Hunted(76)

She closed her eyes, groped for the latch at her back, and then slipped out into the night.





TWENTY-FOUR


THOUGH YEVA NEVER WOULD have been able to pinpoint the location of the Beast’s valley on a map, nor describe to someone how they might find it, her heart knew exactly where to take her. She thought about renting a horse in one of the villages she passed after dawn, but decided against it. She’d found her way out of the valley on foot, and some part of her, the part that knew the rules of fairy tales like she knew down from up, was certain that she must be on foot to find her way back.

Doe-Eyes, too, seemed to know the way. For all she’d been wary, even frightened, of the Beast at first, she’d grown accustomed to living near a predator, and Yeva had the strangest feeling that the dog was excited to be returning. Though Doe-Eyes had spent every evening with Yeva’s family stretched out in front of the fire with her head upside down and beaming in the heat of the coals, there was a spark to her now, a sort of life that had been missing in town.

With every step, Yeva felt lighter. Each league she closed between her and the Beast made his pull all the stronger, as if she were a needle drawn to a lodestone. Her heart had grown so used to hating him that she couldn’t make sense of how her feelings for him had changed, but she knew that just now, in this instant, this crossroads of her life, she was meant to find him. She could not tell what would come after, but she hadn’t felt such certainty since the very first time she’d held her own bow in her hands.

She would find him. She would free him.

The snow that had sent her out into the night stopped later that first day, and the pale autumn sun was enough to melt it on the roads. But once she left the road for the forest, the snow lay beneath the trees in cool white swaths that marked out intricate patterns of shadow where the sun never penetrated the branches above. Each one seemed to point onward, north, illuminating her path.

Her sleep, when she paused in the pitch-blackness of night long enough to get some rest, was dreamless. The days flew as though the magic was pulling her onward, summoning her home.

The air shifted when she reached the river where it passed out of the southern border of the Beast’s valley. She stopped at the water’s edge, gazing down the glittering expanse. The river glittered in the afternoon sun, burbling against the rocks a few paces from her boots, and Doe-Eyes pranced over to lap at it noisily. Here the water was lively and dancing swiftly through its carven course, but a league upstream Yeva could see that it was frozen. The deep winter that froze time itself in the Beast’s valley hadn’t changed.

Yeva ran, throwing wisdom and endurance to the wind in her haste. Doe-Eyes let out an uncharacteristic, joyous bark and sprinted after her, falling into step at her side and breathing noisily. The air once again singed her lungs with cold.

The castle burst into view, looking as it had always looked, nestled in a cradle of ice and snow where it straddled the river that flowed beneath it. The sound of Yeva’s pounding footfalls changed as she hit the stone of the bridge, which she’d once crossed so gingerly. She went first to the den, veering from the castle doors and sliding in her haste down the trodden path to the cave. Despite the violence of her nightmares, she felt no fear—she knew that if the Beast could see her, if he could only know she’d come back for him, the wolf would release him.

The den was empty. Gnawed bones littered the shadowy recesses of the cave, and she could smell him, but his scent was faint and seemed fainter with every breath. Yeva took a step back and looked down, and saw that her tracks were fresh and new but that they were the only ones that had broken the crust of an old snow. No one else had come this way in weeks.

Yeva whirled and made for the castle doors. One of them stood slightly ajar, as if in invitation. She hurried across the dusty marble of the great hall, past the room full of shattered windows, and into the one with the blue velvet divan and the table with books propping it up and tapestries covering the high windows to keep out the drafts.

It was dark and cold, and empty. Her heart ached at the sight of the hearth, which had always been burning bright or glowing with hot coals—she’d never realized how often the Beast must have laid the fire for her until now. She’d taken that warmth for granted, as though the fire had simply lit itself for her each day by magic.

Her legs refused to run anymore, and the ache in her heart began to spread. For the first time an icy trickle of fear lifted the hairs at the back of her neck.

Where is the Beast?

She moved back out into the great hall. Doe-Eyes, panting from the headlong flight through the valley, took one look at the stairs and dropped onto her belly before them. She cast Yeva a baleful look, and Yeva told her to stay before heading up the wide curving stair.

The library was empty, and the master bedroom too—but she’d expected that. It was the tower room she sought, the tower room where she knew she’d find the Beast. She pulled back the tapestry to find the secret door unlocked.

You may come here any time you wish, the Beast had told her. But Yeva’s memory of his offer could not quite touch the rising fear in her heart that she refused to look at directly.

She climbed the steps two at a time, calling breathlessly, “Beast? Beast, it’s me. Your Beauty.” There was no reply, and Yeva imagined him so shocked that she’d return that he could not speak.

But when she burst through the second door at the top of the spiral stair the tower room was empty. The fire in the hearth was unlit, and when Yeva drew nearer and put her hand out to the ashes, she found them ice cold. The carpet crumbled and stank under her feet, and she saw that nothing had been cleaned, dried blood still staining the floor.