Hunted(82)

She set the torn fairy tales and the pieces of her father’s bow at the foot of the ice wall, and then picked up the Firebird’s feather. She held it in her cupped palms, feeling its light bathe her face one more time. Then she settled it down in the nest of kindling and wood, and let it burn.

Yeva dozed, huddled close to the tiny fire, waking now and then to blow on a failing coal here or tuck a splinter of her father’s bow back into the flames there. The fire’s heat was melting the ice, but slowly, far too slowly. Yeva wiped at the trickles of frigid water with the edge of her cloak so the moisture wouldn’t swamp the fire, and rocked, and waited, and hoped.

She could not be sure how much time had passed when a change woke her with an urgent sense of dread. She automatically leaned for the fire to check it, and found it had dwindled to little more than a few faint coals, coated with thick white ash. She grabbed for the book of stories but all its pages were gone now, and the fire was too low and cold to burn the leather binding.

Yeva staggered to her feet and slammed her shoulder into the ice curtain with all her weight behind it, straining to hear some groan or crack or sign that her fire had thinned the door of her prison even a little—but even her imagination heard nothing. Stifling a sob of panic, she began ripping strips from the bottom of her cloak, finding the driest sections to add to the fire.

No, her thoughts screamed, as she tried again to budge the ice, throwing every ounce of strength she had left against the unyielding wall until her body ached with bruises. The story doesn’t end this way.

But if her experience with the Firebird had taught her anything, it was that even here, at the edge of the world, life wasn’t a story. If she died here no one would tell about it. She’d be one more soul lost to the wilderness, and the Beast would be left forever to run through the trees and hunt and feed without ever looking up, without ever seeing the dancing sky. Yeva slammed against the wall one more time and then stayed there, the side of her face against the wet, too-slowly-melting ice, its cold so shocking that it made her gasp.

And then, with her ear against the ice, she heard a sound. At first she thought it was the ice settling, but when it came a second time, and more loudly, she recognized with a new jolt of terror the roar of a wild beast.

The wall beneath her cheek shuddered, and Yeva lurched back. A chunk of ice fell from the other side of the wall, casting dim, pale-blue light into the cave. The creature roared again, and suddenly Yeva’s heart filled. She knew that voice, would know it anywhere, whether it was whispering her name or roaring in fury.

“Beast!” she cried, renewing her efforts and slamming into the wall again—this time her efforts rewarded her with the faintest of splintering sounds. “I’m here!”

There came a great screeching as the Beast raked his claws down the wall outside, then another shudder as his whole body weight came crashing in against the wall. Yeva staggered back, sense reasserting itself and reminding her that he outweighed her many times over, and that trying to help him break down the barrier would most likely end with her crushed under an avalanche of shattered ice.

The growls and roars grew louder as the Beast carved away more and more of the wall. Beauty could see his shape behind the ice, silhouetted by the sun. It took only moments for the entire frozen curtain to fall in a shower of crystal fragments. The Beast burst into the cave in a brilliant glare of sun, blinding Yeva and making her throw up both arms to shield her eyes.

“Beast,” she gasped, struggling for breath through her relief. “How did you find me? How did you know to look?”

But when there was no reply, Yeva lowered her arms and squinted through the sudden glare and saw the hulking shape of the Beast circling, head low, each step meticulous and calculating. His lips were drawn back in a snarl, and when she met his red, red gaze she saw no hint of the man she’d come to save.

She took a hesitant step toward him, and the creature’s entire body tensed, the muscles in his shoulders bunching, his haunches readying to attack. Yeva froze, hand half outstretched, her mind going blank. She had no weapons anymore. Every bit of gear she’d packed, she’d left behind in a magic-induced haze.

Except . . . the age-worn feather the Beast had left for her was still in her pocket.

She started to reach for it, but the monster stalking her saw the movement and let out a snarl that rattled her very bones. Yeva had only an instant before he leaped at her, and she thrust her hand into her pocket and drew out the feather as she threw herself backward, shielding herself with both hands, instinctively, waiting to feel the Beast’s crushing weight, the rending of her body with his claws, the cruel snap of his jaws.

They never came.

When she managed to open her eyes, Yeva saw the Beast looming over her, still snarling, panting with bloodlust—but his focus had narrowed to the feather clutched in her fingers. Compared to the soft, gleaming thing she’d used to start her fire, this feather was dull and dirty and bedraggled, battered by the centuries until it was barely recognizable. But the Beast stared at it, snorting steam into the frigid air, muscles trembling as if he were being held back by invisible bonds.

Yeva scrambled back, lifting the feather like a talisman, heart pounding painfully and fear leaving her mouth bitter and dry. But as the Beast moved to take a step after her, she found her voice and blurted the first words that came to her lips.

“Let me tell you a story!” she cried out. The Beast froze, though his gaze never flickered. Yeva had to draw three breaths before she found her voice again. “I will tell you a fairy tale.”