In the wild, in this wild, it would be merciful to kill a wounded animal. And more merciful still not to make her be the one to deliver the killing blow to her own companion.
But what could a Beast know of mercy?
Yeva drew in a shaking breath. “How far are we from—from your home? I will carry her.”
The Beast paused, either calculating the distance or hesitating to share the information, Yeva did not know. “You cannot carry her if you are blindfolded.”
“No,” agreed Yeva, gazing back at him.
The Beast’s tail twitched, darting one way, then the other. “It is not far,” he said finally. “Follow me.”
Doe-Eyes was not a small dog, and though the weeks of drawing her father’s bow had strengthened her shoulders, Yeva still staggered under her dog’s weight after the first hour. The Beast did not offer any help, and Yeva did not expect him to—if she ever drew too near him, Doe-Eyes would stiffen in her arms, legs flailing about as her instincts told her to get her feet on the ground in order to defend herself and her mistress.
After casting a few glances her way, the Beast stalked on ahead of them, as if he were frustrated by Yeva’s slow pace. But as he moved, his bulk trampled the snow ahead of Yeva’s steps, making her journey considerably easier. Though he clearly had some way of traveling through the forest without leaving a sign, now he walked like any common beast, forging a path ahead.
Now and then Yeva set Doe-Eyes down in order to rest her back, and the dog would hobble a short distance on three legs. Though Yeva knew she must be in considerable pain, Doe-Eyes kept gazing up at her with that gap-jawed smile of hers, tongue lolling out, eyes seeking assurance.
The Beast led them up a long slope, a slope Yeva did not remember descending while blindfolded. She assumed he must have led her away by some other route, and was now taking a more direct path. Up ahead the trees thinned, telling Yeva that they were approaching a ridgeline overlooking one of the many valleys in the forest. She set Doe-Eyes down again in anticipation of pausing at the top of the ridge, and was unable to prevent the groan that escaped her lips. The bones in her spine popped in protest as she straightened, and she pressed her hands into the small of her back to stretch the muscles.
When she opened her eyes again the Beast had stopped. He was watching her. That unblinking stare was still unnerving, but the rush of terror that ran through Yeva every time the massive creature looked her way had dwindled to a trickle. He was still frightening, alien, unpredictable—but she found she could return his stare now without shivering.
As if sensing her thoughts, the Beast broke his eyes away first and looked toward the thinning trees. “My home is in the . . . valley,” he said haltingly, as though he had to pause to remember the right words. “You will not ask me questions.”
Yeva knit her brows and took a step toward the ridge. “What do you mean? Why would I—”
“Did I not just tell you there were to be no questions?” The Beast’s voice quickened with irritation.
“You did. But I didn’t agree to your terms.”
The Beast drew himself up on his haunches. “There is no negotiation. I gave you an order.”
“How nice for you.” Yeva clicked her tongue at Doe-Eyes, who was sniffing furiously at a patch of yellow snow left by a passing fox. The dog left the spot reluctantly, falling into hobbling step beside her mistress as Yeva set off for the ridge.
She felt the Beast’s consternation, heard it in the wordless rumble of protest as she passed him. She regretted moving ahead instantly—it had been some time since she’d had to break her own trail through the snow, and she’d grown used to the trampled path left in the Beast’s wake. But she wouldn’t let the creature see her struggle. She fought her way through the snow, keeping her eyes down.
It wasn’t until a flicker of light caught her eye that she looked up and found a valley opening below her. The overcast sky was clearing in spots, letting trickles of sunlight out to wash the vista ahead. A river ran through the valley, only a narrow ribbon of treeless white expanse in the frozen winter. The trees thinned off to one side of the valley, suggesting a meadow or marsh beneath its blanket of snow, and on the far side stood a ridge of small mountains, barely high enough for their peaks to clear the tree line and stand stark white in the patches of sun.
But none of this was what held Yeva’s gaze. Because in the bottom of the valley, straddling the river nestled in the foothills, was a castle.
Yeva stood stunned, dimly aware of Doe-Eyes leaning against her legs. The castle sat dark and gray, as much a part of the landscape as the trees or the distant mountains. Its peaked roofs were coated with snow, and from this distance it hardly seemed real—like a picture of a castle that, as soon as Yeva moved, would betray itself as fake.
The Beast waded past her, his great body low to the ground and churning up the snow like a plow in the fields. He did not pause to admire the sight, or to take in Yeva’s shock, but rather began making his way down into the valley. Yeva stood until Doe-Eyes gave the tiniest of whines, and jerked her out of her confusion. She swallowed hard, stooped to pick up the dog, and moved to follow the Beast.
BEAST
We will not break the terms of our sentence. We cannot explain, or we risk remaining trapped together for the rest of eternity. But the girl’s face, when we turn to look at her, carries a thousand questions, and she is clever. We must tread with care.
Do you not understand loyalty, she asked us, or love?
We wanted to answer: no. They are human concerns, and we have not been human for centuries. We are, we have always been, beast.
But the question hangs on the air like the smell of a coming storm, and we fear the change the storm brings.
ELEVEN
AS THEY NEARED THE castle, Yeva saw that it was in terrible disrepair. Crumbling stone, cracked by centuries of freezing and thawing, was covered in frozen lichen, and many of the great carved gargoyles lining the eaves were broken or missing altogether. The windows were dark and cold, and many of them shattered, leaving only carved stone frames around the blackness beyond.
The palace looked like it had been abandoned for centuries.
Most of the building lay on the other side of the river, with a gatehouse on the near side, connected to the rest by a bridge. Though Yeva hesitated at the idea of crossing such an ancient, crumbling structure, the Beast continued on ahead without pausing.
If it can hold his weight, Yeva thought dubiously, it must be able to hold mine. But then, the Beast seemed able to make himself as light as air when he chose, to leave no prints in the snow and make no sound as he moved.
Yeva walked very, very carefully.
On the other side of the bridge, a section of the palisade lining the walk had crumbled away, and Yeva saw a well-trodden path leading down toward the river. Churned mud and snow led to a hole in the rock foundation supporting the castle, some dank hollow or cave. A home befitting a Beast. Yeva half expected the Beast to turn and lead her down the slope, but instead he set his shoulder to one of the great doors at the far end of the courtyard and shoved until the rotting wood groaned open wide enough for them to slip through.
The only light inside came from a row of grime-coated windows high above, centuries of cobwebs and dust turning the pale winter sunlight the color of dusk. The Beast kept moving without pause, able to see in the dark with those animal eyes, but Yeva stumbled when her feet encountered a broken stone in the floor. She gasped and nearly dropped Doe-Eyes, who yelped as Yeva’s grip shifted and she jostled the injured leg.
Yeva heard the Beast stop, no more than a change in the way the air moved. She couldn’t see him, only a shift in the shadows ahead. “Wait here,” he said, and before Yeva could answer, he was gone.
Yeva dropped to her knees on the cold stone floor, uncertain what the Beast meant her to wait for, but grateful for the rest. Doe-Eyes settled beside her and laid her head in her lap, and though it was too dark, Yeva saw in her mind the look
the dog was giving her: eyes rolled up, seeking Yeva’s face, tail thumping in the dust. She stroked Doe-Eyes’s ears, and stared up toward the thin gray light trickling down from the windows high above.
The castle was not large—or rather, it was far larger than any building Yeva had ever seen, including the baron’s estate, but it was far smaller than the castles Yeva had seen depicted in paintings and tapestries. The castles of old stories were vast and sprawling, with fantastical turrets and buttresses that stretched toward the sky. This one was more compact, lacking the ornamentation and fancy of the ones in pictures. This was the sort of castle that could have been defended in a siege, she thought.
The Beast was gone so long that Yeva considered lying down right there on the stones to sleep. But just as she started to lean over, the shadows ahead of her moved abruptly. A flame sprang to life—a lantern, unshielded. Yeva could not quite see how the Beast managed it without fingers, and yet there he stood, sitting on his haunches, the lantern hanging from one massive paw.
“Here,” he said, blank-faced.
Yeva pulled herself up, getting to her feet with some difficulty, as her abused muscles had stiffened. She reached out for the lantern, willing her arm to steady despite its desire to tremble, so close to the Beast’s claws.
The Beast turned again without speaking, and led Yeva across what must have once been a grand foyer. The lantern only cast enough light for Yeva to see the floor beneath her feet and the barest hint of the room around her, but she spied a great stone staircase off to the right, so wide she could have lain down across each step many times over. She got the impression of vast tapestries against the wall, and she veered off in that direction a little, keeping one eye on the Beast as she lifted the lantern higher.
She saw only faded cloth and dust, too old and too dirty to reveal any images underneath, and a twinge of disappointment took the place of her curiosity.
“This way,” said the Beast, voice quickening in that way it did when he was annoyed.
Yeva saw that he was standing before a smaller door that stood ajar, opening onto a narrow staircase leading down. Yeva knew what lay in the dark under-places of castles. She drew back, and Doe-Eyes, hobbling at her side, dropped to her haunches.
The Beast halted when she did, and Yeva saw the gleam of his eyes catching the lamplight.
“Don’t make me go back to that cell,” Yeva blurted, before she had even fully resolved to speak. “You bring me out, you make me hunt for you, but you keep me locked away where I cannot see the sky, cannot tell what weather has come and gone in the night—how can I know how old a set of tracks is if I don’t know when the last snow fell, or whether the wind has been strong enough to stir snow from the tree branches? How can I learn the forest well enough to track its creatures if I never know where I am, or where I’m going?”
The words came out in a rush, her voice rising with the strength of her plea. She could not live out the rest of this existence, however long it took before the Beast was done with her, in a locked room of stone.
“I’ll die in there—the part of me that hunts will die, anyway—and I’ll be useless to you. And Doe-Eyes—she wasn’t built for cold. Her leg will ache in there, with no warmth, and she’ll never heal properly if I can’t see her to treat her and make her well. I—”
“The dungeons,” said the Beast calmly, interrupting her, “are through the door on the other side of the hall.”
The rest of Yeva’s breath fell out in a stuttering gasp, punctuated by the wavering light of the lamp dangling from her hand.
“My home,” the Beast went on, “when I choose to live there, is down here.”
Yeva swallowed. Here, where the Beast had been leading her. She shifted her weight, her tired muscles trembling and making the flame dance and shiver. “All right, then.”
The narrow stairway curled around and around, and as they descended farther into the depths beneath the castle, the air grew colder and heavier. Yeva began to shiver in earnest—not from exhaustion or fear, but from a cold more penetrating than the bitter wind outside. This cold crept in from everywhere, chilling all of her, even her bones, despite her cloak and thick wool undergarments. Doe-Eyes managed the stairs with great difficulty, but it was too narrow for Yeva to carry her, and even if she could, she needed her hands to keep from slipping. The steps were worn low in their centers, bowing inward by centuries of feet carving smooth hollows in the stone that threatened to send Yeva’s boots sliding.
The staircase ended in a narrow hallway with doors on either side. Yeva guessed that this area must have once housed the castle’s servants, and she wondered again how the Beast came to live here; whether the castle was in ruins when he found it, or whether—and this made her shiver all the more—he was the reason the castle had been abandoned.
The Beast halted in front of a door a few down from the staircase, and lifted one paw for the latch. Yeva raised the lantern, determined this time to see the trick of it, how he mastered human tasks with nothing but his claws—but despite the light on him and the door latch, her eyes couldn’t quite grasp what they were seeing. Her gaze kept trying to slide from what was happening. However he managed it, he opened the latch as easily as she would have done, and pushed the door open.
Beyond, the room was dim and cold. But as Yeva stepped forward, her boots hit carpet. She paused. Below her feet was a lush red rug, and as she looked around, she realized it was the room the Beast had brought her to when she was ill. It was furnished with dilapidated, mismatched furniture, obviously from various rooms of the castle. Some of it seemed in better care, if faded, while other items, like a crooked, battered table that stood on three legs and a stack of moldering books in place of its fourth leg, wouldn’t have been fit for a hovel. The floor was covered by overlapping rugs of clashing colors. Along one wall was a fireplace, and though it held only ashes and blackened charcoal, next to its hearth was a stack of feathers and hafts—Yeva’s arrow-making supplies. And there, some distance from them, was her fletching knife. Its blade was stained rusty brown, and with a jolt, Yeva remembered stabbing it down into the Beast’s shoulder as he railed at her for removing her blindfold.
You gave us your word, he’d roared. At the time, she’d been too terrified to think. But now, as the Beast stood aside while she explored the room, she wondered at the depth of his fury. He scarcely seemed to notice her stabbing him, but the betrayal, the breaking of her word, sent him into such a fury that the memory of it made Yeva’s body grow colder still.
Yeva halted in the center of the room, trying not to think of the faded blue divan a few paces away, and how easy and lovely it’d be to drop onto its moldering cushions and close her eyes. But the Beast was still there, and as exhausted as she was, that primitive part of her brain would never be able to dismiss the presence of a predator in the room with her.
“You may remain here,” the Beast said coolly, “as long as you give your word that you will not try to escape, and that you will not try again to kill us. Remember that we know where your family lives, that we have watched them, that we could kill them at any time.”
Yeva swallowed hard, this time forcing her hand to still. “I give you my word,” she said slowly, “that I will not run away.”
“You lied to us once,” the Beast said softly.
“Perhaps I regret doing so.” Yeva’s own voice quieted. For it was true. Maybe, if she had not let curiosity get the better of her, she would never have learned the identity of her captor, and she could have gone on in ignorance, telling stories to her friend by the fire.
The Beast was silent for a long time, so long that Yeva’s eyes began to play tricks on her. His form melted back into the shadows cast by the lantern, and she began to wonder if he was even still there. When he spoke again, she nearly jumped.
“You promised not to run,” he murmured. “You did not promise not to try to kill me.”
“No,” Yeva agreed. “I didn’t.”
The Beast stood in sile
nce again for a few seconds. Then came the oddest, most unexpected of sounds—a bass rumble, a quick burst of rich velvet, lacking the somber chill his voice usually carried.
He was laughing.
Before Yeva could react, the Beast was gone.
BEAST
She believes she can kill us. She wants to avenge her father’s death, letting hatred and fury fuel her. Her word not to run comes easily because she has no desire to flee—not until we are dead.
She has a fire to her that we have not seen, have not felt, in a long time. That the fire wants to consume us makes no difference—that passion will make her stronger, faster. More useful to us. That is all that matters. Fire cannot hurt us.
And yet, when we light her a lantern, there is a moment as we watch the wick flare in the darkness—a moment in which I want to touch the flame.
Just to see if I can still be burned.
TWELVE
YEVA DID WHAT SHE could for Doe-Eyes. After lighting a fire in the cold hearth from the flame of the oil lamp, she broke an arrow haft in two for splints, which she bound to the broken leg with strips torn from her tunic. If she’d had the medicines she’d brought with her, she could use the cypress salve she’d applied on her own ribs, but she had no way of summoning the Beast to return. Nor did she feel like pressing her luck with him further.
As Doe-Eyes heaved a noisy sigh and rolled onto her back, all four paws in the air and belly exposed to the fire, Yeva leaned against the edge of the divan and closed her eyes.
That laugh.
Beasts did not laugh. True, Doe-Eyes smiled at her—but it was not a smile the way most humans would recognize it. Yeva knew she was seeing happiness when her dog’s mouth fell open and the tongue lolled out, and it translated into a smile in her mind because she knew Doe-Eyes, knew each twitch of her tail or flick of her ears, and what they meant. But the laugh from the Beast required no translation, no learned interpretation of his body language.
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