Hunted

by Meagan Spooner

  “Will you not tell me what’s the matter?” Yeva burst out, after they’d sat in utter silence together under the peony tree, wrapped up against the autumn chill and watching the fire-gold leaves fall all around them.

  Solmir started, looking for an instant like he’d forgotten Yeva was there at all. “What—what’s the matter?”

  “You’re unhappy,” Yeva said softly, and though it was the first time she’d used that word even to herself, she knew from the look on Solmir’s face that she was right.

  “No,” he said swiftly. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “I know. But you can be happy about a thing and sad about it at the same time. Feeling one thing in your heart doesn’t stop you from feeling another.” Yeva pulled her cloak more tightly around herself. If her time in the Beast’s castle had taught her nothing else, it was that anything—be it Beast or her own heart—could have more than one nature.

  “I’m not unhappy that you’re safe,” Solmir said, so firmly he almost snapped the words. “Yeva, please. I’m only tired, and the baron is ailing, and I worry about him.”

  Yeva swallowed. “I know he once planned on naming you his heir. And I know the rumors that have been circulating about me. For you to be tied to such a woman would surely hurt your chances of—”

  “Enough of that!” Solmir scowled at her, the first flicker of real, bright emotion beyond that distant melancholy she’d seen. “If you think I give a damn—sorry—about the silly rumors people whisper in the streets, you must not think very highly of me.”

  Yeva couldn’t help but smile, for he was his old self again just then. But then her smile faded and she sighed. “I do think highly of you,” she said softly. “I want you to be happy. Which is why—all I mean to say is that I don’t intend to hold you to a promise you made a year ago. You believed I was dead. For all I know, you’ve begun courting someone else, some other girl in the baronessa’s court.”

  Solmir’s scowl smoothed, his face going blank. “You don’t want to marry me anymore?”

  Yeva’s breath stuck in her throat, and as she saw hurt flickering behind that expressionless mask and her heart responded with a painful flutter, she realized she did love him. She loved him like she loved her sisters, like she loved Albe. She loved his heart, and his kindness, and the devotion he’d shown her family even after they all believed her dead. She didn’t love him as a wife loved a husband, but she knew she could learn to do so, that she could be happy with him. If it would make him happy.

  “You saved my family,” Yeva said. “You helped my sisters through the winter even after you thought I was dead and would never fulfill my end of the promise.” Greatly daring, she reached out and took his hand. “I’ll do anything you ask of me.”

  Solmir stared at her, his boyish face suddenly haggard. Weakly, his fingers squeezed hers back.

  Yeva smiled. “Including releasing you from our engagement if that is what you want. You have your own reputation to think of, and I know that.”

  Solmir was silent, watching her. Beyond him and around him the peony leaves fell, drifting to and fro like feathers on the wind. Yes, Yeva thought. I could love him.

  But though she struggled not to, she found herself listening with all her might for the tiniest glimmer of a song in him, of the magic the Beast had taught her to hear. All she heard was the sighing rustle of a breeze through the branches, and the crunch of leaves as Doe-Eyes and Pelei frolicked in the back garden, and the distant ring of the blacksmith’s hammer in town, echoing back through the buildings.

  And then Solmir’s voice, saying, “I want nothing more than to continue keeping your family safe, as I promised.” He squeezed her hand again, and this time there was strength to his grasp, and his smile was warm. “You are one of the most remarkable women I’ve ever known, Yeva, and it would be a fool who would let you go.” He lifted her hand, and Yeva’s heart flickered, and she waited for him to turn her palm over and kiss the inside of her wrist as he’d done that day in the forest. But he just brushed his lips against her knuckles, and then helped her to her feet and led her back inside.

  Yeva dreamed that night of the peony tree. She was kissing Solmir beneath its branches, and its leaves fell around them like a rain of fire. His arms were around her and his palms pressed warm against her back, and all through her body ran a burning torrent she felt might consume her at any moment.

  Solmir ducked his head to kiss her throat, then behind her ear, breathing in the scent of her hair and pulling her closer against him. Her head tipped back and she opened her eyes, and gasped.

  The leaves falling all around them were not leaves after all, but feathers, feathers of red-gold fire. Yeva knew that if one of them touched her it would be too much, that just that tiny spark of heat would be enough to push her over the edge into the fire and she would burn. Her mind filled with the song she’d been searching for, and she felt magic in his pulse, and in the rhythm of his breath, and in her skin everywhere he touched her.

  Then Solmir lifted his head and she saw his eyes, and they were gold, gold like the Firebird, gold like the feathers swirling around them in a blizzard of fire. His face wasn’t Solmir’s after all, but one she’d seen only once, and only by the faint light of a dying fire. But his eyes . . . those eyes were as familiar to her as her own heartbeat.

  “Beauty,” he whispered, tracing his fingertips along the contours of her face.

  She woke gasping as if from a nightmare, but her body felt flushed and feverish and the pounding of her heart was not telling her to flee. Her thoughts flooded with regret, and for an instant she wished more than anything that she could return to that dream, for never in her life had she felt so awake.

  Abruptly she realized three things: that she was sweating, that the window had blown open in the night, and that she was shivering. The heat and longing of the dream vanished and she groaned, sliding out of her bed and hurrying to the window. She was about to pull it closed when she heard something that made her stop.

  It was still well before dawn, and the town was silent. She ought to hear only the noises of the night and the wind, but as she strained, she caught the faintest sound that made the fire of that dream sweep over her again.

  She thought she heard distant music.

  BEAST

  song

  fire

  beauty . . .

  TWENTY-ONE

  GALINA HAD COME TO visit Yeva a few days after word had spread through the town that Tvertko’s youngest daughter had returned. She’d figured out the identity of the strange, wild-looking woman who’d accosted her in the street, and came full of apology and embarrassment that she hadn’t recognized Yeva at once. But after a few visits, Yeva had managed to convince her that the lack of recognition was hardly Galina’s fault. And since Galina was one of the few women around Yeva’s age who didn’t avoid her and her reputation like the plague, Yeva was glad for her company.

  Aside from her sisters, who were all too eager to pretend nothing had changed, and Solmir, who responded to any mention of Yeva’s absence with visible distress, Galina was the only other person who didn’t turn every conversation into a stream of questions about the Beast. She’d talk about her new husband, a tailor on Market Street who had shyly designed a beautiful gown for her to wear at one of the baronessa’s parties. She’d talk about how exhausting and frustrating her pregnancy was, as she was currently suffering through an endless run of mornings where she could not eat a bite without throwing it back up again. She’d talk about the current fashions, and the other ladies, and who was leaving for the city and who was moving into the vacant house on the eastern edge of town, and whether there would be an early frost to damage the harvests.

  Perhaps it was because she didn’t ask about the Beast that Yeva wound up speaking of him herself.

  They were strolling through the marketplace, where the vendors were pressing their wares on passersby with renewed vigor, determined to sell as much of their stock as possible bef
ore winter shut the marketplace down for the year. Galina found that walking eased her nausea, and Yeva was all too glad to stretch legs that had been accustomed to long days of running through the woods.

  “Yeva, is something the matter?” Galina’s voice was soft, a change from the laughter with which she’d been talking about her husband’s latest experiments with brocade.

  Yeva lifted her gaze from the ground, where she’d been separating and categorizing the layers upon layers of footprints in the dried-mud street. “What? No, I’m merely feeling quiet today.” But when she saw Galina’s face, gentle and concerned and entirely without artifice or anything hidden, she sighed. “I’ve been dreaming about him.”

  “Solmir?” Galina asked, eyebrows lifting.

  Yeva shook her head. “The Beast.”

  Galina was quiet, stride not even pausing. Yeva waited for the standard reassurances—oh, the nightmares will fade, you’ve been through such a trial, give it time and you will learn you’ve nothing to fear anymore—but Galina just asked, “What kind of dreams?”

  Yeva felt her face warming despite the chill in the air and kept her eyes down. “They aren’t bad dreams. In fact, I . . . I like them. They’re nice dreams. They make me . . .” She stopped before she could finish the sentence, unwilling to utter the words she was about to say.

  They make me miss him.

  Galina nodded toward the square up ahead, and claiming weariness, suggested they sit on the rough-hewn fountain over the well. It wasn’t the most private of places, but just now nobody was fetching water, and the blur of activity about the town offered its own cloak of anonymity.

  Yeva sat, feeling the cold stone seeping through her layers of skirts. She’d been thinking of the Beast’s valley more and more as winter approached, and though there’d been no frost yet, she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to see the town blanketed in snow without longing for the forest and its music.

  Galina let her breath out in a rush as she sat, and watched people moving to and fro for a time before she spoke. “I have a cousin in Kiev,” she said finally, “who got married very young, because she wasn’t wealthy enough for a large dowry and her parents didn’t know if she’d ever get another offer like the one she’d received.”

  Yeva wondered if Galina had forgotten about her dreams, and nodded.

  “Her husband wasn’t a good man. He hit her when she didn’t do everything exactly to his liking—if the bread was burned, or if the house wasn’t spotless, or if he thought she’d looked too long at another man. He always hit her where it wouldn’t show, until one day he lost his temper and blackened her eye and her brother recognized what was happening. But when he prepared to deal with the husband, to bring the matter to the magistrate and get the marriage annulled, my cousin begged him not to. She defended her husband and said he only had a terrible temper, that he was so loving and so apologetic afterward, and that no other man could possibly make her feel so special, so loved. She said that without her he’d be lost, and that he needed her.”

  Yeva listened in silence, her own thoughts troubled. She’d known other women who’d formed attachments to men who were cruel to them, though she’d never known any in such dire situations. She’d always thought them foolish, weak, lacking in the self-assurance to know they were better than the men whose backhanded compliments made them flush so. But perhaps they were simply in love. Perhaps their hearts had betrayed them, and not their courage.

  Galina leaned back. “I tell you this because I wonder . . . I wonder if something like that has happened to you.”

  Yeva bit back a quick reply, forcing herself to absorb the story, and closed her eyes. “He never hurt me. Well, he did once, but to be fair, I had shot him with an arrow and was about to kill him with an ax.”

  Galina’s expression flickered, but she managed not to blanch too visibly. “Maybe not, but you were his prisoner. That’s a different kind of hurt, but hurt nonetheless.”

  “And I wanted to kill him,” Yeva said, “when I was his prisoner. It was my whole reason for existing, surviving. I didn’t fall in love with him because he hurt me—the idea is absurd.”

  Galina’s eyebrows shot up. “In love with him? Heavens, Yeva, that’s not what I meant at all. Who could even imagine such a thing?”

  Yeva’s face burned hot. “I thought—I mean, you were talking about your cousin—”

  Galina shook her head quickly. “Good lord, no.” Now she was watching Yeva closely, voice dropping despite the noise of the bustling streets. “You care about him.”

  Yeva blinked hard, the words ringing in her ears, words she’d never dared say even to herself, even in the deepest, quietest parts of the night when she woke sweating and longing. “I—I feel for him,” she whispered. Her eyes burned at the admission, and she looked up, barely able to meet Galina’s eyes. “What does that make me?”

  Though she tried to hide it, Galina’s expression held the tiniest glimmer of horror, and it made Yeva shrink. But Galina drew a breath and when she let it out, her reply came in a sigh: “Human.”

  Yeva balled up her fists and ground them against her eyes, punishing them for their betrayal, making sure there’d be no more tears. “I hated him. I hated him more than anything, like I’ve never hated before. I didn’t know I could hate until I hated the Beast.”

  “So what changed?”

  Yeva had to pause to breathe until her voice steadied. “I found out he was a prisoner too,” she whispered. “And that he was as lonely as I had been.”

  “Lonely?” Galina echoed. “But Yeva, he was the reason you were lonely, cooped up all alone in that old castle—”

  “No,” Yeva interrupted. “I was lonely before. I was lonely in the cabin, with my sisters. I was lonely here, with the baronessa.”

  Galina bit her lip, eyes dropping. Too late, Yeva realized she was saying that even her friendship with Galina in the past had left her lonely, but it was the truth, and she couldn’t take it back.

  “I was always lonely, and I never knew it until I met the Beast. The real Beast, the one beneath the fangs and the claws and the rage. The one who reads, who listens to fairy stories, who comes alive in the forest, who hears music. . . .”

  “Music?” Galina frowned.

  Yeva started. “No, I just meant—I don’t know what I meant.”

  “But Yeva . . . he held you prisoner. He threatened your family.”

  “I know.” Yeva’s eyes crept up toward the hill, and though she couldn’t see her father’s house from here, she could imagine it just on the other side of the ridge. “And I took advantage of his trust and tried to kill him. We have both hurt each other.”

  “What makes you think he wouldn’t have kept trying to hurt you if you hadn’t escaped?”

  “Because I didn’t escape,” Yeva replied simply. “He let me go.”

  Galina’s face was troubled. “Give it time,” she suggested softly. “You have your sisters, and me, and you have Solmir. Think of Solmir—you won’t be lonely here, Yeva. You’re surrounded by people who love you.”

  Yeva knew she was right. She thought of Solmir, and of his warm eyes, and of the tremendous kindnesses he’d shown her family. She tried to ignore the bite in the air as she and Galina stood and began the walk back to her home. It smelled like snow.

  Asenka still spent most of her days at the leech’s shop, helping to nurse the sick. The leech himself was good enough at treating illnesses, but he was an arrogant, officious man with no patience or interest in people—his passion lay in disease itself, in making endless lists of symptoms and treatments and linking them together. So it was Asenka, and her smiles and her unflinching sympathy in the face of horrific injury or disease, to whom many of the townsfolk quietly attributed their recoveries whenever they fell ill.

  Yeva came now and then to share the noonday meal with her. Though Asenka was given lunch by the leech, it was more often than not cold meat on cold bread, so when Yeva brought hot stew from home, the change was more than
welcome. Asenka’s little corner of the upstairs loft in the shop was quiet, and unless the leech had patients so ill as to need full-time care, the beds in the loft were empty. It was a respite from the bustle of town, and even from their own home, which was full of servants, and Radak and Lena. Yeva had come to understand why Asenka enjoyed her time here so.

  Sometimes they talked about the Beast. Sometimes they talked about Lena, and how increasingly irritable she was becoming due to the baby growing in her womb. Occasionally they spoke of their father, but most often they simply ate together quietly, enjoying the rare, precious company of silence shared.

  It was the latter Yeva was hoping for when she decided to wrap up a tureen of dumplings in mutton broth and cabbage and walk down to the leech’s shop. Lena was overseeing the redecoration of their sewing room as it was being converted into a nursery, and Yeva felt she might shout at her if she were asked one more time to choose between two nearly identical tapestries to cover the walls.

  But as she climbed the stairs to the leech’s upstairs, she heard voices.

  “I asked you to go.” Though Asenka’s voice was quiet, the pain in it carried easily down the stairs and made Yeva stop short.

  “I don’t believe you mean it.” It was Solmir. Yeva stifled her breath of surprise with her hand, and though her conscience told her she ought to creep away again, she couldn’t help but stay to listen. Solmir sounded every bit as sad and hurt as he’d seemed lately, and she’d do anything to discover the cause.

  “You can’t keep coming here,” Asenka said, voice rising. “It’s improper. Someone will see you, and talk, and our family’s had more than its fair share of rumor and gossip lately.”

  “What do I care?” Solmir burst out, with that same passion Yeva had come to find endearing.

  “It’s not you!” Asenka cried, making Yeva teeter on the stairs in surprise. She couldn’t remember the last time Asenka had raised her voice to anyone. “I care, Solmir. Lena and Radak care. Yeva cares.”