The music stopped. Erec spun her out one final time, then twirled her back into his embrace.
“Ten thousand years of this,” he said. “Would it be so terrible?”
It took Rachelle a moment to speak. Her heart had already been beating fast in the dance, and now she was clasped against his body, his arms warm around her waist.
“It wouldn’t be like this,” she said. “We’d be monsters living in the woods.”
“Are you sure? Maybe the forestborn have palaces and balls as well.”
Her laugh was almost fond. “If you can believe that, clearly you were marked by a different kind of forestborn than I was.”
“Oh? Was yours not elegant enough to satisfy you?”
She remembered his soft voice laughing and coaxing her. She remembered rough tree bark digging into her back as her mouth was forced open.
“Would you call a rabid animal ‘elegant’?”
“Maybe, if it was pretty enough.” He leaned down a little closer. “But if that’s not what you crave, how about me? If you must die soon, at least you could enjoy tonight.”
She knew that if she stayed in his arms another moment, he would kiss her. He would kiss her and take her back to his room and make her forget, for a little while, the blood in her past and the thread on her finger and the darkness waiting for her. If she let him.
Once upon a time, she would have been insulted by such an offer. Even when she’d first come to Rocamadour, bitterly aware that she had no honor left to lose, she’d still been furious to discover that being kissed by him made her no different from a hundred other women. But she had known him for three years now, and he’d saved her life in half a dozen fights, and he was her friend. She couldn’t hate him for his games; even less could she hate him for thinking she might say yes. She was a bloodbound because she could say yes to anything.
She pulled herself out of his grip, because she didn’t have any honor left, but she had a little pride. Erec was a good friend but he was incapable of falling in love; his women were pretty, shiny pieces in his collection, and Rachelle had no intention of being the latest prize.
“I am going to enjoy sleeping tonight. You can do as you please.” She turned away but he caught her shoulder.
“If it’s time for good night, then I should tell you—the King wants you at his levée tomorrow.”
The levée was the ceremonial rising-from-bed that the King enacted every morning. Courtiers would scheme, fight, and bribe themselves bankrupt for a chance to attend. As one of the King’s bloodbound, Rachelle had the right to attend anytime she pleased, but she had never bothered.
“Why?” she asked. Beyond accepting her into the ranks, King Auguste-Philippe had never taken any interest in her.
“Our gracious King will tell you when he pleases. Good night, mademoiselle.” Erec bowed extravagantly and strode away, probably to join the party overhead. With a sigh, Rachelle turned in the opposite direction and trudged toward the cold, narrow refuge of her bed.
Whatever the King wanted with her, it wouldn’t matter for long. Nothing would matter. The thought hollowed her out with cold, despairing fear, and yet it was strangely liberating.
She lay awake a long time, staring at the dim red glow of the string. After the forestborn had tied it to her finger, he had made no move to stop her when she staggered out of the house. He hadn’t pursued her as she ran through the woods, stumbling because she wasn’t used to the sudden strength in her limbs.
She hadn’t tried to go home. If the villagers knew what she had done, they would burn her. They would tie her to a stake and her own family would light the pyre. That was the penalty for becoming bloodbound, and as much as she deserved it, Rachelle still wanted to live. She hadn’t stopped running until she reached Rocamadour, where she had begged to be made one of the King’s bloodbound, her sentence of execution delayed so she could serve him.
For a little while, she’d hoped—not for herself, but for the world. The forestborn had told her that the Devourer could only be defeated with Joyeuse or Durendal, and that both swords were gone forever. But while Durendal had vanished over a thousand years ago—shattered in battle, they said—Joyeuse had been the coronation sword for the kings of Gévaudan until just three hundred years ago, when a woodwife had hidden the sword from Mad King Louis to prevent him from destroying it. Nobody knew where, and so that sword too was lost.
That was how everybody in Rocamadour told the story. But when Aunt Léonie had told it to Rachelle, she had said, The woodwife opened a door above the sun, below the moon, and hid Joyeuse against our hour of greatest need.
When Rachelle had asked her what that meant, she’d only shrugged. At the time, it had seemed like just another one of Aunt Léonie’s maddeningly obscure sayings. But after Rachelle became bloodbound—after the forestborn had told her that Joyeuse could kill the Devourer—it had given her hope. All she had to do was solve the riddle and find the sword. Just like in the stories she’d loved as a child.
But she wasn’t like any of the heroines in those stories. And though she searched the city until she had found every door and gate and fountain and mosaic that had the sun or moon upon it, though she had spent hours scrutinizing all of them for the least trace of power, she had never found anything. And nobody whom she talked to had ever heard Aunt Léonie’s version of the story.
Eventually, she had accepted that she would never defeat the Devourer. She would never redeem herself. So she had sworn that the next time she saw her forestborn, at least she would avenge Aunt Léonie.
But when she had finally seen him again this night, she hadn’t been able to do anything. She was still just that helpless, frightened little girl.
No. She had turned to fight in the end. If he hadn’t disappeared, she would have fought him.
When the Devourer returned, her forestborn would certainly come find her again. And when all the world was covered in the Great Forest, there would be no disappearing into it. Rachelle would have her chance to fight then, and she would kill him. No matter the price.
She fell asleep still promising.
3
Her dreams were a tangled mess of blood and shuddering trees. Rachelle struggled awake with a gasp, her heart pounding in her ears. It was still before sunrise; her room was dark and silent—a simple, human darkness that would melt away with the dawn.
Soon she would lose that darkness, as well as the light. Rachelle wondered how long, exactly, she had left. Her forestborn had said, Before the summer sun makes its last valiant gasp. Did that mean before winter? Before autumn? Or before the summer solstice, after which the days would only grow shorter?