Fury hit her like a wall of flame, and her fear went up in smoke. She whirled, sword coming up—
But he was gone. There was only darkness, and the Forest, and then both wavered and blew away like smoke.
She was in a dingy little room, lit by a single lamp. In front of her, a woman was chained to the wall. Her head lolled forward; her whole chest was soaked with blood. So much blood. The floor seemed to rock under her feet, and Rachelle wobbled back a step. Strong hands caught her shoulders, and she flinched before she realized it was Erec.
“Congratulations,” he said.
“Shut up,” muttered Rachelle. None of the woman’s blood had fallen on her, but she still felt the hot, sticky mess all over her hands and arms.
She forced herself to look away from the corpse to the tray piled with cracked chicken bones, the gouges clawed into the wall. The woman must have been up here for at least a month, teetering on the edge of madness, only iron chains and the last scraps of will keeping her something like human.
It was a mercy, she told herself, but that was no comfort.
“All right downstairs?” she asked.
“Let’s see,” said Erec. “Half of them are missing bits of their faces due to woodspawn. The rest are unconscious or stabbed, due to me. So everything’s quite all right.”
Behind them, somebody gasped. Rachelle turned, pulling free of Erec’s grasp, and there was the scrawny girl from downstairs.
“Mama,” the girl whispered, and burst into tears.
Behind the girl stood her father, his face pale. “Murderer,” he said.
“No,” said Erec. “Executioner. Your wife was the murderer. You know, don’t you, the penalty for concealing a bloodbound from the King?”
The man spat. “If you’d ever loved someone, you’d understand.”
Rachelle didn’t realize she was moving until she had grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him against the wall. “Do you know what I understand? There have been five woodspawn attacks in this neighborhood in the past two weeks. That’s two people dead and one who will never walk again, all because your wife was sitting here, calling down the power of the Forest. If we hadn’t put her down, she would have broken those chains when she finished transforming, and then she would have killed every person she could find. Starting with your daughter.”
“She would never—”
“Let me guess. The Bishop promised that if you just prayed hard enough, she would stay human.”
The man’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t say anything.
Bishop Guillaume helped people hide bloodbound from the King’s justice. Rachelle and Erec knew it, they just hadn’t been able to prove it yet. She still wasn’t sure if the Bishop had some fantasy of building his own bloodbound army, or if he was just that deluded about the chances that bloodbound could stay sane and human. Either way, he was a hypocrite for also preaching death and judgment on them every Sunday.
“It’s a lie,” said Rachelle. “Nobody escapes the Forest. But if you’d given her to us, we’d have executed her before she hurt more people.”
“She wasn’t like you—”
“She killed. She was exactly like me. And like her, I will die for my sins and go to hell. But at least I’m not fool enough to think that bloodbound won’t bring death all around them.”
Then she shoved him away and stalked out of the room.
“Do you really believe you’re going to hell?” asked Erec.
“I don’t see a way to doubt it,” said Rachelle, not looking down at her hand. She was still acutely conscious of the crimson thread tied to her finger.
They were finally back at the Palais du Soleil, just inside the main courtyard, where lamplight glinted off the wet blue-and-gold tesserae that covered the ground in a vast mosaic. A few minutes ago, the bells had rung out two in the morning, but on one of the grand balconies above them, light and music spilled out into the night, and Rachelle could glimpse the brilliant swirl of silken dresses.
“But you’re bloodbound,” he said, with a quizzical tilt to his eyebrows. Rain glistened on his cheekbones. Despite the dingy coat and cap he had worn to infiltrate the coffeehouse, despite being soaked by the rain, he still looked as elegant as a court portrait.
“I believe it because I’m bloodbound,” Rachelle snapped. “Or did you forget how we’re made?”
She remembered it with every breath.
“Did you forget? Bloodbound become forestborn, the lords of the forest and beloved of the Devourer, who grants them the life to dance ten thousand years and never die.” He tossed off the words as if they were nothing, without a break in his long, easy stride. “And what never dies, cannot be damned.”
Her feet stopped. For one moment, she was back in the Forest, listening to her forestborn gloat: I bring you glad tidings of great joy.
“Believe me,” she said, “I do not forget. Not for one moment do I forget that if I live long enough, I will become one of the monsters that did this to me. And believe this also, I would rather be dead and damned. I will be.”
She realized she was shaking. In the distance, the music tinkled on, as if all the world were an orderly music box and none of them were doomed.
Erec’s hand landed on her shoulder. “You’re a strange woman, do you know that?”
She went rigid at his touch, and for an instant she wanted to turn and strike him.
For all his knowing airs, Erec had no real understanding of the Great Forest’s power. Like so many people, he thought that the Devourer was no more than a myth told by the forestborn. And unlike most people, the forestborn were the best thing that had ever happened to him. Becoming a bloodbound had raised him from being a landless bastard to the King’s right hand. He could talk all he wanted about living for ten thousand years, but he’d never really thought about what that would mean.
She barked out a sudden, pitying laugh. He would have such a surprise, and so soon.
“Normal women don’t survive the forestborn,” she said.
“Then survive them for ten thousand years. That’s the only victory for us, don’t you think?”
Suddenly Erec seized her hand and pulled. She stumbled forward a step, her body automatically moving to break the grip and take him down. But he spun her effortlessly in another direction, and then another, and suddenly they were moving in time to the music.
They were dancing.
Rachelle didn’t know any of the court dances Erec did. But he whirled her through the motions, and her body followed with the same unholy grace it had in a fight. Except here, for one moment—her heart beating in her ears, the courtyard lights spinning around her—that grace didn’t feel like anything wicked or deadly.