Crimson Bound (40 page)

“I’m glad to see you’re alive,” he said with a hearty laugh that made him seem very like his late uncle.

“Thank you,” Armand said blandly.

Vincent slapped him on the shoulder. “It’s a sad day, but I’m sure good will come of it. And I know I’ll have your support in the days ahead, as I take up my dear uncle’s mantle.”

Armand pressed his lips together for a moment as he looked at Vincent.

“No,” he said, his voice quiet and carrying. “I won’t help you.”

Clearly it had not occurred to Vincent that Armand might refuse him to his face in public. It took him a moment to respond. “You know my uncle wanted me to—”

“The King my father handed me over to the forestborn who cut off my hands,” said Armand, his voice growing louder. “He forced me to help him while he was alive, but now that he’s dead, I don’t give a damn what he wanted. Or what you want.”

“I don’t either,” put in Rachelle. “And I have a sword.”

Vincent huffed. “I would advise you not to speak that way to your future king—”

“I would advise you,” said Armand, in a voice that was entirely calm but reached every corner of the hall, “not to threaten somebody who has faced the Devourer twice. One of us walked away. It wasn’t him.”

He met Vincent’s eyes, and there was no hint of hesitation anywhere in his body. Every eye in the hall was on him, and though Vincent still had his chest thrust out, Rachelle could tell he was uneasy.

Nobody but Rachelle had ever seen Armand when he wasn’t playing the part of obedient saint. Even she hadn’t ever seen him when he wasn’t having hostages used against him.

Armand looked around the hall. He seemed to be measuring up the people around him and finding them just barely sufficient. “The King had Raoul Courtavel imprisoned in the Château as a hostage against me. I will require some guards to free him.”

Vincent spluttered, clutching at the fragments of command. “You can’t just—”

“I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake, monsieur.” La Fontaine was approaching them with a set of palace guards at her back. “Last week, our dear, late king made a will that legitimized Prince Raoul and named him heir. I saw him sign it. I have the documents.”

“You’re lying.”

“I also,” la Fontaine continued pleasantly, halting just a step away from him, “have proof that you conspired to assassinate your cousin Armand Vareilles. And the captain of the guard believes me.” She smiled. “I would advise you not to land that blow, monsieur.”

Vincent hastily lowered his hand, his gaze flickering from side to side. He had clearly never considered that anyone would seriously contest him so quickly—especially not Armand or la Fontaine—so he had brought no supporters with him. He tried a smile; it looked rather sickly.

“I’m afraid,” he said, “that grief for my uncle has caused you to start engaging in wild fantasies—forging a will in my uncle’s name—”

And here came the Bishop, his dark cassock swinging. “I have seen the documents,” he said. “I am satisfied.”

Rachelle wondered if anyone else noticed that he hadn’t said the documents were genuine.

It didn’t matter. She could see it in the faces of the guards, of the nobles gathered around them. The Bishop and la Fontaine had helped save their lives last night. Armand was their saint. They trusted them now.

“Think what you want,” said Armand. “I’m going to free my brother and my king.”

He strode away without looking back. And so, of course, the guards and Rachelle and la Fontaine followed him. Vincent stayed behind, his mouth hanging open.

He would never be able to command anyone who had stood in the Hall of Mirrors this morning. Rachelle took a vicious pleasure in the knowledge.

Armand led them through little-used corridors to a set of small, lightless rooms. Rachelle knew them: Erec had shown them to her, and told her that they were for keeping prisoners. He hadn’t told her who was held captive behind the most well-guarded of the doors.

There were no guards now. Rachelle wondered if they had been given orders to kill their prisoners if things went wrong, and if they had obeyed those orders. But Armand strode forward as if doubt and fear belonged in another world and had no power to touch him. He had always been desperately, terrifyingly human to her, but now she could see why people bowed before him and called him saint.

“This one,” said Armand, halting in front of a door.

The guards broke it down on his command. And on the other side—there was Raoul Courtavel. Rachelle might not have recognized the tall man with the ragged beard. But when he pulled Armand into a desperate, wordless embrace, there was no mistaking him.

This was why Armand had led an armed rebellion. This was what Rachelle had killed to stop him from achieving.

She turned away, feeling sick. She found la Fontaine looking at her, no pride or courtly polish left anywhere in her face.

“Thank you,” said la Fontaine, looking straight into her eyes, and the words sounded more sincere than anything la Fontaine had ever said to her.

Rachelle knew she didn’t deserve them.

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F
or the next two days, Rachelle was beside Armand almost every moment. And she barely said a word to him.

She knew why he kept her close, and she was desperately, stupidly thankful. Everyone knew her as one of the King’s bloodbound, as the friend—or mistress—of Erec d’Anjou. By making sure that everyone saw her as his trusted bodyguard, Armand was freeing her of suspicion. Nobody knew exactly what she had done the night of the summer solstice—neither she nor Armand had provided many details—but everyone knew that she had helped the saint to vanquish his foes.

Unlike all the other bloodbound, she would be loved forever after. It was a debt she could never repay.

One of the many, many debts.

Something held Armand back from speaking to her during the few, scattered moments when they were alone together. Rachelle didn’t speak either, because she didn’t have the right.

She’d had his love, if it had really been love. He had kissed her and said that he loved her, but he had thought he would be dead within days. It had been impossible for him to have any intention of sharing his life with her. And since then, she had thrown him away, killed his followers, slept with the man who had maimed him—and saved his life and mattered enough to be used as a hostage against him, but that wasn’t love. Exactly. Maybe.

Now Armand was not only going to live, he was the favorite half brother of the new
king. He could have anything that he wanted, and if he didn’t want Rachelle . . . after the way she had treated him, it was only fair.

A lot of things were fair: the strange, uneasy looks that she got from most people in the Château, who didn’t know whether to fear or honor her. The dull heaviness and infuriating
weakness
of her body, now that she was fully human again. The loneliness of standing next to Armand and saying nothing.

Just because things were fair, didn’t make them easy.

Amélie went home on the second day. Rachelle wanted to beg her to stay, but she couldn’t, because she had held Amélie when she woke up sobbing the night before. She deserved a chance to go home to her mother.

“I am not leaving you forever and ever,” said Amélie, glowering as she fussed with the clothes in her trunk. “Even if
you
try to leave
me.
I will hunt you down and find you.” She snapped the lid of the trunk down. “I can do it. You’re not so much stronger than me, now. So
stop looking that way.
”

Rachelle choked on a laugh. “You were always stronger.”

“You,” said Amélie, “were always foolish enough to think that mattered.” For a few moments, she studied Rachelle, her mouth puckered. “Don’t leave me,” she said quietly. “Promise you’ll come visit.”

Rachelle let out a shaky breath. Amélie’s determination was like solid ground beneath her feet after she’d spent days falling.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll come, I promise.”

Amélie grinned and pulled her into an embrace.

“I wouldn’t be here without you,” Rachelle said when Amélie released her. “You know that, don’t you? I would have given up and lost myself to the Forest years ago.”

“I think you’re underestimating yourself,” said Amélie.

“No,” said Rachelle. “I’m not. That night we met—when I was too late to save your father, I thought that at least I got to save you. But it was really you who saved me.”

Amélie smiled at her. She looked fragile and beautiful and terribly strong. “Thank you,” she said.

The evening after Amélie left, Rachelle went out running in the gardens. The Château’s bells had just finished ringing nine o’clock, and yet the sun was still lingering at the horizon. Rachelle had never imagined the world could be so full of light.

She had never imagined, either, what it would be like to run as a human.

It was still a delight. The air was still cool and sweet in her throat, even if it was not
the magical, inhuman sweetness of the Great Forest. The pounding of her heart was like a drug. But soon—so very soon—her legs burned and her chest ached. She had to lean against a tree, gasping for breath. Sweat slid down her back.

Once she could have run forever. Once the wound on her palm would have healed in minutes instead of still being a scabbed mess two days later that ached and stung when she flexed her hand.

She was grateful—so very, very grateful—to be human again. To be free. And yet she missed the strength and speed and grace she’d had as a bloodbound. She missed them bitterly.

A breeze stirred against her face. She looked up.

In the spaces between the trees, other phantom trees stretched out their translucent branches, like indentations in the air.

The breeze stirred again. It sounded like it was laughing to itself. Dimly, between the shadows of the trees, she saw something that looked like a white deer with red eyes. A woodspawn.

She blinked, and the vision was gone. She was the most alien thing among the trees once more.

But the song of the wind still trembled in her blood. The Forest had been here—it was still here, right now, even if she couldn’t see it. Though the Devourer had gone, the Great Forest was living still. And it no longer had the same feeling of heartless menace as it had before.

She supposed it made sense. The Devourer did not seem like a creature that could create anything, much less the terrible beauty of the Great Forest.

Uncounted ages ago—not just before the daylight, but before the Devourer swallowed the sun and moon to begin with, before it enmeshed itself in the human world at all—the Great Forest had been standing. How it must have delighted the people who lived then. And then the Devourer took it from them.

Now, perhaps, they would have it back.

Erec, you fool
, she thought.
There was a whole world waiting for us.

And there, surrounded by the shadow of the Forest that could have been, that would be now—dark but no longer so dreadful—she cried for Erec.

Eventually she dried her eyes. She stood and walked back toward the Château, out of the trees.

Back toward Armand. He stood by one of the fountains, staring at the falling water
that glittered in the sunset light.

Her heart thudded. She meant to slip past him silently, but then he looked up at her and said, “Rachelle.”

And she couldn’t move. She could only stare at him, drinking in the curve of his cheek, the line of his mouth, wishing that he was still hers to touch.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Well. I’m human. And nobody seems to want me executed.”

He wasn’t happy. She could tell that from the way he had planted himself, shoulders braced, but she couldn’t read anything on his face. That was what hurt most of all, that he was
hiding
from her.

“I killed you,” he said suddenly. “I’m—really very sorry.”

It was the last thing she had expected him to say.

“You didn’t kill me, you killed the Devourer inside of me,” she said after a moment. “Isn’t that what you said at the salon?”

He choked out a small laugh, his face coming alive again. “I did. But. That was when I thought I couldn’t possibly be the one holding the blade. I spent so much time pretending to be a saint, I think I fooled myself as well.”

“It’s true now, isn’t it?” said Rachelle. “You were ready to die twice to stop the Devourer. You helped save Gévaudan.”

“I did everything wrong,” he said. “Those men who helped in the coup, they trusted me to lead them, and I ruined our chances—”

“I was the one who killed them. Some of them.” Rachelle’s heart thudded when she said the words, and for a moment she couldn’t look at him.

When she dared a glance, he was looking annoyed. “You thought we were planning to slaughter you,” he said. “Because
I
didn’t tell you, because I couldn’t make up my mind if you knew what the forestborn were planning or not.”