Crimson Bound

by Rosamund Hodge

  He had, and she couldn’t stop a guilty glance at his hands.

  “Then what do you believe?” she asked. “That we should all be martyrs?”

  She realized that they were surrounded by darkness and the cold, sweet wind. They were in the Great Forest again. The change had felt so natural, so right, she hadn’t noticed it happen.

  “What’s so bad about that?” asked Armand.

  “The problem with martyrs is that they’re all dead. What have they got to do with those of us who are sinful enough to still be alive? Should we just give up and want to die, because death is better than dishonor? But suicide is a sin too, so then we really are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

  “I don’t—” Armand started to say.

  “Enough. I don’t want to hear it.” Rachelle strode forward faster, trying not to think about the lindenworm waiting for her, and thinking of it with every step.

  The journey seemed to take hours. Days. Forever. There was no keeping track of time in that endless darkness, but they walked on and on, and Rachelle grew wearier and wearier.

  All she could think of was the lindenworm. She had to try to defeat it and get Joyeuse. She didn’t see a way she could win.

  You deserve as much and more besides.

  She didn’t want to be a martyr. She didn’t have a choice.

  When sunlight suddenly poured down on them, Rachelle’s head was hanging low. She looked up, and saw Château de Lune glittering before them. They were in the garden, among the rosebushes. Judging by the position of the sun, they had only been walking for a few hours.

  “How did you do that?” asked Armand. He was looking at her, his eyes squinted against the sudden sunlight.

  “Luck,” said Rachelle. “Maybe.”

  Or her forestborn was lurking somewhere near the Château, which was a truly terrifying thought.

  When they got back to their rooms, they found both Amélie and Armand’s valets in a state of modified panic.

  “Where have you been?” Amélie demanded, hugging Rachelle fiercely. “Monsieur d’Anjou kept asking and asking for you, and we had to keep making up excuses.”

  Which was pointless, since the valets would report it all to Erec anyway, but Rachelle was surprised and touched that Amélie had taken the trouble.

  “We took a walk,” said Armand. “Got lost in the trees.” His valets were not hugging him, but they had peeled off his coat—exclaiming about the dust—and now seemed to be checking him for injuries.

  “He was tired of being cooped up,” said Rachelle. “It won’t happen again.”

  “I’ve learned my lesson,” Armand agreed, with a smile just for her.

  Of course, she had to explain herself to Erec. The valets must have sent him a message as soon as she got back, because he turned up not long after and dragged her away for a private audience.

  “I hear you went wandering with our saint,” he said. “What happened?”

  Rachelle decided that a little bit of the truth couldn’t hurt. “It turns out the protections on the Château are worse than we thought,” she said. “We went walking and ended up in the Great Forest.”

  “And you didn’t bring me along?” he asked lightly.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “What happened while I was gone?”

  “An extraordinary amount of panic. You would think that no member of the court had ever seen a woodspawn before.”

  “Most of them haven’t seen a woodspawn before,” said Rachelle. “Since none of them are out on the city streets at night.”

  Erec shrugged. “Well, the result is, the two of us are patrolling the grounds every night lest such a terrible thing happen again.” He managed to make the assignment sound like a ridiculous joke.

  It was the same game he played every time they talked about the Forest. For once, Rachelle didn’t get angry, but felt a sudden stab of worried pity. He seemed so sure that the Forest would never hurt him. She hoped he would never find out how wrong he was.

  Erec might not yet believe that there was anything to fear. But everyone else in the Château did. She saw it all day as she followed Armand around the court: the whispers, the half-hidden fearful glances out the windows. People weren’t quite ready to admit it out loud, but they knew.

  Rachelle spent the rest of the day thinking about the lindenworm. She would fight it. The thought made her feel numb with fear, but she had no other choice: there was no way to stop the Devourer but with Joyeuse, and there was no way to get Joyeuse but to defeat the lindenworm. No matter how terrible the odds, she had to try.

  Attacking it with just a sword would be suicide. And yet, if it came to that, Rachelle would try it. But she still hoped she could find another way.

  Margot had suggested that there might be a woodwife charm that could work against it. The most terrible charms, she had said, or the most simple.

  But Rachelle remembered the charm she had tried to weave burning in her hands. She had been able to make the door appear, but that had only been awakening a charm already woven. It was quite likely that making even a simple charm would be impossible.

  Could she ask Erec to help?

  Two bloodbound might not be enough. Margot had said no human hands could kill a lindenworm. Then again, Margot wanted her to die, and anyway, bloodbound were not exactly human anymore. And Rachelle and Erec were the very best. If any bloodbound could do it, they could.

  But would he help her?

  Rachelle knew that asking Armand to help had been a far riskier gamble. He’d had reason to want her dead, while Erec considered her a friend. But Erec was . . . Erec, and when she imagined trying to tell him everything that she knew and suspected and planned—everything she cared about so desperately—she felt an awful, sinking suspicion that maybe he would laugh and decline to risk his life.

  She was still wondering when they met that evening to patrol the grounds. Erec seemed to be in a fine mood; he grinned, and when she asked where they would start, he said simply, “Run with me.”

  So they ran.

  When she was a child, Rachelle had loved to run. She had loved that one perfect moment, just after she hit her stride, when it felt like the air itself was flinging her forward and the ground had lost all claim to her, when her heart was racing faster than the wind.

  Now that she was bloodbound, she could run like that forever. Or close enough. The wind roared in her face but couldn’t stop her. And unlike all the other powers she had gained as a bloodbound, in this one there was no lingering memory of what she had done to win it. She ran, and didn’t smell blood, only the damp, sweet evening air.

  Erec finally skidded to a stop in a little moonlit clearing, beside a fountain full of writhing marble mermaids and living, placidly glinting carp. Rachelle stopped abruptly enough that she had to grab at his shoulder to regain her balance, and for a moment they teetered together, gasping for breath in a way that was almost laughter.

  Erec smiled at her. “Do you like me now, my lady?”

  “For once,” she said, “yes.”

  And she meant it. He was only unbearable when he remembered he was a glory of the court. When they were just Erec and Rachelle, hunting in the darkness, then he was kind. Then she was happy to be with him.

  They were Erec and Rachelle right now. If she told him about the lindenworm, would he understand?

  She drew a breath to speak, but she wasn’t sure where to start, and for a moment her heart thudded in the silence—

  “And yet you scorn me still,” Erec went on, because they were still on the grounds of Château de Lune and he had still not forgotten how handsome he was.

  She laughed shakily. “I scorn to be one of your five hundred women.”

  “But if you were the only one?” asked Erec. “Because you could be, if you only said the word. There is a ruby waiting for you.”

  “No,” she said flatly, trying to think how to turn the conversation back. It was sliding away from her, back into the well-worn pat
hs of teasing and disdain, where neither of them could be truthful.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Are you still angry over our duel? I can’t help being better than you at sword fighting.”

  “You could have helped forcing me into it,” she said. The familiar anger was so comforting that she spoke without thinking. “Not to mention—” She cut herself off.

  “What?” said Erec. “The kiss? The force of that was entirely on your side, I believe.”

  Rachelle looked away. “You made me look like an animal,” she said, and instantly wished the words unsaid.

  “My lady, I did you honor. I showed you to all the court as a bloodbound terrible and lovely.” He stepped closer and leaned down so they were nearly eye to eye. “We’re stronger and fairer and we are going to live forever. Why would you want to pretend you’re a plodding daylight creature?”

  And there was her answer. She hadn’t even had to risk his mockery by asking.

  Erec might not fully understand their destiny. But he wanted it. He would never risk his life against a lindenworm, just so Rachelle could kill the Devourer.

  She put a hand on his chest to push him back a step. “I told you already. I will die first.”

  “Such a perverse wish.” He caught her hand. “Do you know what the old heathen stories called the first man and first woman, who crawled out from the roots of the first tree? Life and Life-Desiring.”

  Her chest ached, but she met his eyes with her normal scorn. “Were I a heathen, I’d find that inspiring.”

  “I only mean that it’s the oldest law we know. Life, and desiring it.”

  “And destroying it. That’s why the heathens spilled blood to Tyr and Zisa.” She wrenched her hand free. “And that’s why we both did what you know damn well we did!”

  “That’s not why I did it,” said Erec. “I walked out into the woods and called for the forestborn because I needed a way to be pardoned after I killed my half brother.”

  Rachelle stared at him. “What?”

  “It’s a neat loophole: plain murder will get you hanged, but murder for the sake of becoming bloodbound can win you fame and fortune.”

  Of course she had known that since Erec was bloodbound, he must have killed. But she had never thought that— Well, she had never thought. She had spent so much time trying not to remember what she had done, there had been no time left over to wonder about others.

  “Why did you want to kill him?” she asked numbly.

  “You’ve noticed, haven’t you? That the old families always have a well-placed bloodbound or two? It’s not because the forestborn care about rank, it’s because the families pick someone to walk into the woods and beg for the blessing. I should have been the bloodbound, since I wasn’t due to inherit, but I overheard my father complain that my brother would rather roam the woods than manage the estate. I knew what that meant. I knew who was expendable enough to be his sacrifice. And I decided I would kill him first.” Erec’s mouth curved in the old ironic smile, and for once she could not tell whom he was mocking. “I won’t deny it gave me satisfaction. He was legitimate, and heir to everything I lacked. At the time, that seemed very important.”

  Rachelle was silent. She didn’t know what to say.

  “Later it seemed less so,” Erec went on thoughtfully. “And going by my brother’s last words, I don’t think he intended to become a bloodbound after all.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rachelle said.

  He smiled brilliantly and touched her cheek. “Why should you be? Don’t I have everything I ever wanted?”

  “I don’t know,” Rachelle said slowly. “Do you?”

  “Well, I have not yet achieved you, my lady.”

  They patrolled the grounds for several more hours but found no more woodspawn. Rachelle bid Erec a very firm good night, then slipped into the Château through a side door and strode silently through the halls. There was a party still going in the eastern wing, but most people had finally gone to bed, so the halls were almost empty.

  Erec wouldn’t help her. That meant she had to face the lindenworm alone, with charms or with her sword. Either way seemed doomed to fail.

  Every day for the last three years, she had thought she deserved to die.

  She still didn’t want to. She wanted to live with every filthy, desperate scrap of her heart.

  When she saw somebody sitting huddled in the shadows at the feet of a statue, her hand went at once to her sword. Then she realized that it was Amélie.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  Amélie, who had sprung to her feet as if to flee, relaxed.

  “First I was waiting for you to get back,” she said. “Then I thought I’d take a walk. Then I got tired. Where have you been?”

  “Hunting.” Rachelle sighed, and sat down. Amélie sat back down beside her.

  “Why were you waiting for me?” Rachelle asked after a few moments.

  “I worry about you,” Amélie said simply. “You’re very sad. And very far away.”

  And she was only going to get farther, because if by some miracle she did not die facing the lindenworm, she would surely die fighting the Devourer, and Amélie would never know the reason. Perhaps she would never even know for sure that Rachelle was dead. And it was worth it, absolutely worth it all if Amélie stayed safe and innocent, but when Rachelle thought about the yawning, never-to-be-crossed gulf between them, all the strength went out of her.

  “Amélie,” she asked, “what do you want, more than anything else in all the world?”

  “I want my father back,” Amélie said promptly.

  Rachelle stared at her. “Well, that’s not going to happen.”

  Amélie shrugged. “You didn’t ask what I thought likely.”

  “I mean . . . what do you wish for?”

  “Wishes are always impossible, that’s the point,” said Amélie. “I wish my father were alive. I wish I could paint cosmetics all the time. I wish that you would stop crying.”

  “I never cry,” said Rachelle.

  “That’s what makes it extra impossible.” Amélie leaned a little closer. “Why are you wondering about wishes?”

  Rachelle looked at her hands. “I used to know what I wanted,” she said. “A long time ago. I don’t anymore.”

  Amélie’s hands twisted together. “My mother says it’s frivolous, wanting to learn cosmetics. Vain, too, even though it’s not myself I’m painting. But when I’m mixing the pigments—when I’m painting beauty onto someone’s face—I feel at peace. As if, just with a few brushstrokes, I am . . . being what God made me. I have never felt that way doing anything else.”

  Her jaw was tight, her eyes fixed on the other side of the hall as if a glorious battle awaited. With a spurt of guilt, Rachelle realized that as much as she’d enjoyed Amélie’s art, she had never thought it was more than a frivolous game either.

  “When you practice your cosmetics on me,” she said quietly, “I feel at peace too.”

  Amélie turned to her with a smile. “I hope you think God wants something more out of you than sitting still while I paint.”

  The problem was that Rachelle knew exactly what God wanted her to do. He wanted her to die. Three years ago, she should have died rather than kill, and every breath she took since had been stolen. Maybe that was why she couldn’t find any way to defeat the lindenworm: because she was supposed to die fighting.

  But she couldn’t tell Amélie that.

  Instead, she asked, “So painting cosmetics is what you want the most?”

  “Well,” said Amélie, “I’m giving it up to help my mother make medicines. So I suppose it’s not.”

  They sat in silence for a while longer. At last Amélie said quietly, “I know . . . something’s going on in this palace. If you ever want to tell me, I’ll listen.”

  Rachelle looked at her. She noticed the careful way that Amélie leaned toward her, closing the distance between them but not ever touching. She noticed that Amélie was biting her lip, the w
ay she always did when she was nervous. She noticed that this was, in fact, her only friend.

  She still couldn’t tell her anything. Maybe it was foolish, but she had spent three years trying to shelter Amélie. She couldn’t bear to undo that now.

  But she couldn’t let Amélie’s concern go unanswered, either.

  So for the first time since she had pulled a bloodstained, crying Amélie off the street, wrapped her in a coat, and taken her home, Rachelle put an arm over her shoulders.

  “Thank you,” she said.

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  The next day was Sunday. All the court was expected to accompany the King to the palace chapel, where every Sunday he demonstrated his devotion to appearances, if not to God.

  Rachelle had not attended mass since she became bloodbound, and she hadn’t expected to start now. For the past two weeks, she had gotten Erec to watch Armand while he was in the chapel. But this morning she couldn’t find him, so she had to follow Armand inside.

  She knew that the stories about bloodbound screaming and bursting into flame on consecrated ground were false. Justine was proof enough of that. But the last time she’d walked into a church, she hadn’t been bloodbound. She’d been the good little daughter of Marie and Barthélemy Brinon, training to become a woodwife and dreaming of saving the world. She’d still believed that she loved God. That chapel was everything she had lost and renounced and spat upon.

  But when she actually walked inside, it wasn’t so bad. The church she had grown up with was a little stone building, the walls plastered and painted with fading, clumsy portraits of the saints. The windows were narrow slits paned with cloudy, pale glass. The altar was a simple square stone with only the jawbone of a nameless martyr sitting upon it.

  The royal chapel was a jewel box of a room: the floor was pure, shimmering white marble, while the walls and pillars were coated with a vast tracery of gold leaf. Between the gem-like stained glass windows hung tall paintings in equally glowing colors. Before the marble altar lay the skeleton of le Montjoie, patron saint of the royal line. Every one of his bones was completely gilded, enameled eyes set into his sockets, jeweled rings on his fingers and jeweled chains about his neck. It didn’t feel a thing like the place Rachelle had worshipped as a child, and filing into it with a mass of richly arrayed courtiers didn’t feel much different from filing into the Salon du Mars.