Crimson Bound
Page 38

She could tell she wasn’t going to sleep that night, so she didn’t even try. She told Amélie to go to bed, and then she sat in a chair and stared at the wall. If she stared hard enough, she could make herself stop thinking, even though the confused misery in her chest still wouldn’t go away.
Then Armand let out a hoarse cry. She was in his room before she had fully realized what she was doing. She didn’t see or sense any woodspawn; Armand was sitting up in bed, rigid but apparently unharmed. Beside his bed, the candle had burned down nearly to a stump.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” He stared at the wall.
“Did you see something?”
“No.”
“Did you— Just look at me!” She grabbed his wrist to pull him toward her. But she had forgotten that he had lost his hands; her fingers closed over the very end of his arm, and she could feel the rounded edge of the stump.
She had heard for months about his tragically missing hands. She had seen his stumps before. But feeling the way his arms just ended was like a kick to the stomach.
He did look at her then, very tired and very irritated. “I had a dream,” he said. “I woke up screaming. Laugh and go back to sleep.”
“I’m not going to laugh,” she said.
“Are you going to let go of my arm?”
She flinched and released him.
The silence stretched between them. The darkness wrapped around them. It felt like they were the only people in the world, and the tension that had choked her all day started to seep away.
“Are you going to watch me all night?” he asked. “Because I wasn’t aware that your mandate included protecting me from bad dreams.”
“What really happened?” she asked. “With your hands, and the mark?”
“I thought I was a liar. Now you’re going to believe what I say?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Are you going to tell me it was your holiness that let you live?”
He looked at her as if she were a foreign language he was trying to decipher.
“No,” he said finally, slowly, softly.
Very carefully, Rachelle sat down beside him on the bed. “Then what happened?”
He pressed his lips together. “I met a forestborn,” he said. “He marked me. I said I wouldn’t kill anyone. He laughed, and told me I’d change my mind in three days.”
“Did you?”
“No. I didn’t.” His voice was light and tense and strangled. “But you know the stories about the Royal Gift? That because the royal line is descended from Tyr, they have power over the Forest? It turns out it’s real. At least, real enough to keep the mark from killing me. And surprisingly, forestborn don’t like it when you ruin their plans.”
“Why didn’t he kill you?” asked Rachelle.
“Why don’t you ask him?”
He did have a point. “So the forestborn cut off your hands for revenge, and you survived it because you’re special—”
“Because I’m nearly bloodbound, so I heal faster. But I still wasn’t well enough to conceal the mark until much too late.”
“So now you hold audiences where you pretend to be the King’s pet saint. Why? Because you can’t bear to disappoint the multitudes?”
“Because,” Armand said, biting off each word, “my half brother Raoul deserves to get the throne and every other good thing. Unfortunately the King doesn’t much like him, but he knows I care about him, and if I don’t let people go on thinking I’m his pet saint, he will punish Raoul on my account.”
“So instead you lie to the people.”
“I don’t lie,” said Armand. “I always tell them I’m not a saint.”
“Which only convinces them that you are one. Do you think that makes a difference?”
“Maybe. Do you believe me now?”
“Maybe,” said Rachelle, but she knew she meant, Yes.
He seemed to know it too, because the edge of his mouth turned up. “Does that mean you’re going to be kinder to me?”
“Of course not. I’m still a heartless bloodbound.”
His face cracked in a smile utterly different from the one he’d used playing cards. “Between you and me, you’re not very good at it.”
The flickering candlelight danced across his face. He was beautiful.
No. Beauty was something you admired from a distance. Rachelle wanted to lock her fingers in his hair and close her mouth over his and pull him down to the bed on top of her. She wanted to possess him, and more than that, she wanted him to possess her. More than anything else in the world, she wanted him to look at her with the same absolute, burning attention he had when he talked about what he believed.
Her face heated. This was lust, plain and simple. It was why she couldn’t stop watching him on the hunt, why she couldn’t stop noticing his every movement now. She hadn’t thought she could feel this way about anyone except Erec.
It didn’t matter what she felt for anyone. It wasn’t love, and even if it was, she didn’t have time for it. Very soon now, she would die fighting the Devourer. Or more likely, the Devourer would return and she would simply die. There was no room for love in her future.
No room at all.
Armand let out his breath suddenly—the noise was almost a laugh—and Rachelle realized that she had been staring at him. She jumped to her feet.
“Then if we don’t hate each other right now,” she said, “will you help me look for the door again?”
Armand seemed to hesitate a moment; then he squared his shoulders and said, “Actually, I had an idea.”
“What?” asked Rachelle.
“None of the rooms look the same as they did in Prince Hugo’s day. But the name of the place—that hasn’t changed in five hundred years. Maybe longer. This was Château de Lune when Prince Hugo knew it.”
“You mean the whole Château is the ‘moon’?” said Rachelle. “Then what’s the sun?” As soon as she said the words, she realized. “The sun,” she said, answering her own question.
Armand nodded. “One of the old women on my mother’s estate said that some woodwife charms only work at certain times of day. Is that true?”
The sun had set hours ago. It was, in a sense, beneath them. Now they only needed to get beneath the Château.
“Yes,” said Rachelle, and hope was almost as dizzying as terror. “Let’s go.”