Crimson Bound
Page 43

“I remember, you said you wanted to speak with me.” Rachelle paused. “Thank you for last night.”
“I did not do it for your sake.”
“Who are you?” asked Rachelle.
The woodwife handed her a bowl of porridge and a spoon. “My name is Margot Dumont,” she said. “I apprenticed beside Léonie and I do not intend to forgive you for her death.”
Rachelle’s hand clenched on the spoon. “I didn’t ask you to.”
“No.” Margot nodded in acknowledgment. “I need to know, and on whatever honor you have left, I charge you not to lie: What did she tell you about Durendal?”
“Nothing,” said Rachelle, and took a bite of the porridge. It tasted like her childhood, and her throat ached with unshed tears.
“Nothing?”
“Just what everyone knows. That it was Zisa’s sword, forged from the bones of the Devourer’s victims. That it was lost. That’s all.” One spoonful had made her hungry; Rachelle gulped down the rest of the porridge.
Margot watched her eat, then said, “Léonie knew where it was.”
“What?”
“It was her duty to know where it was. She was entrusted with it by the woodwife who trained us. You were her apprentice; she must have told you.”
“She never told me anything,” said Rachelle. “She never did anything, just—”
Just, she realized, guarded Durendal. Rachelle had despised her aunt for doing nothing when she was protecting a weapon that could kill the Devourer.
The porridge turned to stone in her stomach.
Margot sighed through her nose. “Then I will continue searching,” she said. “And you—what brings you back here? An errand for the King? Or did you just need to visit the sight of your triumph?”
Rachelle set the bowl down. “No,” she said flatly, “I was looking for Joyeuse. You don’t happen to know anything about it?”
They stared at each other for a few moments. Then Margot snorted and looked away. “No more than anyone else. Behind a door above the sun, below the moon.”
“I know,” said Rachelle. “I found the door. There’s a lindenworm on the other side.”
Margot raised her eyebrows. “Indeed.”
“Do you know how to kill one?”
“I have heard it said that the blood of an innocent virgin could lull them to sleep,” Margot said musingly. “But you might find that hard to obtain, and I doubt that tale anyway.”
Rachelle strangled the sudden fury in her throat and said quietly, “Try to remember that killing it could save us from the Devourer.”
“No human hands can kill a lindenworm,” said Margot, as placidly as if they were discussing the best way to stitch a hem.
“I thought la Pucelle killed one?” Rachelle demanded.
“I believe she had angels helping her. You do not.” Margot paused, pursing her lips. “Perhaps you never learned this rule: the most powerful creatures can only be touched by the most terrible charms—or the most simple. I don’t believe there is a woodwife alive who could weave a charm strong enough to stop a lindenworm, but I suppose a simple charm might beguile it for a little while.”
“Do you think that could work?” asked Rachelle.
“No,” Margot said coolly. “I think if you fight that lindenworm, it will swallow you whole, and you will feel the flesh melt off your bones as you die. But you deserve as much and more besides, so I will not dissuade you from trying.”
Rachelle stared at her. She thought, Armand would probably laugh at that, and then she had to smother her own urge to laugh wildly.
Margot took the bowl and rose. “I won’t let the village burn you, but you’d better be off now before it gets difficult.”
Rachelle nodded and rose to her feet. She went to the door, opened it, and couldn’t move.
Her mother stood on the front step.
How had she changed so much? Rachelle remembered her mother as a towering, imperious figure—not this slight woman with a sagging face.
“So,” said her mother.
Rachelle couldn’t speak. It used to be that one glance from her mother would make her stammer and confess what she’d done wrong. Now her very existence was the confession. There would be no forgiving hug after her punishment, because there was nothing left of her but the sin.
“Your father was weeping in the loft all night,” said her mother. “On and on about his darling precious daughter. He never believed you’d done it, you know; he swore the forestborn must have kidnapped you, and that was why you never came back.”
After all the nights she’d spent agonizing over what her father would think, it should have been a comfort that he still loved her. It wasn’t.
“You believed,” Rachelle whispered.
Her mother smiled mirthlessly, her gaze drifting away. “I know quite well what daughters will do when they must.” Then she looked back at Rachelle. “When he wakes, he won’t believe this happened. He’ll swear it was only a lying forestborn who looked like his daughter. You won’t ever come back so he won’t ever have to learn the truth. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” Rachelle said numbly. She couldn’t tell what she was feeling. She had imagined a thousand nightmare situations that might happen if she ever went back to her village. But she had never imagined anything like this.
Neither one of her parents hated her the way that Margot did, the way the rest of the villagers did. They simply didn’t want her to exist.
“You won’t come back?”
“Never,” said Rachelle. “I will die first. I promise.”
“Good.” Her mother opened her mouth, then shut it, and turned to stride away.
Rachelle’s chest hurt. She took a step after her.
“Mother,” she called out.
Her mother stopped. Without looking back, she said, “Yes?”
Rachelle didn’t know what she was going to say until the words formed in her mouth. “Thank you. For asking me to help.”
“I knew you lived,” her mother said after a moment. “Any daughter of mine would be ruthless enough.”
She found Armand sitting in the herb garden. The morning sunlight glowed through his hair; he looked at peace in a way she didn’t think he had anywhere in the Château.
“I like it here,” he said. “It’s quiet. Nobody knows who I am.”
And then she felt it again: the sudden, sharp awareness of wanting to touch him, of the space between them as an open wound, of her own body being jumbled and awkward and far too separate when she could be pressed against him, waist to waist and chin to shoulder and her fingers sliding into that pale brown hair—