Crimson Bound
Page 67

There was no sword.
Rachelle wasted several minutes looking in all the corners and crannies nearby and in trying to pry up paving stones. Then she remembered how Joyeuse had shifted and changed shape to let Armand hold it.
In the stories, Joyeuse had been made from a single bone.
She bent closer to the pile of offerings, squinting at the candlelight. And then she saw it: a little white finger bone, wedged in between two candles. She put on her leather gloves and reached for it.
Even through the glove, it was like touching hot iron. Her hand sprang away before she had even fully realized what she was feeling. It occurred to her that if she hadn’t knocked the guards unconscious, perhaps she could have bullied or bluffed them into moving the bone for her. But she supposed she would have had to touch it sooner or later.
She held her hands out over Joyeuse for a long moment—hesitated—and then seized it.
It shifted in her grasp, turning back into the sword. Red-hot agony seared up her arms. Still she turned and managed to walk halfway to the door before her hands simply wouldn’t grasp anymore. Joyeuse clattered to the ground, and after a moment of wavering, Rachelle fell to her knees.
She realized there were tears trickling down her face—tears of pain, but also frustration. She had, against all odds, survived the transformation into a forestborn with her mind and heart intact. She had fooled Erec and gotten to Joyeuse. And now she was going to fail and all the world would fall to darkness, just because she wasn’t strong enough.
She thought of Armand six months ago, bleeding alone and still able to hold back the Devourer, and she reached again for Joyeuse.
Bishop Guillaume’s voice rang out: “What business does a bloodbound have in the house of God?”
In an instant, she was on her feet. For there in the doorway stood the Bishop and Justine.
“Not a bloodbound,” said Justine, her face pinched with loathing. “A forestborn.”
Everything she had felt for him before, she felt ten times more now: the bone-deep revulsion and mistrust. Her fingers tensed with the desire to kill.
As if in answer, Justine’s hand went to her sword.
And Rachelle remembered why she was there, and that if she fought them, Erec and the other forestborn would probably notice. They would wonder what she was doing in the chapel, and that would be the end of everything.
The problem was that the Bishop and Justine were surely going to fight her. She was a forestborn in the house of God. Who wouldn’t try to stop her?
The Bishop took a step forward, and Rachelle did the only thing she could think of. She dropped to her knees and said, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three years since my last shriving.”
There was a short, brittle silence. She saw the horror flicker across his grim face. I think he just got more than he asked for, she thought with bleak humor. I suppose now I find out if he really believes what he preaches.
Her stomach curled. What had she been thinking? She was on her knees before the man who hated her and whom she had always hated. She was going to die on her knees, because who would believe a monster? And who would refuse to strike it down?
Erec would laugh.
Then the Bishop exchanged a look with Justine. She nodded and stepped back, out of the chapel. And he took the last step forward and dropped his hand on the top of Rachelle’s head.
She flinched. But he said, “May the Lord be in your heart and on your lips.”
Her heart lurched. Her lips wouldn’t move.
It was the worst mockery of repentance to speak these words simply so he would trust her. It was the worst mockery of Aunt Léonie to think she could ever be sorry enough to win forgiveness. Who did the Bishop think he was, to act as if he knew she could?
And then she thought, Admit it. Most of all, you’re humiliated to speak your sins in front of someone you’ve despised.
So she made herself look up at him.
His hand had not fallen from her head. Rachelle could, if she wanted, seize his wrist, throw him down, and break his neck before Justine could intervene.
His mouth was a hard line; his nostrils were flared. She realized that he, too, was afraid.
“I confess—”
The words were like two boulders grinding together. She closed her eyes. Speak your sins to God, the village priest had once told her. The priest is just his messenger. So she spoke to the God in the painting behind her, as ugly as her own soul and as tormented as Aunt Léonie.
“I confess to almighty God and to you, Father, that I accepted a forestborn’s covenant to become a bloodbound.”
Her face burned. Her words were boulders and she was being ground between them.
“This morning I tried to murder someone who had hurt my friend, and—and then I accepted the transformation into a forestborn.”
The words were ragged, insufficient. They made everything she’d done sound so stupid. But also much smaller, and the words started to tumble out faster and faster.
“I have lied, and on my way to Rocamadour, I stole both food and money. I slept with Erec d’Anjou. I have not attended chapel in three years. I killed a woman who had gone mad when transforming into a forestborn. I have killed the enemies of the King, but always with good reason. I have said very cruel things. To seal my covenant with the forestborn, I killed my own aunt. I cut open her throat and I killed her. Because she was terribly wounded and I wanted to spare her, but also because I wanted to live. I killed her.”
Then there was no sound but her breathing.
“For your penance,” the Bishop said finally, “say three rosaries, one for each year of your sinful life, and offer them for the people you have harmed.”
“That is not remotely enough,” she snapped.
“Do you need also to confess doubts about the power of God to forgive sins?”
“Yes,” she admitted after a few moments.
“In that case, for your penance, say only one rosary.”
Rachelle couldn’t say anything to that. Her throat was too tight with three years of unvoiced keening, and her eyes burned with unshed tears. It felt like every inch of her was raw and bleeding.
But now they were at the part of the ceremony where she wasn’t supposed to speak. The Bishop laid a hand on her head and said swiftly, “The Dayspring who bid the sin-eaters rise and walk now bids you rise from your sins. In his name and by his power I command and adjure all unclean spirits to depart from you, and I release you from every penalty of excommunication and bond of interdict, and I absolve you from all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Dayspring and of the Paraclete. Amen.”