Crimson Bound

  Then the mark burned on her neck, flaring to life in response to the Forest’s power, and she remembered the price of that darkness and that dancing.

  Around her little finger, she felt an answering burn. She looked down.

  No one but Rachelle could see the phantom red string that the forestborn had tied to her finger. Even she couldn’t feel it. But here, though it had no physical presence, it burned cold against her finger.

  After she had . . . after, the forestborn had congratulated her on joining the lords of the Forest in time to rule with them. She’d dropped the knife and bolted. He had caught her and thrown her to the ground, and she’d wondered if he was going to use her the way people said forestborn used innocent maidens. But she wasn’t innocent anymore and she didn’t have enough strength left to fight back. So she had lain still, but he’d only tied the red string around her finger, saying, Leave me all you want. You’re still mine.

  She had never seen him since, but he had been right. She had never again been anything but what he made her, and someday she would lose herself completely to the call of the Great Forest.

  But not today.

  Not like the other poor, mad bloodbound she had followed here.

  She listened carefully, and there it was to her left: the soft, harsh breathing of a human driven almost past endurance. She followed the sound, picking her way through the trees.

  The breathing grew louder. Rachelle moved softly and silently as smoke.

  A lean, middle-aged woman crouched in the hollow of a tree. Her clothes were in rags; deep scratches scored her arms. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her hands were pressed over her ears. On her forehead was the mark, an eight-pointed star, no bigger than a thumbnail, exactly the same color as fresh blood.

  It was the same mark that burned on Rachelle’s neck.

  Because this woman was exactly like Rachelle. A forestborn marked her and left her with a choice: die in three days, or kill somebody and live as a bloodbound, heir to the power of the Forest.

  Like Rachelle, she had chosen to kill and live.

  Now the power of the Great Forest had almost finished growing in her. She had fought it. She had fought until it broke her mind, until the Great Forest grew up around her because she would not run to it. But this was the end. In another moment the last scraps of her humanity would be washed away, leaving her with nothing but a senseless desire to hunt and kill.

  The woman’s eyes opened. Rachelle’s hand tightened on her sword hilt, but the woman remained still, watching with blind wariness. Was she still human, or had the change fully overtaken her now?

  She was a bloodbound and therefore a murderer; like Rachelle, she deserved to die.

  She was helpless and in pain. Like Aunt Léonie.

  The woman’s hands dropped from her ears. Her lips curled back, and a little whining snarl escaped between her teeth.

  She isn’t human, thought Rachelle. She isn’t human anymore.

  The woman sprang.

  Rachelle’s body had no doubts. Quicker than thought, she swung her sword and sliced the woman’s throat open; blood sprayed as the woman sank to the ground.

  Rachelle stumbled back a step. Now that it was over, she was shaking and panting like she had run up a mountain. She could see the crumpled body at the edge of her vision, but she couldn’t look at it now.

  She didn’t need to. She knew what a human body looked like, ripped open and stripped of life. What it looked like, dead by her hands. She knew.

  Her throat burned with the need to scream or weep.

  But this time, at least, she had also saved lives. There would not be a new forestborn to plague the world. This manifestation of the Forest would end without spilling more chaos into Rocamadour.

  Except it didn’t end.

  Rachelle had never yet killed a transforming bloodbound, but she knew how it worked: the fledgling forestborn’s awakening called down the power of the Great Forest. Killing it would release the Forest’s grip on the spot. Justine—who had killed nine mad bloodbound, six of them in the Forest—said that the Forest always vanished instantly.

  But it didn’t.

  Rachelle waited, the dark breeze tickling the hairs against her neck, but nothing happened. Except the phantom laughter got a little louder, and perhaps the distant fire flared a little brighter.

  The thread on her finger burned red-hot.

  No, she thought. No, no, no—

  Her forestborn’s voice came from behind her, soft and smooth as butter. “Are you ready to join me now?”

  She didn’t turn around. She didn’t think she could move. His voice had wrapped around her spine, her legs and arms and throat, and locked her into place. Her heart pounded with helpless, animal fear.

  She should have known he would find her as soon as she stepped into his realm.

  “No,” she said, staring into the darkness.

  The string had no physical substance. She had seen people walk through it, time and again. Yet now it felt as it were going taut, as if he were tugging at the phantom, unbreakable bond that tied them together.

  “I grow impatient, little girl.”

  “Then learn to wait,” she bit out, but she was shaking. She had sworn that the next time she saw him, she would take revenge for Aunt Léonie. So many nights, it had been her only comfort, the only way she could let herself sleep. Now she finally stood before him, and she was still the terrified, bloodstained little girl she had been three years ago. All she could think was that he was going to kill her and she did not want to die.

  Or he was going to give that thread one more pull, and all her strength would unravel and she would walk into his arms and forget how to be human.

  “I don’t have to.” She heard him stepping closer. “Behold, I bring you good news of great joy. Our lord is almost ready to return.”

  “I know that.” Her heartbeat was jagged in her throat.

  His breath was hot against the back of her neck. “Did you know how soon? Before the summer sun makes its last valiant gasp, our lord will smile and awaken and eat the light from the sky.”

  Rachelle felt sick. Before the end of summer. It was one thing to know that the Devourer would return sometime soon; it was another to realize that it was starting now.

  Then she shuddered as the forestborn’s lips pressed against her neck in a kiss. “No pleading?” he asked.

  It took all her strength to answer steadily, “I don’t see the point.”

  “Or praying?” His voice had an extra mocking edge, and she remembered the whimpering babble that had spilled out of Aunt Léonie’s lips, desperate pleas to the Dayspring and the Holy Virgin that had never been answered.

  Fury hit her like a wall of flame, and her fear went up in smoke. She whirled, sword coming up—

  But he was gone. There was only darkness, and the Forest, and then both wavered and blew away like smoke.

  She was in a dingy little room, lit by a single lamp. In front of her, a woman was chained to the wall. Her head lolled forward; her whole chest was soaked with blood. So much blood. The floor seemed to rock under her feet and Rachelle wobbled back a step. Strong hands caught her shoulders, and she flinched before she realized it was Erec.

  “Congratulations,” he said.

  “Shut up,” muttered Rachelle. None of the woman’s blood had fallen on her, but she still felt the hot, sticky mess all over her hands and arms.

  She forced herself to look away from the corpse to the tray piled with cracked chicken bones, the gouges clawed into the wall. The woman must have been up here for at least a month, teetering on the edge of madness, only iron chains and the last scraps of will keeping her something like human.

  It was a mercy, she told herself, but that was no comfort.

  “All right downstairs?” she asked.

  “Let’s see,” said Erec. “Half of them are missing bits of their faces due to woodspawn. The rest are unconscious or stabbed, due to me. So everything’s quite all right.”
>
  Behind them, somebody gasped. She turned, pulling free of Erec’s grasp, and there was the scrawny girl from downstairs.

  “Mama,” the girl whispered, and burst into tears.

  Behind the girl stood her father, his face pale. “Murderer,” he said.

  “No,” said Erec. “Executioner. Your wife was the murderer. You know, don’t you, the penalty for concealing a bloodbound from the King?”

  The man spat. “If you’d ever loved someone, you’d understand.”

  Rachelle didn’t realize she was moving until she had grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed him against the wall. “Do you know what I understand? There have been five woodspawn attacks in this neighborhood in the past two weeks. That’s two people dead and one who will never walk again, all because your wife was sitting here, calling down the power of the Forest. If we hadn’t put her down, she would have broken those chains when she finished transforming, and then she would have started killing everyone she could find.”

  “She would never—”

  “Let me guess. The Bishop promised that if you just prayed hard enough, she would stay human.”

  The man’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t say anything.

  Bishop Guillaume helped people hide bloodbound from the King’s justice. She and Erec knew it, they just hadn’t been able to prove it yet. Rachelle still wasn’t sure if the Bishop had some fantasy of building his own bloodbound army, or if he was just that deluded about the chances that bloodbound could stay sane and human. Either way, he was a hypocrite for also preaching death and judgment against them every Sunday.

  “It’s a lie,” said Rachelle. “Nobody escapes the Forest. But if you’d given her to us, we’d have executed her before she hurt more people.”

  “She wasn’t like you—”

  “She killed. She was exactly like me. And like her, I will die for my sins and go to hell. But at least I’m not fool enough to think that bloodbound won’t bring death all around them.”

  Then she shoved him away and stalked out of the room.

  “Do you really believe you’re going to hell?” asked Erec.

  “I don’t see a way to doubt it,” said Rachelle, not looking down at her hand. She was still acutely conscious of the crimson thread tied to her finger.

  They were finally back at the Palais du Soleil, just inside the vast main courtyard, where lamplight glinted off the wet blue-and-gold tesserae that covered the ground in a vast mosaic. A few minutes ago, the bells had rung out two in the morning, but on one of the grand balconies above them, light and music spilled out into the light, and Rachelle could glimpse the brilliant swirl of silken dresses.

  “But you’re bloodbound,” he said, with a quizzical tilt to his eyebrows. Rain glistened on his cheekbones. Despite the dingy coat and cap he had worn to infiltrate the coffeehouse, despite being soaked by the rain, he still looked as elegant as a court portrait.

  “I believe it because I’m bloodbound,” Rachelle snapped. “Or did you forget how we’re made?”

  She remembered it with every breath.

  “Did you forget? Bloodbound become forestborn, the lords of the forest and beloved of the Devourer, who grants them the life to dance ten thousand years and never die.” He tossed off the words as if they were nothing, without a break in his long, easy stride. “And what never dies, cannot be damned.”

  Her feet stopped. For one moment, she was back in the Forest, listening to her forestborn gloat: I bring you good news of great joy.

  “Believe me,” she said, “I do not forget. Not for one moment do I forget that if I live long enough, I will become one of the monsters that did this to me. And believe this also, I would rather be dead and damned. I will be.”

  She realized she was shaking. In the distance, the music tinkled on, as if all the world were an orderly music box and none of them were doomed.

  Erec’s hand landed on her shoulder. “You’re a strange woman, do you know that?”

  She went rigid at his touch, and for an instant she wanted to turn and strike him.

  For all his knowing airs, Erec had no real understanding of the Great Forest’s power. Like so many people, he thought that the Devourer was no more than a myth told by the forestborn. And unlike most people, the forestborn were the best thing that had ever happened to him. Becoming a bloodbound had raised him from being a landless bastard to the King’s right hand. He could talk all he wanted about living for ten thousand years, but he’d never really thought about what that would mean.

  She barked out a sudden, pitying laugh. He would have such a surprise, and so soon.

  “Normal women don’t survive the forestborn,” she said.

  “Then survive them for ten thousand years. That’s the only victory for us, don’t you think?”

  Suddenly Erec seized her hand and pulled. She stumbled forward a step, her body automatically moving to break the grip and take him down. But he spun her effortlessly in another direction, and then another, and suddenly they were moving in time to the music.

  They were dancing.

  Rachelle didn’t know any of the court dances Erec did. But he whirled her through the motions, and her body followed with the same unholy grace it had in a fight. Except here, for one moment—her heart beating in her ears, the courtyard lights spinning around her—that grace didn’t feel like anything wicked or deadly.

  The music stopped. Erec spun her out one final time, then twirled her back into his embrace.

  “Ten thousand years of this,” he said. “Would it be so terrible?”

  It took Rachelle a moment to speak. Her heart had already been beating fast in the dance, and now she was clasped against his body, his arms warm around her waist.

  “It wouldn’t be like this,” she said. “We’d be monsters living in the woods.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe the forestborn have palaces and balls as well.”

  Her laugh was almost fond. “If you can believe that, clearly you were marked by a different kind of forestborn than I was.”

  “Oh? Was yours not elegant enough to satisfy you?”

  She remembered his soft voice laughing and coaxing her. She remembered rough tree bark digging into her back as her mouth was forced open.

  “Would you call a rabid animal ‘elegant’?”

  “Maybe, if it was pretty enough.” He leaned down a little closer. “But if that’s not what you crave, how about me? If you must die soon, at least you could enjoy tonight.”

  She knew that if she stayed in his arms another moment, he would kiss her. He would kiss her and take her back to his room and make her forget, for a little while, the blood in her past and the thread on her finger and the darkness waiting for her. If she let him.

  Once upon a time, she would have been insulted by such an offer. Even when she’d first come to Rocamadour, bitterly aware she had no honor left to lose, she’d still been furious to discover that being kissed by him made her no different from a hundred other women. But she had known him for three years now, and he’d saved her life in half a dozen fights, and he was her friend. She couldn’t hate him for his games; even less could she hate him for thinking she might say yes. She was a bloodbound because she could say yes to anything.

  She pulled herself out of his grip, because she didn’t have any honor left, but she had a little pride. Erec was a good friend but he was incapable of falling in love; his women were pretty, shiny pieces in his collection, and Rachelle had no intention of being the latest prize.

  “I am going to enjoy sleeping tonight. You can do as you please.” She turned away but he caught her shoulder.

  “If it’s time for good night, then I should tell you—the King wants you at his levée tomorrow.”

  The levée was the ceremonial rising-from-bed that the King enacted every morning. Courtiers would scheme, fight, and bribe themselves bankrupt for a chance to attend. As one of the King’s bloodbound, Rachelle had the right to attend anytime she pleased, but she had never bothered.
r />   “Why?” she asked. Beyond accepting her into the ranks, King Auguste-Philippe had never taken any interest in her.

  “Our gracious King will tell you when he pleases. Good night, mademoiselle.” Erec bowed extravagantly and strode away, probably to join the party overhead. With a sigh, Rachelle turned in the opposite direction and trudged toward the cold, narrow refuge of her bed.

  Whatever the King wanted with her, it wouldn’t matter for long. Nothing would matter. The thought hollowed her out with cold, despairing fear, and yet it was strangely liberating.

  She lay awake a long time, staring at the dim red glow of the string. After the forestborn tied it to her finger, he had made no move to stop her when she staggered out of the house. He hadn’t pursued her as she ran through the woods, stumbling because she wasn’t used to the sudden strength in her limbs.

  She hadn’t tried to go home. If the villagers knew what she had done, they would burn her. They would tie her to a stake and her own family would light the pyre. That was the penalty for becoming bloodbound, and as much as she deserved it, Rachelle still wanted to live. She hadn’t stopped running until she reached Rocamadour, where she had begged to be made one of the King’s bloodbound, her sentence of execution delayed so she could serve him.

  For a little while, she’d hoped—not for herself, but for the world. The forestborn had told her that the Devourer could only be defeated with Joyeuse or Durendal, and that both swords were gone forever. But while Durendal had vanished over a thousand years ago—shattered in battle, they said—Joyeuse had been the coronation sword for the kings of Gévaudan until just three hundred years ago, when a woodwife had hidden the sword from Mad King Louis to prevent him from destroying it. Nobody knew where, and so that sword too was lost.

  That was how everybody in Rocamadour told the story. But when Aunt Léonie had told it to Rachelle, she had said, The woodwife opened a door above the sun, below the moon, and hid Joyeuse against our hour of greatest need.

  When Rachelle had asked her what that meant, she’d only shrugged. At the time, it had seemed like just another one of Aunt Léonie’s maddeningly obscure sayings. But after Rachelle became bloodbound—after the forestborn had told her that Joyeuse could kill the Devourer—it had given her hope. All she had to do was solve the riddle and find the sword. Just like in the stories she’d loved as a child.