“Yes, Monsieur Most Educated, that’s how they tell it. Now tell me your version.”
“Well,” he said, drawing out the word as he gave her a dubious look, “long ago, the king of Gévaudan had a son named Hugo, who could never be content unless he was adventuring. He spent so much time wandering the forest that his father began to fear that he would become a bloodbound. Finally the king forbade him to leave Chateau de Lune for a month. At first Prince Hugo was much upset, but then he seemed to grow content. And then he started to vanish for days at a time. The king thought he had broken the ban, but when he questioned his son, Prince Hugo laughed and said that he had found his own forest within the Chateau’s walls. He said it lay beyond a door above the sun and below the moon that would open only to his hands, and it would make him the greatest hunter the world had ever known. After that night, no one ever saw him again.”
“Did they find where he had gone?” asked Rachelle.
“No,” said Armand. “But the next year, in my mother’s province out west—this is why I know the story—they found a skeleton with his signet ring upon its finger. If it was him, and how he came to be there, nobody knows.”
When Rachelle looked at him, he met her eyes. He seemed more curious than anything, as if he genuinely didn’t know why she was so interested in a single turn of phrase.
It was too convenient. The moment she was assigned to watch over him—the moment she needed Joyeuse more than anything—he dangled her lost hope in front of her? It had to be a trick.
But nobody among the bloodbound or the court had ever heard her question people about the door—she knew that, because if somebody had, Erec would have heard about it and teased her. Armand couldn’t possibly know what this story meant to her.
And it actually seemed plausible. She had never been to Chateau de Lune, the country palace that lay twenty miles outside Rocamadour. But while now it was a glittering garden of delights for the nobility, once it had been a hunting lodge from which the kings of old would ride out to destroy woodspawn. Ancient charms protected the spot, but it was not impossible that the Chateau might also have a hidden door into the Forest. And it made sense that such a door would only open to members of the royal house, who had inherited Tyr’s power against the Great Forest.
It didn’t sound much like the door that Aunt Léonie had described. But even that made a sort of sense. Suppose the door didn’t open directly on the Forest, but had some sort of . . . entryway. The power of the Forest would hide the power of Joyeuse from the ability of woodwives to sense it. That was exactly what someone hiding the sword from Mad King Louis would want, because he had used captive woodwives to hunt down and destroy charms and magical artifacts.
It was a wild guess, a slim chance. But with the Devourer’s return so close, any chance was worth taking.
“Why do you care?” asked Armand, something shifting in his voice. He sounded almost suspicious.
“Because I like stories about fools who get eaten by the Great Forest,” she said.
She needed someone of the royal line to open the door. But the less she told Armand, the less chance he’d have to scheme.
“And mysterious doors,” said Armand.
She grinned. “Maybe I’ll find it and throw you in.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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The apothecary’s shop always made Rachelle feel like a great lumbering wild animal. The walls were lined with shelves and cupboards full of tiny, gleaming jars. Little sprays of dried herbs hung by ribbons and swayed in the draft. Everywhere were tiny white labels written in Madame Guignon’s minuscule hand. Sometimes Rachelle felt that it would all shatter if she breathed.
If she didn’t find Joyeuse, it would shatter before the year was out.
“Good morning,” said Madame Guignon, barely looking up from the herbs that she was sorting into piles with swift, sure movements. She was a short, gaunt woman, but somehow she still managed to seem like the tower of a castle.
“Good morning,” said Rachelle. “Is Amélie here?”
“Upstairs.” Madame Guignon didn’t look at her again as she started another pile of herbs. She’d never forbidden Rachelle from visiting, but she didn’t encourage her, either.
When Rachelle got to the top of the stairs and opened the door, Amélie was sitting at the table, fussing over a little bowl. Then her head snapped up. She was a small girl—eighteen years old like Rachelle—with mousy brown hair and a bony little face that turned beautiful when she smiled.
“At last!” Amélie jumped up, hugged her, and planted two kisses on her cheeks. “It’s been weeks. I was starting to think you’d been eaten.”