Rachelle nodded, feeling dizzy. “As soon as I change out of this dress.”
Half an hour later, Rachelle was back in her normal hunting clothes and they were striding down the hallway together.
“I wish the story was a little more exact than ‘above the sun, below the moon,’” said Rachelle. “Every surface in this place is covered in the sun and moon. It’s not helpful.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Armand. “Looking at the decoration’s useless because every room in the Chateau’s been redecorated, oh, at least twice in the last hundred years.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Everybody knows that,” Armand said easily, then looked at her. “At least, everybody whose mother was banished from the court and comforted herself with creating doll-sized models of the Chateau,” he amended. “So I can assure you that while parts of the building are quite old, none of the rooms look the same as they did in Prince Hugo’s day.”
“That’s why you’re going to use your gift,” said Rachelle.
“Yes,” said Armand, “but first we’re going to the library.”
“Why?” she asked. “You think the door is in there?”
“No,” he said calmly, “but there are books in there, and a lot of them are chronicles or memoirs. There might be something that could help.”
“I thought you could see the Forest.”
He sighed. “Yes, but it’s not hung with signs saying, ‘This way to the secret door.’ I would probably see something if we walked right past the door, but as you might have noticed, this is a rather large Chateau and it would take us a while to walk through all the rooms.”
“As if reading all the books would be any faster,” Rachelle muttered. Just the thought of trying to puzzle through book after book made her head hurt. Aunt Léonie had taught her to read when she became her apprentice, but she had never been very good at it. “Don’t you think that if the door’s location were written down, somebody else would have found it already?”
“I don’t think it’s written down,” said Armand. “I think maybe some hints are written down, which nobody would have paid any attention to because nobody is interested in Prince Hugo except the people on my mother’s estate. And you.”
His words made sense. But in the end, they weren’t what made her give in. It was the memory of Armand leaning forward as he argued about Tyr and Zisa. Everything he said had been foolish and sanctimonious and wrong, but he had been the only person in that room who cared.
“All right,” she said. “If you think you can find it that way, then try. But you’re doing the reading.”
The library was probably the most modest room in the entire Chateau, or at least the most modest room that any of the nobility would be caught dead in. There were murals on the ceiling, but the bookshelves lining the walls were made of plain wood. Spurs of lower bookshelves ran out from the walls, dividing the room into seven bays on each side. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows.
Armand strode halfway down the room, stopped, and peered intently at the shelves. He traced his hand along the spines of the books, fingers glinting in the sunlight, and then came to a stop at a fat red book. Rachelle stepped forward to pull it off the shelf for him, but before she could, he had tipped it back with his finger and caught it—awkwardly but securely—between his forearms.
“What’s that?” asked Rachelle.
“It’s the diary of a lady who lived at the court a hundred years ago,” said Armand. “Madame du Choissy. She was the niece of the king, but she later married a minor nobleman and disappeared into the countryside.”
There was a table in the center of the room; he set the book down with a thump, and Rachelle stepped closer with the lamp.
“And how does that help us?” she asked.
“She was obsessed with legends of the Great Forest.” Armand flipped the cover of the book open. “And legends surrounding the royal line. If there were any more tales about Prince Hugo in those days, she would know them.”
His eyes were already tracing the text of the book; his voice had gone vague and distracted. He looked and sounded exactly like he was absorbed in looking for an answer, and the very innocence in the set of his shoulders made suspicion worm through Rachelle’s stomach.
The book was handwritten in old, elaborate letters. He could claim the pages said anything he chose, and she’d never know the difference.
She leaned closer. “How convenient that you knew about that specific book just as soon as we needed help.”
“Mm,” said Armand.
Her hands slammed down on the table beside him. “How did you know about it?”