On the bright side, the horror of a surprise woodspawn attack in plain daylight seemed to have stopped people from talking about the depraved antics of the King’s bloodbound. Not that Rachelle could stop thinking about it; every other minute, she remembered Erec laughing at her as he scored point after point in the duel, Erec pinned beneath her but still—through the kiss—making her dance to his bidding. He had humiliated her and laughed at her and then he had still made her want him.
Armand didn’t speak to her for the rest of the day. That was good, because she didn’t want to talk to him. He had seen her kissing Erec, seen her panting with lust and bloodlust at the same time. She knew what he must think of her.
It shouldn’t matter what he thought of her.
The King didn’t send for them that evening, so Armand ate dinner in his rooms, grimly stabbing at his food with the fork clamped to his hand. Rachelle sat in the corner and stared. She didn’t want to look at him. Looking at him made her think of this afternoon and the day before and everything that was horrible and broken and wrong in her. But she couldn’t look away.
Finally, Armand looked up at her. “Are we still pretending you take orders from me?” he asked with a mild curiosity that burned more than any anger.
Rachelle’s chest tightened. “Have we ever pretended that?”
“I would like it,” he said quietly and distinctly, “if you pretended long enough to go into the other room and stop staring at me.”
“And let the woodspawn eat you?” she asked.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re useful. For now.” She stood. “Scream if you need help.”
She went to her room and spent the next hour watching Amélie mix powders and trying not to cry. Which did not make any sense.
Nothing in her heart made any sense.
She could tell she wasn’t going to sleep that night, so she didn’t even try. She told Amélie to go to bed, and then she sat in a chair and stared at the wall. If she stared hard enough, she could make herself stop thinking, even though the confused misery in her chest still wouldn’t go away.
Then Armand let out a hoarse cry. She was in his room before she had fully realized what she was doing. She didn’t see or sense any woodspawn; Armand was sitting up in bed, rigid but apparently unharmed. Beside his bed, the candle had burned down nearly to a stump.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” He stared at the wall.
“Did you see something?”
“No.”
“Did you— Just look at me!” She grabbed his wrist to pull him toward her. But she had forgotten that he had lost his hands; her fingers closed over the very end of his arm, and she could feel the rounded edge of the stump.
She had heard for months about his tragically missing hands. But feeling the way his arms just ended was like a kick to the stomach.
He did look at her then, very tired and very irritated. “I had a dream,” he said. “I woke up screaming. Laugh and go back to sleep.”
“I’m not going to laugh,” she said.
“Are you going to let go of my arm?”
She flinched and released him.
The silence stretched between them. The darkness wrapped around them. It felt like they were the only people in the world, and the tension that had choked her all day started to seep away.
“Are you going to watch me all night?” he asked. “Because I wasn’t aware that your mandate included protecting me from bad dreams.”
“What really happened?” she asked. “With your hands, and the mark?”
“I thought I was a liar. Now you’re going to believe what I say?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Are you going to tell me it was your holiness that let you live?”
He looked at her as if she were a foreign language he was trying to decipher.
“No,” he said finally, slowly, softly.
Very carefully, Rachelle sat down beside him on the bed. “Then what happened?”
He pressed his lips together. “I met a forestborn,” he said finally. “He marked me. I said I wouldn’t kill anyone. He laughed, and told me I’d change my mind in three days.”
“Did you?”
“No. I didn’t.” His voice was light and tense and strangled. “But you know the stories about the Royal Gift? That because the royal line is descended from Tyr, they have power over the Forest? It turns out it’s real. At least, real enough to keep the mark from killing me. And surprisingly, forestborn don’t like it when you ruin their plans.”
“Why didn’t he kill you?” asked Rachelle.
“Why don’t you ask him?”
He did have a point. “So the forestborn cut off your hands for revenge, and you survived it because you’re special—”
“Because I’m nearly bloodbound, so I heal faster. But I still wasn’t well enough to conceal the mark until much too late.”
“So now you hold audiences where you pretend to be the King’s pet saint. Why? Because you can’t bear to disappoint the multitudes?”
“Because,” Armand said, biting off each word, “my half brother Raoul deserves to get the throne and every other good thing. Unfortunately the King doesn’t much like him, but he knows I care about him, and if I don’t let people go on thinking I’m his pet saint, he will punish Raoul on my account.”
“So instead you lie to the people.”
“I don’t lie,” said Armand. “I always tell them I’m not a saint.”