She realized that they were surrounded by darkness and the cold, sweet wind. They were in the Great Forest again. The change had felt so natural, so right, she hadn’t noticed it happen.
“What’s so bad about that?” asked Armand.
“The problem with martyrs is that they’re all dead. What have they got to do with those of us who are sinful enough to still be alive? Should we just give up and want to die, because death is better than dishonor? But suicide is a sin too, so then we really are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”
“I don’t—” Armand started to say.
“Enough. I don’t want to hear it.” Rachelle strode forward faster, trying not to think about the lindenworm waiting for her, and thinking of it with every step.
The journey seemed to take hours. Days. Forever. There was no keeping track of time in that endless darkness, but they walked on and on, and Rachelle grew wearier and wearier.
All she could think of was the lindenworm. She had to try to defeat it and get Joyeuse. She didn’t see a way she could win.
You deserve as much and more besides.
She didn’t want to be a martyr. She didn’t have a choice.
When sunlight suddenly poured down on them, Rachelle’s head was hanging low. She looked up, and saw Chateau de Lune glittering before them. They were in the garden, among the rosebushes. Judging by the position of the sun, they had only been walking for a few hours.
“How did you do that?” asked Armand. He was looking at her, his eyes squinted against the sudden sunlight.
“Luck,” said Rachelle. “Maybe.”
Or her forestborn was lurking somewhere near the Chateau, which was a truly terrifying thought.
When they got back to their rooms, they found both Amélie and Armand’s valets in a state of modified panic.
“Where have you been?” Amélie demanded, hugging Rachelle fiercely. “Monsieur d’Anjou kept asking and asking for you, and we had to keep making up excuses.”
Which was pointless, since the valets would report it all to Erec anyway, but Rachelle was surprised and touched that Amélie had taken the trouble.
“We took a walk,” said Armand. “Got lost in the trees.” His valets were not hugging him, but they had peeled off his coat—exclaiming about the dust—and now seemed to be checking him for injuries.
“He was tired of being cooped up,” said Rachelle. “It won’t happen again.”
“I’ve learned my lesson,” Armand agreed, with a smile just for her.
Of course, she had to explain herself to Erec. The valets must have sent him a message as soon as she got back, because he turned up not long after and dragged her away for a private audience.
“I hear you went wandering with our saint,” he said. “What happened?”
Rachelle decided that a little bit of the truth couldn’t hurt. “It turns out the protections on the Chateau are worse than we thought,” she said. “We went walking and ended up in the Great Forest.”
“And you didn’t bring me along?” he asked lightly.
“I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “What happened while I was gone?”
“An extraordinary amount of panic. You would think that no member of the court had ever seen a woodspawn before.”
“Most of them haven’t seen a woodspawn before,” said Rachelle. “Since none of them are out on the city streets at night.”
Erec shrugged. “Well, the result is, the two of us are patrolling the grounds every night lest such a terrible thing happen again.” He managed to make the assignment sound like a ridiculous joke.
It was the same game he played every time they talked about the Forest. For once, Rachelle didn’t get angry, but felt a sudden stab of worried pity. He seemed so sure that the Forest would never hurt him. She hoped he would never find out how wrong he was.
Erec might not yet believe that there was anything to fear. But everyone else in the Chateau did. She saw it all day as she followed Armand around the court: the whispers, the half-hidden fearful glances out the windows. People weren’t quite ready to admit it out loud, but they knew.
Rachelle spent the rest of the day thinking about the lindenworm. She would fight it. The thought made her feel numb with fear, but she had no other choice: there was no way to stop the Devourer but with Joyeuse, and there was no way to get Joyeuse but to defeat the lindenworm. No matter how terrible the odds, she had to try.
Attacking it with just a sword would be suicide. And yet, if it came to that, Rachelle would try it. But she still hoped she could find another way.
Margot had suggested that there might be a woodwife charm that could work against it. The most terrible charms, she had said, or the most simple.
But Rachelle remembered the charm she had tried to weave burning in her hands. She had been able to make the door appear, but that had only been awakening a charm already woven. It was quite likely that making even a simple charm would be impossible.