The door swung in. Darkness fell.
Instantly Rachelle lunged forward, flinging the charm while clinging to one end. She let herself feel the soft fibers against her skin, and inside her mind she reached as she tried to awaken the charm. For one moment she had it—she could feel the power humming through the charm—
Then she remembered the way Aunt Léonie had smiled at her the first time she managed it, and the way she had shuddered when Rachelle laid the knife against her throat, and the power was gone.
Four eyes opened.
There was no time to think, only move. Rachelle drew her sword and slashed, cutting off the nearest head, then dodged to the side and tried to cut off the other. But she moved at the wrong angle; her sword only got halfway into the creature’s neck and got stuck. The lindenworm screamed and reared up, tearing the sword from her hands—and then the other head was already grown back and surging toward her.
Rachelle ducked just in time. At least she still had a hold on the sleep charm.
“Armand!” she shouted. “Distract it!”
She didn’t noticed if he did or not; all her attention was on the lindenworm’s two swaying heads—and her sword, stuck in its neck. When the head with the sword lunged at her, she was ready. She rolled to the side, grabbed the sword, and wrenched it free. The next moment, she had sliced off the head, but the other was hurtling toward her—
Armand flung himself at the other head, hitting it right where the neck began and throwing his arms around it. “Do it!” he yelled.
Rachelle grabbed the charm, ducked as the head lunged at her, slammed her sword into the neck and down, pinning it to the floor. The lindenworm bucked and writhed beneath her, but she was pressing the charm against its neck and trying, trying, trying to awaken it—
And the charm sang in her mind, and the lindenworm went slack beneath her. Its eyes were still open, but the glow had dimmed; when she looked closer, she saw that the pale film of its inner eyelids had slid across its eyes.
It looked like the creature could still see her. But when she waved her hands in front of its nose, it didn’t move. She kicked it lightly in the head, and all that happened was that its scaled outer eyelids finally shut.
Rachelle’s breath shuddered out of her. She thought, I really did it. I’m still alive.
Then she remembered what Armand had done. She looked up.
There was more light now, she realized: torches blazed on the walls, as if celebrating the lindenworm’s defeat. But she couldn’t see Armand anywhere, just the vast tangle of the lindenworm’s body, scales gleaming in the torchlight.
“Armand?” she shouted, climbing over the body. “Where are you?” Her heart pounded because if he was dead—if he was dead—
“Here.” His voice was muffled. “I’m a little tied up.”
And then Rachelle saw a foot sticking out from under the lindenworm’s coils.
“Buried, more like,” she said, her voice shaky with relief, and she set about untangling him. He was still gripping the lindenworm’s other head; it jiggled when she started to pull him free, and in an instant she had her sword drawn.
“I think it’s asleep,” said Armand, letting go of the head.
Rachelle sheathed her sword. “I know that,” she said. “But you, what were you thinking?”
“That it was going to bite you and then we’d both be dead?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“You are not the first to tell me that.” He smiled, and it felt like ground glass in her chest, because she was sure he had smiled like that at his forestborn, and he would smile like that every other time he tried to do the right thing. And she knew what happened to good people, from the Dayspring right on down to Aunt Léonie.
“You’re going to die an idiot,” she snarled. “You won’t last another week, and I’ll have to watch you die.”
And strangely, that wiped away his smile and left him looking desperately tired and sad.
“True enough,” he said. “So I really have nothing to lose.”
He flung an arm around her shoulders, and closed his lips over hers.
It was nothing like Erec’s kisses. It was just Armand’s lips clumsily mashed against hers. But she felt it through her whole body like a bolt of lightning because it was Armand, warm and alive and wanting to touch her—
It seemed like only a heartbeat later that he let go. It took her a moment to remember how to breathe and how to think and by then he was stepping back, smiling again.
“You,” said Rachelle. “You—”
“Really,” he said, “you have to be careful about telling people they’re doomed. It makes them crazy.”
“You were already crazy,” said Rachelle. He couldn’t want her. He was everything that could never want her, but he had kissed her, and now her heart was starting to beat with dreadful hope.
“So that means you need to be extra careful.” Then he was starting to climb down the coils of the lindenworm on the other side.