The words were like two boulders grinding together. She closed her eyes. Speak your sins to God, the village priest had once told her. The priest is just his messenger. So she spoke to the God in the painting behind her, as ugly as her own soul and as tormented as Aunt Léonie.
“I confess to almighty God and to you, Father, that I accepted a forestborn’s covenant to become a bloodbound.”
Her face burned. Her words were boulders and she was being ground between them.
“This morning I tried to murder someone who had hurt my friend, and—and then I accepted the transformation into a forestborn.”
The words were ragged, insufficient. They made everything she’d done sound so stupid. But also much smaller, and the words started to tumble out faster and faster.
“I have lied, and on my way to Rocamadour, I stole both food and money. I slept with Erec d’Anjou. I have not attended chapel in three years. I killed a woman who had gone mad when transforming into a forestborn. I have said very cruel things. To seal my covenant with the forestborn, I killed my own aunt. I cut open her throat and I killed her. Because she was terribly wounded and I wanted to spare her, but also because I wanted to live. I killed her.”
Then was no sound but her breathing.
“For your penance,” the Bishop said finally, “say three rosaries, one for each year of your sinful life, and offer them for the people you have harmed.”
“That is not remotely enough,” she snapped.
“Do you need also to confess doubts about the power of God to forgive sins?”
“Yes,” she admitted after a few moments.
“In that case, for your penance, say only one rosary.”
Rachelle couldn’t say anything to that. Her throat was too tight with three years of unvoiced keening, and her eyes burned with unshed tears. It felt like every inch of her was raw and bleeding.
But now they were at the part of the ceremony where she wasn’t supposed to speak. The Bishop laid a hand on her head and said swiftly, “The Dayspring who bid the sin-eaters rise and walk now bids you rise from your sins. In his name and by his power I command and adjure all unclean spirits to depart from you, and I release you from every penalty of excommunication and bond of interdict, and I absolve you from all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Dayspring and of the Paraclete. Amen.”
All of her sins, gone like that. She didn’t feel relieved or joyful; she felt dizzy and confused, and the Forest still hummed in her veins. She had groveled and begged and told the most horrible truths. And nothing had happened, except that a man who once hated her had said she was forgiven.
She opened her eyes and climbed to her feet. The Bishop was still watching her, his shoulders tense, and she realized that he still was not entirely sure she wouldn’t attack him.
And yet he had absolved her.
“Thank you,” she said.
He regarded her another moment. “I believe Mademoiselle Leblanc was right about you.” He knocked on the door, and Justine slipped back in.
“Well?” said Justine. “Reconsidered your ways?”
“The King has made an alliance with the forestborn,” Rachelle blurted out, “of whom Erec d’Anjou is one. Tonight, they’re going to awaken the Devourer by offering Armand Vareilles as a sacrifice to be possessed. I’ll try to stop them, but I don’t know if I can. Joyeuse can kill the Devourer once he’s possessing a human body again, so you have to get it out of here. If I can’t stop the sacrifice—I don’t know what they’ll do to the Chateau—Joyeuse has to be out of their grasp so someone can try to kill Armand. When he’s the Devourer. Did I mention, you have to get out? Also, Raoul Courtavel is locked up somewhere in the Chateau as a hostage against Armand Vareilles.”
The two of them stared at her a moment.
Then the Bishop said, “The Devourer is just a heathen—”
“He’s real. I’m a forestborn, I know. And he’s coming back tonight unless we stop him.” She squashed a sudden impulse to say, I had a vision and the Lady of Snows told me so. “Listen, you know what Erec d’Anjou is like. Even if you don’t believe that the Devourer is returning, believe that Erec thinks he can summon him back, and that he’ll destroy anyone who stands in his way.”
The Bishop looked at Justine. “That is something I would wager on,” she said.
“You believed in my sins,” said Rachelle. “Please. Believe me in this.”
The Bishop stared at her for a long moment. At last he said, “Very well.”
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Rachelle strode down the halls of the palace. She cupped her hands, and thought, Armand. Find him. Mounds of tiny blue flowers glimmered in her hands; she blew on them and they spiraled up into the air where they drifted for a moment before eddying to the left.