“Step away from him,” said the owner of the coffeehouse.
Rachelle’s mind whirled through cold calculations. She had thought she could kill them all. She probably still could, with Erec’s help, because while some fools thought that killing bloodbound was as simple as pointing the musket and pulling the trigger, human hands were slow and muskets had terrible aim.
But sometimes fools were lucky. And even bloodbound couldn’t survive a musket ball in the face.
“You really should have left when I told you to,” Erec murmured.
“You really should have arrested them as soon as they got muskets,” Rachelle muttered back.
“I was waiting for them to implicate all their friends.”
“I said step away,” the owner growled. “We’re done with bowing and scraping to murderers.”
“Well, then I should probably be leaving as well,” said Erec. “Because I’m Erec d’Anjou, captain of the King’s bloodbound, and you would not believe the blood on my hands.”
“I really think they would,” said Rachelle.
“You traitor,” snarled one of the men.
“Not to the King,” said Erec, wrapping his arms around Rachelle. She knew that he was preparing to fling her in one direction while he threw himself in the other. The real risk was in the very first moment, when they were still in front of the muskets; once moving, they would be almost safe, because muskets were only as good as the hands that held them and the eyes that aimed them.
She could feel the cold-hot thrill of battle starting to hum in her veins.
If she hadn’t been readying herself to fight, she might not have noticed the flicker of movement at the edge of her vision. She looked at the mural, at the wonderfully lifelike leaves painted in the background.
Then she realized they were moving. They weren’t part of the painting, they were growing out of the wall, rippling in a breeze she couldn’t feel.
It was a glimpse of the Great Forest like she’d had in the rainswept streets. But that didn’t happen indoors. No bloodbound, no matter how strong her second sight, could see the Forest from within a human home.
Unless the Forest was beginning to actually manifest, enough of its power seeping through to take physical form in the human world.
“Erec,” she said quietly. The thrill of battle was turning into a sick expectation. “The Forest’s here.”
Now she could feel the sour, humming presence of the woodspawn. Right here in this room, surrounded by hateful and hostile and terribly fragile humans.
“Inconvenient,” said Erec.
Suddenly he threw himself to the side, dragging Rachelle along with him. She rolled free of his grasp and back onto her feet. Where they had stood a moment before crouched another doglike woodspawn, red tongue lolling between its fangs.
The muskets went off in a deafening chorus.
“Everybody out!” Rachelle yelled, shifting her grip on her sword as she realized that she had drawn it. Then something rustled above her. She looked up.
The whole ceiling of the room was completely overgrown, and at least ten of the woodspawn crouched among the branches, staring down at her with glittering eyes.
This wasn’t a chance eddy in the Forest’s power. This was a full manifestation, and she hadn’t seen one this bad since—since—
The rest of the woodspawn dropped. The humans, at last seeing them, started screaming. Rachelle ducked one way, Erec the other, and all thought was seared away by the glorious, white-hot delirium of movement. Human words and human fears didn’t exist anymore, just simple, instinctive knowledge: lunge here, slice there. Vault the table, and there was Erec at her back as they took down another knot of the creatures.
Then, diving to avoid a lunging woodspawn, she stumbled straight into the coffeehouse girl—why hadn’t those idiots gotten her out before attempting murder? Rachelle shoved her under the nearest table, and was turning when a woodspawn hit her in the shoulder and slammed her to the ground.
With a wet thud, Erec’s dagger plunged into the woodspawn’s head.
“Watch yourself!” he snapped, already turning away.
Rachelle sat up, pulled the blade out of the writhing creature’s head, and threw it to land between the eyes of the woodspawn closest to him. She grabbed her sword and gave the twitching woodspawn beside her a final, fatal slash across the middle. It shivered and dissolved into mud.
She realized that only two of the woodspawn were left alive, and Erec was fighting both of them with a lethal grace that promised the hounds didn’t have long left.
“You saved me.”
The girl’s voice was quiet, trembling. Rachelle looked back under the table: she was very pale. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted in fear.
No.
That was hope in the girl’s face, and it was hope that made her voice tremble as she said, “You’re not really a monster, are you? People like you—they can still be saved.”
Rachelle leaped to her feet, ice running through her veins. Because she knew why this girl was agonized with hope. She knew why the Forest had manifested indoors.
And she knew what was waiting for them upstairs.
“Erec,” she said, “finish them,” and charged up the steps. Ivy grew down the walls of the stairwell and little red birds flashed among the leaves.
The door at the top was bolted shut. Rachelle kicked it once, twice, and then it gave way.
Inside was the Great Forest.
2
The Forest was just like her dreams. The dark, tangled growth of trees, branches, and roots woven together. The cold air, pulsing with half-heard laughter, that tasted of blood and smoke. The glint of a bonfire in the distance.
This was the Great Forest, the Forest of Dreams and Dreadful Night: the dark, primeval wood that had once covered all the world in the days before the sun and moon. She’d seen its phantom shadow a thousand times, haunting the streets of Rocamadour, blossoming around her when she met the forestborn in the woods near Aunt Léonie’s cottage. She’d dreamed of it night after night.
She had never imagined that when she finally walked all the way inside, it would feel like home.
Rachelle stepped over the threshold. The cold darkness rippled over her skin, kissed her eyes, and unfurled her hair.
The longing hit her like a kick to the stomach. For just one moment, she was convinced that the distant bonfire was the only light in all the world—that the sun was a dream and the moon a delirium—and she wanted nothing but to drop her sword and run for that fire. She wanted to forget her foolish human name, relinquish it to the sweet, secret darkness, and run to that fire-lit world of dancing.