When they were finished, she was gasping for breath. She tried not to look at the bodies that lay on the floor.
“We have to run,” she said. “The King—”
Erec shook his head. “They aren’t from the King,” he said, wiping his sword.
“The rebels,” she said, and her heart lurched. Somebody was organizing a palace coup; that was why they had lured her and Erec together, so that they could be taken out together.
“Armand,” she said, and realized this was the first time she had called him by his first name in front of Erec.
“Yes,” said Erec, “secure him before he gets to the throne room.”
She didn’t bother explaining as she ran out of the room. Armand wouldn’t start a bloody revolution. He wouldn’t, and that meant that anybody doing it would have to take him prisoner, and that meant—
And then she saw Armand at the end of the corridor, surrounded by armed men.
She didn’t think about odds or tactics. Her mind flashed white fire, and then she was upon them.
She cut down two of them before they realized how dangerous she was and started to fall back. Then somebody lunged forward, and she nearly stabbed him before she realized it was Armand.
“Stop,” he said. “Rachelle, stop. It’s all right. They aren’t hurting me.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, “they’re attacking us—”
“They’re with me,” he said quietly. “They follow me.”
She could see Armand’s face quite clearly in the lamplight, his gray eyes and the flat line of his mouth. She could feel the hilt of her sword gripped in her hand, and she could hear the soft moaning from one of the men she had stabbed. But she felt like she had stepped out of her body and to the side, like some important part of her just wasn’t there anymore.
“What . . . what do you mean?”
“These are my men,” Armand said steadily. “They follow me. They are going to help me take the King off the throne and—”
“You lied to me.”
“No.” Armand shook his head, actually looking distressed. “I’ve never—”
“You lied to me,” she said, and her voice sounded like a pathetic, lost little thing. “All this time, you pretended to hate being a saint, when you were really plotting to get yourself on the throne.”
“No,” he said desperately, “I’m trying to put Raoul on the throne. You can help. Please, Rachelle—”
She raised her voice. “Anyone who wants to live had better start running.”
Armand must have sent the message to get her in the same room as Erec. So that his men could kill them both at once.
The men with him in the hall now wanted to kill her as well. When they lunged, it was a relief. She knew how to fight. She knew how to survive fighting. Her sword sliced and whirled. Blood spattered across her face. She didn’t care.
Then she turned back to Armand, and with one hand she easily gripped his collar and slammed him against the wall.
“What made you think it was a good idea to lie to me?”
He was afraid. She could see it in the way his eyes widened, his breath quickened. She could feel it with the hot, deadly instinct that throbbed in her veins. He was prey and he knew it. She was a monster, and he knew it.
“Rachelle,” he said quietly, gently. As if he had ever really loved her. As if he thought he could keep on making a fool of her.
“Where is Joyeuse?” she demanded. She didn’t need to ask if he had taken it: she knew he must have.
He met her eyes, his face bloodless and resolute. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Don’t imagine I won’t hurt you. Don’t imagine for a moment that all your pretty kisses are going to make me spare you.” She raised her bloody sword and pressed the blade against his throat. “You’re only alive because the King has use for you. When the time comes, I will help him destroy you.”
Whatever hope he’d had of beguiling her seemed to go out of him. “You were always loyal to them, weren’t you?” he asked, his voice lifeless.
“Yes,” she said, because she knew it would hurt him. “I told you I was still a bloodbound. What did you expect?”
“Well, then go ahead. Kill me whenever you want.” His voice was quietly contemptuous. “It’s the only thing you know how to do. Kill to please the forestborn and kill to please the King and kill for your beloved d’Anjou.”
“At least I’ve never pretended otherwise,” she snapped.
“Oh yes.” His mouth curved in a thin, ferocious smile. “Your sad little lost soul that you can’t stop talking about. Forgive me if I feel more pity for the people you killed.”
It felt like there were fishhooks sliding under her ribs. “I never asked for your pity.”
“Oh no, of course not. That would make you less special, wouldn’t it, if you were just another sinner needing pity. No, you have to be the daughter of the devil himself before you’re satisfied. You cry and you cry about your lost innocence, but the truth is, you love being this way. You love believing that you’re damned because then you can do anything you want. Because you’re too much of a coward to face what you’ve done and live with it.”
She wanted to hurt him. She wanted to hurt him, and for a moment she imagined pressing the blade home, imagined the blood spurting everywhere, slippery and then sticky between her fingers. It was so real, she could almost taste it. And she could taste the black despair sliding down her throat afterward.
She knew that if she killed him, the next thing she would do was turn the sword on herself.
Her heart pounded with longing for destruction, with terror that she wanted it so much.
She lowered the blade. It was one of the hardest things she had ever done.
“Don’t say another word.” She grabbed his wrist. “If you want to live a moment longer, don’t say another word.”
He must have believed her. Because he didn’t say anything as she dragged him away.
She took him back to Erec. By then the uprising had already been put down: it wasn’t a true rebellion, just an attempt to snatch Armand out of the Château. Half the soldiers involved had already fled; the rest were dead or captured.
Erec babbled something smug and smiled at Armand. Rachelle didn’t listen. She just shoved Armand at Erec and said, “Lock him up.” The words scraped at her throat.