Then the mark burned on her neck, flaring to life in response to the Forest’s power, and she remembered the price of that darkness and that dancing.
Around her little finger, she felt an answering burn. She looked down.
No one but Rachelle could see the phantom red string that the forestborn had tied to her finger. Even she couldn’t feel it. But here, though it had no physical presence, it burned cold against her finger.
After she had . . . after, the forestborn had congratulated her on joining the lords of the Forest in time to rule with them. She’d dropped the knife and tried to run. He had caught her and thrown her to the ground, and she’d wondered if he was going to use her the way people said forestborn used innocent maidens. But she wasn’t innocent anymore and she didn’t have enough strength left to fight back. So she had lain still, but he’d only tied the red string around her finger, saying, Leave me all you want. You’re still mine.
She had never seen him since, but he had been right. She had never again been anything but what he made her, and someday she would lose herself completely to the call of the Great Forest.
But not today.
Not like the other poor, mad bloodbound she had followed here.
She listened carefully, and there it was to her left: the soft, harsh breathing of a human driven almost past endurance. She followed the sound, picking her way through the trees.
The breathing grew louder. Rachelle moved softly and silently as smoke.
A lean, middle-aged woman crouched in the hollow of a tree. Her clothes were in rags; deep scratches scored her arms. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her hands were pressed over her ears. On her forehead was the mark, an eight-pointed star, no bigger than a thumbnail, exactly the same color as fresh blood.
It was the same mark that burned on Rachelle’s neck.
Because this woman was exactly like Rachelle. A forestborn marked her and left her with a choice: die in three days, or kill somebody and live as a bloodbound, heir to the power of the Forest.
Like Rachelle, she had chosen to kill and live.
Now the power of the Great Forest had almost finished growing in her. She had fought it. She had fought until it broke her mind, until the Great Forest grew up around her because she would not run to it. But this was the end. In another moment the last scraps of her humanity would be washed away, leaving her with nothing but a senseless desire to hunt and kill.
The woman’s eyes opened. Rachelle’s hand tightened on her sword hilt, but the woman remained still, watching with blind wariness. Was she still human, or had the change fully overtaken her?
She was a bloodbound and therefore a murderer; like Rachelle, she deserved to die.
She was helpless and in pain. Like Aunt Léonie.
The woman’s hands dropped from her ears. Her lips curled back, and a little whining snarl escaped between her teeth.
She isn’t human, thought Rachelle. She isn’t human anymore.
The woman sprang.
Rachelle’s body had no doubts. Quicker than thought, she swung her sword and sliced the woman’s throat open; blood sprayed as the woman sank to the ground.
Rachelle stumbled back a step. Now that it was over, she was shaking and panting like she had run up a mountain. She could see the crumpled body at the edge of her vision, but she couldn’t look at it now.
She didn’t need to. She knew what a human body looked like, ripped open and stripped of life. What it looked like, dead by her hands. She knew.
Her throat burned with the need to scream or weep.
But this time, at least, she had also saved lives. There would not be a new forestborn to plague the world. This manifestation of the Forest would end without spilling more chaos into Rocamadour.
Except it didn’t end.
Rachelle had never killed a transforming bloodbound, but she knew how it worked: the fledgling forestborn’s awakening called down the power of the Great Forest. Killing it would release the Forest’s grip on the spot. Justine—who had killed nine mad bloodbound, six of them in the Forest—said that the Forest always vanished instantly.
But it didn’t.
Rachelle waited, the dark breeze tickling the hairs against her neck, but nothing happened. Except the phantom laughter got a little louder, and perhaps the distant fire flared a little brighter.
The thread on her finger burned red-hot.
No, she thought. No, no, no—
Her forestborn’s voice came from behind her, soft and smooth as butter. “Are you ready to join me now?”
She didn’t turn around. She didn’t think she could move. His voice had wrapped around her spine, her legs and arms and throat, and locked her into place. Her heart pounded with helpless, animal fear.
She should have known he would find her as soon as she stepped into his realm.
“No,” she said, staring into the darkness.
The string had no physical substance. She had seen people walk through it, time and again. Yet now it felt as it were going taut, as if he were tugging at the phantom, unbreakable bond that tied them together.
“I grow impatient, little girl.”
“Then learn to wait,” she bit out, but she was shaking. She had sworn that the next time she saw him, she would take revenge for Aunt Léonie. So many nights, it had been her only comfort, the only way she could let herself sleep. Now she finally stood before him, and she was still the terrified, bloodstained little girl she had been three years ago. All she could think was that he was going to kill her and she did not want to die.
Or he was going to give that thread one more pull, and all her strength would unravel and she would walk into his arms and forget how to be human.
“I don’t have to.” She heard him stepping closer. “Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy. Our lord is almost ready to return.”
“I know that.” Her heartbeat was jagged in her throat.
His breath was hot against the back of her neck. “Did you know how soon? Before the summer sun makes its last valiant gasp, our lord will smile and awaken and eat the light from the sky.”
Rachelle felt sick. Before the end of summer. It was one thing to know that the Devourer would return sometime soon; it was another to realize that it was starting now.
Then she shuddered as the forestborn’s lips pressed against her neck in a kiss. “No pleading?” he asked.
It took all her strength to answer steadily, “I don’t see the point.”
“Or praying?” His voice had an extra mocking edge, and she remembered the whimpering babble that had spilled out of Aunt Léonie’s lips, desperate pleas to the Dayspring and the Holy Virgin that had never been answered.