“As you are desperate to deny it.” He lounged against the door frame, but she could tell he was readying himself to spring at her.
In the very center of the floor, between the corners of three other doors, there was painted a little red star. Nothing else in the house led anywhere; maybe this did. As Erec lunged forward, she lifted Durendal and plunged it down into the star.
Cracks ran through all the wood. The whole house shuddered. And then it shattered into a thousand pieces.
Erec grabbed her arm as they plunged into darkness. They only fell a few moments, but the darkness was so heavy that it choked her. Then they both hit the ground and rolled, ending in a tangle of limbs, dust flying up around them.
Rachelle drew a breath full of dust and choked. It was not really dust: it was salt and ashes. As she gagged, Erec rolled on top of her and pinned her arms to the ground.
“Listen to me,” he said. “It’s not too late. We can still escape. Believe me, I know, for I once explored this far. We can go back, and give your burden to Vareilles as he deserves. I will make you my queen. We will rule together.”
His words were breathless, desperate. She realized that he was afraid. He was afraid of losing her, afraid of this place, and yet he was being brave. For her.
“I’m dead,” she told him.
“Your blood is still steaming,” he said. “The power of the Forest could still draw you back.”
She didn’t struggle against his grip. She looked up at him and said quietly, “Even if I could, do you really think I would go with you?”
“Where else? To your precious Armand?” A little of his old arrogance returned to his voice. “Do you think he would dare half as much for your love as I have?”
“No,” she said. “He never could. That’s why I love him.”
“You were desperate for me.”
“Desperate. Not happy.” And in that moment, despite all he had done, she truly pitied him. “You can never, ever make me happy. My heart will never rest in you.”
His mouth twisted into something that was half a smile, half a snarl. “And Vareilles, is he your rest?”
She remembered Armand saying, You are never content. She remembered the jagged lines of the Dayspring’s body in the painting, remembered whispering her sins into a listening silence.
“No,” she said. “I really don’t think he is.” Then she pulled her legs in and kicked viciously upward, throwing Erec off her body. She rolled to her feet, seized Durendal, and looked around.
They stood on a field of the white ash-and-salt powder that had covered the ground in the forest. It stretched out, flat and featureless, all the way to the horizon, beneath a dome of pure black sky in which floated fragments of the forest: a broken tree, a ragged circle of ground, a triangular shard of iron-gray sky.
“Don’t look back,” Erec rasped, sitting up. “That’s the rule in this place, don’t ever look over your shoulder. It sees you if you turn around.”
So of course she turned and looked.
And it saw her.
It was the only appropriate word; no human pronouns could encompass the vast swirl of destruction that filled her vision. The dust spiraled around and around as it sank into the center, down and down toward . . . nothing. That was what made her heart hammer, her chest feel like it was paper wrapped over a despairing void. She knew this thing—the Devourer—had forsaken itself to plunge into deeper and deeper nothing, seeking the final abnegation where it would be utterly alone and therefore omnipotent. All its bloodbound and forestborn and vessels, all its mastery and devouring, the power at the heart of the Great Forest, the stomach that swallowed the sun and moon—they all were no more than foam in the wake of its hurtling ruin.
She saw a human figure floating upside down in the center of the whirlpool. She knew it was an illusion, something her feeble human mind had created to shield her from the heart of this vast destruction.
And as soon as she saw it, she could hear it: a great howling wind—no, a voice, screaming and singing at once. It sang pain-hate-loss-fear, but most of all it sang hunger, the vast and devouring emptiness of a creature who had once tasted bliss beyond what any mortal mind could comprehend, and now must keen unbearable loss forever after.
It sang, and she sang with it. Her throat ached and burned from the sounds that ripped out, but she couldn’t stop. She felt that this sight had unlocked every secret of her life and made sense of them all. Surely she had always been singing this song in her heart. Surely this was her home. This, her inheritance.
Erec slammed her to the ground. “You belong to me, lady,” he snarled, “not that thing.” And he kissed her ferociously, biting her lip.
Rachelle bucked against him. “What—”
“You are made of that creature. That’s why you can’t fight it.”
She realized there were a thousand red strings running through the white dust all around them, down into the maw of the Devourer. As she watched, the strings slowly slid forward. She felt a tug on her own hand.
“Yes,” said Erec. “Inch by inch, he eats us all.”
There was no escape. Rachelle was no longer looking at the vast swirl of the Devourer, but she could feel the icy despair starting to rise again in her heart. She was eaten. Finished. Done. There was no way she could turn and face that creature with Durendal. She doubted that it would matter even if she could. Swords were made for killing, and having seen the Devourer, she did not think that death was a concept that even applied to it.
Suddenly she remembered Aunt Léonie’s fingers weaving a charm as she said, The path of needles or the path of pins.
Durendal’s other form was a needle.
There were threads all around her.
Rachelle’s heart thudded with sudden hope. She hadn’t had to kill the lindenworm, only beguile it. Maybe it would be enough if she didn’t kill the Devourer, but only bound it. Maybe the simple, boring charms that Aunt Léonie had taught her years ago had always been enough.
“Rachelle,” Erec breathed into her ear. “Come with me. Please.”
And she realized that he did love her. With all that remained of his heart, he loved her. And she pitied him.
“Erec,” she said, “I came here to destroy the Devourer. If you do not let me try, I will look at him and lose myself. You won’t be able to stop me, I swear it. The only way you’ll have a chance to take me home is if you let me fight him now.”
His face tightened. “What do you think you can do?”