“Mademoiselle—” one of the guards started.

“Trust me,” said the young man, “you don’t want to fight her.”

Rachelle dragged him inside with her. The King was putting on his stockings, and the room was already crowded—with the King’s valets, of course, but also the supremely lucky nobles who were privileged this morning to hand him his prayer book, his shirt, and his razor. Then there was a great crowd of other nobles, ministers, and secretaries, all of whom had wrangled permission to come in during one of the coveted first five entrances. Soon the King’s illegitimate children would be admitted, and then the room would get really crowded. (By tradition, the sixth entrance was for the King’s heirs, but he had only bothered to father one child on his actual wife, and that prince had died three years ago.)

This crowd was even thicker than the one in the anteroom. Rachelle shoved her way through—people muttered only until they saw her coat; then they looked away nervously. Let them. She just wanted to get inside, see the King, and please or annoy him enough that he never invited her to the levée again.

She broke through the crowd as the King stood, the ribbons on his shoes finally tied. Erec sat at his feet—the special privilege of the bloodbound—with his mouth quirked up smugly.

Rachelle went down on one knee, dragging the young man with her. “Your Majesty,” she said.

The most high, most puissant, and most excellent prince, Auguste-Philippe II, by the Grace of God, King of Gévaudan and Protector of the Vasconic territories, looked down his famous nose at her.

“A tardy servant is of little use to me,” he said after a short, brittle silence.

The back of Rachelle’s neck prickled; she knew that everyone in the room was staring, waiting to see what the King would do to her.

Well, but what could he do? As a bloodbound, she was already under sentence of death.

“I’m sorry, sire,” she said, “but I was saving this man from three assassins. I think you need to have a talk with the guard.”

“Good morning, Father,” said the young man beside her. “Well. It hasn’t been very good so far, but I’ve hopes for the rest of it.”

Wait. She had just rescued one of the King’s bastards? Rachelle darted a look at the young man, and yes, that was why his face looked so familiar: though liberally smudged and softened by his mother’s heritage, that was still the line of the King’s jaw that he had inherited.

“Did she really save you?” asked King Auguste-Philippe.

“Yes,” said the young man. “Defeated three armed men, tied them up in their own belts, and gave me a knife. It was most impressive.”

“I see,” said the King, and looked at Rachelle. “Then perhaps you are not so tardy after all.”

“Sire?” Rachelle said cautiously. Erec looked like he was about to burst into laughter; whatever was going on, it couldn’t be good.

The King dropped a hand onto the young man’s head and fixed his gaze on the crowd. “This is Armand Vareilles, my esteemed son,” he said, in a quiet voice that nevertheless carried throughout the room.

It can’t be, she thought in horror, staring at Armand’s gloved hands—but of course, that would explain Erec’s near laughter.

Rachelle didn’t keep up with the court, and yet even she knew who Armand Vareilles was. He had been nothing six months ago, but now everyone in Gévaudan knew about him: how he was the King’s illegitimate son, raised in the countryside after his mother’s political disgrace. How last winter, a forestborn had marked him. How he had refused to kill, and the mark remained black on his skin, yet he was alive to this day.

How, in a fury, the forestborn had cut off his hands.

It was a lie, of course. The forestborn did not forget to claim people; if they marked somebody, they would have him or see him dead. Armand Vareilles was nothing but a clever liar who had lost his hands in some accident, then tattooed himself with a false mark and made his fortune by having people pity him.

But most of the common people were convinced. They proclaimed him a saint, a living martyr, and they called for the destruction of the King’s bloodbound in his name. For if he could resist the forestborn and live, what excuse did the rest of the bloodbound have?

And not just the common people loved him. Some of the nobility were besotted with him as well. So even though Armand Vareilles had become a symbol of those who muttered against him, the King had to keep him in luxurious style. He’d even commissioned false hands made of silver for him. That was why she had never seen his gloved hands move.

“In three days,” the King went on, “he will accompany me back to Château de Lune with the rest of the court. In recognition of his rank, and the heroism he has so lately shown, and on account of the malicious unrest in the kingdom, I grant him one of my own bloodbound, Rachelle Brinon, to be his bodyguard.”

“What?” said Rachelle, so surprised that she didn’t care if everyone heard the outrage in her voice.

She had to find Joyeuse. Failing that, she had to protect as many people as she could until her forestborn returned and she had a chance to kill him. She didn’t want to spend her last days guarding a fake saint while smothered in the elegance of Château de Lune, where ancient spells ensured that no woodspawn ever came.

But if she deserted now, there was no way to keep from instantly becoming a fugitive.

Armand’s mouth was flat as his gaze flickered from her to Erec and back again; then abruptly his mouth crooked up and he leaned toward her. “Not too late to use that knife,” he murmured.

Rachelle glowered at him, but before she could respond, there was another muffled commotion. She looked up to see someone striding through the crowd, and her whole body tensed in revulsion.

It was Bishop Guillaume.

He was a tall, colorless man with a wispy pale beard, a mouth shriveled into a permanent frown, and beady black eyes. On his chest glinted a huge silver pendant in the shape of the Dayspring’s right hand, rubies inlaid to represent the bloody stump. On anyone else it would have been a symbol of faith, but Rachelle had always thought that on him it looked like a trophy from battle.

“Good morning,” said the King. “Come with your usual request? I regret to say there are still no new bloodbound whom I could assign to you.”

As soon as Bishop Guillaume had arrived in Rocamadour, he had started proclaiming that since the King had no power to forgive sins, the bloodbound should not be in his care. Instead, all repentant deadly warriors should be put under the Bishop’s personal command for the good of their souls.