“And you didn’t bring me along?” he asked lightly.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “What happened while I was gone?”

“An extraordinary amount of panic. You would think that no member of the court had ever seen a woodspawn before.”

“Most of them haven’t seen a woodspawn before,” said Rachelle. “Since none of them are out on the city streets at night.”

Erec shrugged. “Well, the result is, the two of us are patrolling the grounds tonight lest such a terrible thing happen again.” He managed to make the assignment sound like a ridiculous joke.

It was the same game he played every time they talked about the Forest. For once, Rachelle didn’t get angry, but felt a sudden stab of worried pity. He seemed so sure that the Forest would never hurt him. She hoped he would never find out how wrong he was.

Erec might not yet believe that there was anything to fear. But everyone else in the Château did. She saw it all day as she followed Armand around the court: the whispers, the half-hidden fearful glances out the windows. People weren’t quite ready to admit it out loud, but they knew.

Rachelle spent the rest of the day thinking about the lindenworm. She would fight it. The thought made her feel numb with fear, but she had no other choice: there was no way to stop the Devourer but with Joyeuse, and there was no way to get Joyeuse but to defeat the lindenworm. No matter how terrible the odds, she had to try.

Attacking it with just a sword would be suicide. And yet, if it came to that, Rachelle would try it. But she still hoped she could find another way.

Margot had suggested that there might be a woodwife charm that could work against it. The most terrible charms, she had said, or the most simple.

But Rachelle remembered the charm she had tried to weave burning in her hands. She had been able to make the door appear, but that had only been awakening a charm already woven. It was quite likely that making even a simple charm would be impossible.

Could she ask Erec to help?

Two bloodbound might not be enough. Margot had said no human hands could kill a lindenworm. Then again, Margot wanted her to die, and anyway, bloodbound were not exactly human anymore. And Rachelle and Erec were the very best. If any bloodbound could do it, they could.

But would he help her?

Rachelle knew that asking Armand to help had been a far riskier gamble. He’d had reason to want her dead, while Erec considered her a friend. But Erec was . . . Erec, and when she imagined trying to tell him everything that she knew and suspected and planned—everything she cared about so desperately—she felt an awful, sinking suspicion that maybe he would laugh and decline to risk his life.

She was still wondering when they met that evening to patrol the grounds. Erec seemed to be in a fine mood; he grinned, and when she asked where they would start, he said simply, “Run with me.”

So they ran.

When she was a child, Rachelle had loved to run. She had loved that one perfect moment, just after she hit her stride, when it felt like the air itself was flinging her forward and the ground had lost all claim to her, when her heart was racing faster than the wind.

Now that she was bloodbound, she could run like that forever. Or close enough. The wind roared in her face but couldn’t stop her. And unlike all the other powers she had gained as a bloodbound, in this one there was no lingering memory of what she had done to win it. She ran, and didn’t smell blood, only the damp, sweet evening air.

Erec finally skidded to a stop in a little moonlit clearing, beside a fountain full of writhing marble mermaids and living, placidly glinting carp. Rachelle stopped abruptly enough that she had to grab at his shoulder to regain her balance, and for a moment they teetered together, gasping for breath in a way that was almost laughter.

Erec smiled at her. “Do you like me now, my lady?”

“For once,” she said, “yes.”

And she meant it. He was only unbearable when he remembered he was a glory of the court. When they were just Erec and Rachelle, hunting in the darkness, then he was kind. Then she was happy to be with him.

They were Erec and Rachelle right now. If she told him about the lindenworm, would he understand?

She drew a breath to speak, but she wasn’t sure where to start, and for a moment her heart thudded in the silence—

“And yet you scorn me still,” Erec went on, because they were still on the grounds of Château de Lune and he had still not forgotten how handsome he was.

She laughed shakily. “I scorn to be one of your five hundred women.”

“But if you were the only one?” asked Erec. “Because you could be, if you only said the word. There is a ruby waiting for you.”

“No,” she said flatly, trying to think how to turn the conversation back. It was sliding away from her, back into the well-worn paths of teasing and disdain, where neither of them could be truthful.

He raised his eyebrows. “Are you still angry over our duel? I can’t help being better than you at sword fighting.”

“You could have helped forcing me into it,” she said. The familiar anger was so comforting that she spoke without thinking. “Not to mention—” She cut herself off.

“What?” said Erec. “The kiss? The force of that was entirely on your side, I believe.”

Rachelle looked away. “You made me look like an animal,” she said, and instantly wished the words unsaid.

“My lady, I did you honor. I showed you to all the court as a bloodbound terrible and lovely.” He stepped closer and leaned down so they were nearly eye to eye. “We’re stronger and fairer and we are going to live forever. Why would you want to pretend you’re a plodding daylight creature?”

And there was her answer. She hadn’t even had to risk his mockery by asking.

Erec might not fully understand their destiny. But he wanted it. He would never risk his life against a lindenworm, just so Rachelle could kill the Devourer.

She put a hand on his chest to push him back a step. “I told you already. I will die first.”

“Such a perverse wish.” He caught her hand. “Do you know what the old heathen stories called the first man and first woman, who crawled out from the roots of the first tree? Life and Life-Desiring.”

Her chest ached, but she met his eyes with her normal scorn. “Were I a heathen, I’d find that inspiring.”

“I only mean that it’s the oldest law we know. Life, and desiring it.”

“And destroying it. That’s why the heathens spilled blood to Tyr and Zisa.” She wrenched her hand free. “And that’s why we both did what you know damn well we did!”