love, if it had really been love. He had kissed her and said that he loved her, but he had thought he would be dead within days. It had been impossible for him to have any intention of sharing his life with her. And since then, she had thrown him away, killed his followers, slept with the man who had maimed him—and saved his life and mattered enough to be used as a hostage against him, but that wasn’t love. Exactly. Maybe.
Now Armand was not only going to live, he was the favorite half brother of the new king. He could have anything that he wanted, and if he didn’t want Rachelle . . . after the way she had treated him, it was only fair.
A lot of things were fair: the strange, uneasy looks that she got from most people in the Château, who didn’t know whether to fear or honor her. The dull heaviness and infuriating weakness of her body, now that she was fully human again. The loneliness of standing next to Armand and saying nothing.
Just because things were fair, didn’t make them easy.
Amélie went home on the second day. Rachelle wanted to beg her to stay, but she couldn’t, because she had held Amélie when she woke up sobbing the night before. She deserved a chance to go home to her mother.
“I am not leaving you forever and ever,” said Amélie, glowering as she fussed with the clothes in her trunk. “Even if you try to leave me. I will hunt you down and find you.” She snapped the lid of the trunk down. “I can do it. You’re not so much stronger than me, now. So stop looking that way.”
Rachelle choked on a laugh. “You were always stronger.”
“You,” said Amélie, “were always foolish enough to think that mattered.” For a few moments, she studied Rachelle, her mouth puckered. “Don’t leave me,” she said quietly. “Promise you’ll come visit.”
Rachelle let out a shaky breath. Amélie’s determination was like solid ground beneath her feet after she’d spent days falling.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll come, I promise.”
Amélie grinned and pulled her into an embrace.
“I wouldn’t be here without you,” Rachelle said when Amélie released her. “You know that, don’t you? I would have given up and lost myself to the Forest years ago.”
“I think you’re underestimating yourself,” said Amélie.
“No,” said Rachelle. “I’m not. That night we met—when I was too late to save your father, I thought that at least I got to save you. But it was really you who saved me.”
Amélie smiled at her. She looked fragile and beautiful and terribly strong. “Thank you,” she said.
The evening after Amélie left, Rachelle went out running in the gardens. The Château’s bells had just finished ringing nine o’clock, and yet the sun was still lingering at the horizon. Rachelle had never imagined the world could be so full of light.
She had never imagined, either, what it would be like to run as a human.
It was still a delight. The air was still cool and sweet in her throat, even if it was not the magical, inhuman sweetness of the Great Forest. The pounding of her heart was like a drug. But soon—so very soon—her legs burned and her chest ached. She had to lean against a tree, gasping for breath. Sweat slid down her back.
Once she could have run forever. Once the wound on her palm would have healed in minutes instead of still being a scabbed mess two days later that ached and stung when she flexed her hand.
She was grateful—so very, very grateful—to be human again. To be free. And yet she missed the strength and speed and grace she’d had as a bloodbound. She missed them bitterly.
A breeze stirred against her face. She looked up.
In the spaces between the trees, other phantom trees stretched out their translucent branches, like indentations in the air.
The breeze stirred again. It sounded like it was laughing to itself. Dimly, between the shadows of the trees, she saw something that looked like a white deer with red eyes. A woodspawn.
She blinked, and the vision was gone. She was the most alien thing among the trees once more.
But the song of the wind still trembled in her blood. The Forest had been here—it was still here, right now, even if she couldn’t see it. Though the Devourer had gone, the Great Forest was living still. And it no longer had the same feeling of heartless menace as it had before.