Chapter 23
XXIII.
Threads of Truth
The balance between me and Renaud shifted after that night.
I had left and returned and walked back over the threshold of his home by my own free will.
In that, I found a little of my own power.
I don’t think Renaud had truly thought I could do any of those things, and he seemed to change in the wake of that brief loss.
That night he gathered me off the steps and carried me to my bed.
Over the course of the next two weeks, he devoted his time to tending to me.
Twice a day he changed my bandages and cleaned my wounds.
Three times a day he fed me. I laid like a baby in his arms. Every evening, he poured me wine and talked with me like we had before.
When I would start to drift off, he would smooth my hair away from my forehead and whisper his apologies, his regrets, his sorrows, his troubles into the skin of my hand or my neck and sometimes into my thighs.
I relished holding his confessions on my body.
When I woke in the middle of the night from dreams of Dacia, he was there instantly to soothe me.
We lived those two weeks in a persimmon-tinted cloud of unspoken passion.
It was enough to make me wish to be injured and broken forever.
Schneid showed up at the end of the two weeks.
I caught him skulking around the door and lured him back inside with scraps.
It wasn’t his fault I couldn’t control my magic and tore through the mountains on a branch.
The hellcat rubbed his horns against the edge of my bed with a terrible grating noise that made me want to stop up my ears and then disappeared into the curtains.
But I felt better to have him there with me.
At night I would reach behind me and run my fingers along the scars on the backs of my thighs.
They felt strange and twisted, and I had not seen them in the light of waking day.
One afternoon I stood in front of the uncanny mirror and lifted my skirt.
Craning my neck, I faced the fresh white lines.
I did not recognize the symbols, but they felt familiar somehow.
Maybe I should have felt horrified, but instead a strange pleasure pooled in my stomach. Renaud had etched a secret message, a brand of some kind, onto my body. It was a sign of possession and adoration. A talisman of what I had long felt—I was marked by Death.
Slowly things fell back into their normal routine.
Once I was recovered, I resumed my work in Renaud’s chambers.
I missed his attentive care but tried not to show it.
I waited for him to come to me, to show me some sign of love, to fuck me even, but he stayed at a respectful distance always.
As we had been. Even that seemed to be care from him—for if he’d pressed, I would have felt like a whore, when what I wanted, suddenly, was to feel like a bride.
Not because I longed to be his bride, but because I longed for the formality of such a relationship. I longed to be chosen in such a way.
So I waited. The summer heat began to build. I kept waiting.
One morning, Renaud left again.
I solemnly agreed to continue my studies. I promised not to enter his bedchamber. I assured him I would watch over the estate. Then I took a deep breath to shore up my courage and made a request.
“Can you deliver a message for me?”
He stilled and tilted his head. “To whom, ma petite chou?”
“My friend, Dacia. I want her to know I’m all right.” And to say goodbye.
There was a long pause, and something in me froze. Would he deny me this request?
But he did not. His expression softened and he plucked a leaf of parchment off his desk and handed it to me. “I don’t usually deliver such messages. But for you, of course.”
I swallowed my relief, taking the parchment and plucking the quill out of my ink.
Quickly, I scratched out a message, reassuring Dacia, telling her I was sorry and that I had been born cursed—that she needed to forget me.
I wanted to ask if the bandits had done anything to help her but hesitated and asked instead if any more girls had gone missing.
I had not yet worked up the courage to ask Renaud about the missing girls, but I did not know why.
I folded the parchment and handed it to him.
“Where do I find this Dacia?”
“She is a prostitute at the Blue Moon.”
He tucked the letter into his cloak and then kissed my forehead. He had been so tender with me since that night. I longed to reach out and beg him to stay. But I would not shame myself and kept my hands at my sides.
He left.
THE FIRST DAY PASSED SLOWLY WITHOUT HIM. I SPENT MOST of it in the garden, pulling weeds and touching all my herbs and reassuring myself that nothing would change. Thinking and planning for his return. But as each day passed, my anxiety increased.
When I was first in his home, I felt the distance between us as one would feel the distance between the self and a god.
In his realm I made myself as small and unobtrusive as possible.
But since returning, that distance felt—false, somehow.
Or maybe I only felt it more keenly and resented it.
I knew I was acting entitled and ungrateful—but perhaps I deserved to feel those things.
During a particularly warm afternoon I sat working on some cantrips in his quarters and found my eyelids drooping from the simmering heat.
I kept thinking of the keys, even in my sleep-addled mind.
Where did he keep them now? How would I earn them back?
I nearly hit my head on the desk, falling asleep.
Pushing up, I closed the book with a slam.
I could not keep on with these dry tomes that held no answers.
I had never dared to really explore inside the chateau, beyond what was assigned to me—but he’d cut me, bled me, and confessed over me—mourned me. And so I felt more entitled to my place. I had less fear of doing something to anger him.
Besides, there was no one here to see me but the quiet, heat-drenched stones.
I crossed the room to his bedchamber door.
I had glimpsed inside his private chambers a few times—when he was moving between the two rooms—and it seemed to me a regular bedchamber, if regular meant black walls and a bed and red silks.
I’d never really dared think of it before, but now it bothered me almost as much as the keys that I was not allowed into his sanctum.
That he guarded this so carefully. So possessively.
I bore his scars, the proof of my devotion carved in my very skin.
Did I not deserve that intimacy returned even a little?
The door was dark and heavy, and when I touched it, I was surprised to find it wrought of iron, only painted to look like wood and hung on fine hinges to seem light. I traced the lacquer and then, firmly, tried the knob.
It was locked.
Those damn keys. I cursed myself again for having lost them. Reckless and irritated, I leaned against the door, rubbing the anxious tension that crawled up my neck. Outside the window, the forest waited.
It had been weeks since I had been to the grove.
I’d avoided it since my return, not wanting to explain to Perchta what had happened.
Even with my legs covered, I was afraid she would know.
I was afraid the forest would recoil against his marks like it did from his chateau and his courtyard.
But looking into its cool, shadowy depths now, I decided I would steal to the grove.
I would return by night. And maybe me leaving would call him back to me early.
I stopped in my room to exchange my slippers and call for Schneid, but he did not come. I did not want to go through the forest by myself, but with no other choice, I slipped out, through my garden and the tiny stone gate that led to the forest.
Once under the bower of those dark trees, I expected it to be cooler, but it only felt more stifling, with less air and more eyes, and a heavy sense of sadness that pricked at my chest. I tried not to let it bother me, and instead thought of the grove and its hut, bringing them firmly to the front of my mind to lead the way.
The forest had donned its summer darkness, underbrush thicker and twisted in the time since I’d last walked there.
As I picked my way, I became suspicious that the forest was taking me on a route twice as long as normal.
I passed a rushing mountain waterfall cascading between boulders that I had certainly never seen.
The cool water spray was tempting, but I kept going—I was no longer a novice, and as long as I kept the grove in my mind, eventually the forest would surrender and deliver me there.
The heat pressed in on all sides, and the path wound through trees growing so tightly together that no sunshine reached the roots.
Branches laced and twined with one another; one tree tangled up into the other with a thick stillness dancing in the gaps and crevices.
I felt if I could look quickly enough, I’d spot some creature ready to catch me by the throat.
But I heard Perchta in my head, telling me to make friends.
Carefully, I touched one of the trees as I climbed over the roots and tried to reach out with my magic, but it felt strange and resistant.
The cuts on my legs burned faintly. I did not know if they were at fault, but it felt like a veil had dropped between me and the forest, and I could not find my way through.
Drained and wishing I’d just stayed at the chateau, I settled myself into the curve of a root and tipped my head to the thick overstory.
The wind sighed through the tops, and it seemed, after a moment, that we both took a long breath—the forest and me.