Rachelle patted her back awkwardly. They’d known each other for over two years, but it still felt wrong for this cheerful, purely human girl to embrace her so easily.
“Sit down,” said Amélie, shoving her into a chair. “You’re just in time.”
Rachelle looked down at the bowl Amélie had been stirring. It was full of white paste. “Bismuth?” she asked.
Amélie made a face. “With chalk mixed in. It’s too expensive otherwise, to use for practice. Just a moment, and I’ll get my other brushes.” She whirled away.
Rachelle’s stomach tightened. “Now? I don’t—”
“You’re not in the middle of hunting, are you? The King hasn’t dispatched you on a desperate quest? Then you can sit here for ten minutes and let me practice painting your face.” With a clatter, Amélie set down a tray filled with brushes and little pots. She seized Rachelle’s head by the temples and adjusted the angle. “There. Don’t move.”
Two years ago, Rachelle had saved Amélie from the woodspawn that killed her father. Another girl would have considered herself in debt and paid it off long ago. Amélie had simply decided that they were going to be friends, and kept insisting it no matter what anyone said.
Every time Rachelle visited, she always thought, I should never come back. It felt like a betrayal to let someone so innocent like her. And it would surely be the ruin of Amélie someday; the way people were turning against the bloodbound, anyone known to be friends with them would be in trouble soon. But she had never been able to stay away, because of what Amélie was doing now. She laid three fingers against Rachelle’s forehead to steady her and, biting her lip, began to spread the white paint over her face in swift, sure little strokes.
Nobody touched Rachelle like this. Not since she became a bloodbound. Nobody touched her without trying to fight her, seduce her, or drag her somewhere. Nobody but Amélie.
She thought, I am never going to see her again.
If she found Joyeuse, she would fight the Devourer when he returned, and it didn’t seem likely she’d survive killing her master. If she couldn’t find it—
She would still fight. And she would certainly die.
“Look up at the ceiling,” said Amélie, and the brush tickled under Rachelle’s eyes.
Amélie would die too. If the sun and moon were gone, if the forestborn hunted men through the woods like foxes hunting rabbits—Amélie would never lose her gentleness fast enough to become somebody who could survive in that world.
So Rachelle could not fail.
“I’m going to Château de Lune in three days,” she said.
“Lucky.” Amélie sighed.
“I’m not going there to dance at the parties,” said Rachelle. “I’m going as a bodyguard.”
“For whom?” asked Amélie. Her tongue peeked out between her lips as it always did when she was painting a particularly tricky bit of Rachelle’s face.
Rachelle shrugged, embararssed for reasons she couldn’t fathom. “Armand Vareilles,” she mumbled.
Amélie’s brush stopped moving. She stared at her a moment, then let out a wild snort of laughter.
“What?” Rachelle demanded.
Amélie rolled her eyes. “You’re to guard the living martyr himself. And you say, ‘Oh, Armand Vareilles,’ as if he were last week’s laundry.”
“I’d rather guard the laundry,” Rachelle muttered.
Amélie’s forehead creased slightly. “Why?”
He’s an arrogant fraud, Rachelle nearly said, but she didn’t know how Amélie felt about Armand Vareilles. They had never discussed him—or Bishop Guillaume, or the unrest in the city, or anything that had to do with what it meant for Rachelle to be bloodbound.
“Every time I turn around, there are people bowing at his feet,” she said finally. “It’s very inconvenient.”
With another strange lurch of embarrassment, she remembered Armand’s face as he said, I’d rather burn.
“Hm,” said Amélie, leaning forward again. Her brush made tiny, feather-light strokes over Rachelle’s face. Then she sat back and studied her, pursing her lips. “Done,” she said finally.
“Anyway,” said Rachelle, “I don’t know when I’ll see you again, so—”
“I’m coming with you,” said Amélie.
“What?” Rachelle stared at her.
“I’m coming with you.” Amélie grinned. “You don’t get to look in the mirror till you say yes.”
“I don’t care about the mirror,” said Rachelle. “But what do you think you’ll do at the Château? You aren’t a bodyguard.”
“And you are, but you know you’ll still have to dance,” said Amélie. “Or at least stand in a corner at one of those grand parties, and that means you’ll have to wear a pretty dress, and you know you’ll look ridiculous if you don’t have someone apply cosmetics and do it well, and you couldn’t hire someone good if your life depended on it, so I, because I am your loyal friend, will help you.”
She crossed her arms and nodded. Rachelle was about to tell her that no bodyguard who hoped to be effective would ever wear an elaborate court gown—but then she realized there was a nervous edge to Amélie’s grin. And she couldn’t bear to shatter it.