Page 157 of The Scarlet Veil

Talon.

I smile—because I know, in this moment, my strength has never been like the others’. I am not cunning or fearless like Lou, nor am I strategic or disciplined like the Chasseurs. No. I am Célie Tremblay, Bride of Death, and my strength has always and will always be in my loved ones. Myfriends.

Talon swoops dangerously low, locking eyes with me, before soaring upward once more.

My elbow threatens to buckle in relief, and I hurl the witchlight toward Frederic when he too glances up. It collides with the glass in an earsplitting shriek. If he realizes Lou is on her way, he’ll kill me even faster. That cannot happen. Picking up the witchlight, I smash it against the glass again—and again, and again, until Frederic exhales slowly, forcing another smile. “I allowed you to keep that witchlight as a kindness,” he says with obvious effort to return to civility. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“Pippa knew you were a witch?” I ask, desperate to hold his attention.

“She learned in time. Magic fascinated her.”

With one last, fervent look at his beloved, he collects his bowl and knife, rounding her coffin with purpose now. Clearly, the time for talk is over, but if I let this conversation die, all signs point to me dying with it—especially with that knife in his hand. It glints crooked and sinister in the witchlight, goading me into speech. Because I refuse to go quietly. I refuse to let my friends die as collateral damage. “You asked her to run away with you.”

“Of course I did.” Though it isn’t a question, he answers it regardless. And he’llkeepanswering me, I realize, if we keep talking about Filippa. With that horrible, avid light in his eyes, he seems unable to help himself. I just need to stall. I just need to distract him until Lou arrives. “And she agreed. If not for you and your father, much could’ve been different today. Who knows? Perhaps we would even now be lighting a candle and preparing for Mass on All Saints’ Day, hand in hand with Filippa and Reid.” He draws to a halt between our two coffins. “It no longer matters what could’ve been, however. Soon, all will be as it was before.” Motioning toward Filippa’s stitched face, he says, “As you can see, even Morgane’s damage has been undone, and in mere moments, Pippa will wake. She’ll breathe and walk and live again, and the three of us will be together once more.”

Three?

Unbidden, my gaze flashes to my other side, where I expect to see Babette’s little sister, Sylvie, in a third glass coffin. Nothing is there, however. Just empty air and dark sea. Perhaps he still cloaksher in invisibility.Herbody wasn’t necessary to lure me here, after all, yet if Frederic is about to start the ritual, shouldn’t someone prepare her body too? Babette risked everything to help him.

“Don’t you mean the four of us?” I ask. “WhereisSylvie, anyway?”

The water ripples slightly behind him. “I couldn’t care less about Babette and her sister. Meeting her was a boon, yes—and sharing a common purpose—but as I said before, the spell doesn’t clarify how much of your blood Filippa will need. She gets every drop.”

“But Sylvie—”

“—is not my wife or child, and therefore not my responsibility.”

The words—spoken so simply—are more paralyzing than any injection of hemlock. I blink, convinced I misheard, before my eyes dart past him to Filippa. Though the plane of her belly still stretches flat and smooth, her hands lie clasped gently upon it, like she cradles a—a— “Oh my God.”

Though my mind instantly rejects the possibility, horror grows claws in my own belly, shrieking and scrabbling up my chest, my throat, leaving cruel understanding in its wake. The rendezvous, the note, the elopement—

The three of us will be together forever.

Thethreeof us.

Frederic, Filippa, and—

“Frostine,” Frederic says in a strained voice, reaching out to graze Filippa’s fingertips. The knife in his hand reflects her pale face. “It’s a horrid name for a little girl, but I could never deny yoursister. Though I suggested Snow as an alternative, she’d already set her heart on little Frost.”

It looks like Frost tonight.

“She—she would’ve told me. If Pip was having a baby, I would have known.”

“She wouldn’t have left you for any other reason.” He entwines his fingers with hers then, as if they aren’t cold and limp in his grasp. His mouth twists into a sad smile. “But Frost quickly became our entire world. She meant everything to us. The day your sister found out, she—she walked a mile in the snow to tell me.” His grip tightens, and Pippa’s fingers crack and bend within it. Gnarled now. “We were going to be a family.”

The word rattles through my mind like the tail of a cornered and angry serpent. Family, family,family.

They were going to be a family.

And my sister... she was going to be a mother.

Pressure builds behind my eyes at the revelation. Inside my heart. When shouts erupt from the shore of Michal’s room—when a raven shrieks—the sounds echo as if through a long tunnel, and all I can see is Filippa and her clasped hands. She never told Frederic about her ice palace. Perhaps she tried to forget it as the years passed, as her circumstances changed and her resentment grew, but she could never quite crush the white petals beneath her boot. A tear trickles into my hair. She finally found her summer prince, but instead of dancing in a snowdrop garden, she and her child were buried in it. Another tear falls.

“If it helps”—Frederic tracks the tear down my cheek, transfixed, and he somehow reachesthroughthe glass to wipe it away—“I can tell her of your sacrifice. She might even mourn you.”

From across the cavern, Lou’s fierce voice rises above the rest, and the strange moment between us shatters.

Frederic’s wistful expression vanishes at the sound, and I flinch, crying out, as he jerks the knife upward, cutting the ribbon from my throat. “Perhaps we’ll even give our daughter yours as a middle name,” he says fervently. “It has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it? Frostine Célie?”

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