Page 159 of The Scarlet Veil

I drift closer, unnerved, and lift a tentative hand to my throat, fingers gliding with sickening ease across wet skin. Still no pain comes, however, even as I trace the jagged line where my flesh parts. Frederic wasn’t neat in his attack. He wasn’t clean. With one hand, he now lifts my sister’s head, and with the other, he tips my blood into her mouth. “Mila,” I breathe, unable to tear my gaze away, “why isn’t it cold here any longer?”

She slips her arm around my shoulders, and a creeping sense of dread lifts the hair at my neck. Her arm feels solid.Warm.“Youdon’t need to watch this. You need to prepare.”

“Prepare forwhat?”

“Death,” she says sadly, nodding toward my broken body.

In my periphery, the golden light continues to shine, and if I strain, I can just make out gentle laughter. Except I don’t hear it. Ifeelit. It settles within my very skin, but I ignore it, staring at Mila incredulously.

“But I can’t— I’m not—No.” Wrenching away from her, shaking my head, I dart toward the islet and my body, toward Frederic and Filippa and Michal, who struggles to rise to his knees. “I can’t bedead. I’mright there.” I whirl to face her when she joins me, jabbing a finger at my chest. The blood at my throat spurts in gruesome time with my pulse. “Look—I’m still breathing. I’m notdying.”

She brushes the hair from my body’s face with heartbreaking affection. A tear trickles down her nose. “I’m sorry, Célie. It’s too late. You wouldn’t be here otherwise, and you won’t be able to stay long—not unless you choose to stay forever.”

Not unless you choose to stay forever.

At her words, the golden light seems to dim slightly.

Forever.

“No.” I repeat the word over and over again, refusing to hear any more. Refusing to acknowledge thatwretchedgolden light. My friends have almost reached the islet now, and they—they’ll fix this. Lou and Coco will fix everything, and Jean Luc and Reid will deal with Frederic. Michal or Odessa will give their blood to heal me, and—and everything will be fine again.Everything will be fine.

“It might not be so bad,” Mila says tentatively, “if you do choose to stay. I’m here, after all—Guinevere is here—and your friendsare all human. They would join us soon enough.”

Determined, I thrust myself back toward the veil, but I can no longer feel it there. The pressure in my head has vanished, so I fling myself upon my body instead, slipping into it and searching for purchase. I find none. Despair rises through me like the tide around the islet, and I try again, and again, nearly screaming in frustration now.I cannot be dying. I cannot be dead.I burst upward in a rush of tears as the golden light grows weaker. “I can’t stay here, Mila.Please, I can’t leave my friends, mysister—”

Odessa hurtles past us in a blur then, stealing my plea and knocking the half-empty bowl from Frederic’s hands. My blood splatters in each direction as she seizes his shoulders, launches him through the air. He lands hard upon the ground, but Odessa descends just as swiftly, clamping her fingers around his throat. His eyes bulge.

For one glorious second, it looks like she might end this. Like she might kill him before he can hurt anyone else.

Before she can snap his neck, however, Dimitri tackles her to the ground.

Oh God.I dart toward them, frantic, because my blood—it’s everywhere, and it’s fresh. It sprays the stone scarlet, coats the side of Frederic’s body, even runs in rivulets toward the sea.Oh God oh God oh God.

For anyone else, this scene would be straight from a nightmare. For Dimitri, this scene is straight from Hell.

“What are you doing?” Hissing, Odessa grapples with him, but her brother’s eyes have shifted into something feral and wild. “Dimitri! Stop it! Please,stop, and let me go—”

“He still has the grimoire,” Dimitri snarls, beyond reason.

I watch them struggle with maddening helplessness. I never would’ve anticipated this—that Dimitri could attack his own sibling, his owntwin, but bloodlust proves stronger than even family, it seems. Without hesitation, he flings his sister into the sea, where she hits the water with a tremendous crash.

“Odessa!”

Though she can’t hear my cry, I still wring my hands and streak after her—then turn abruptly to streak toward Frederic instead. Because I need to do something. I need tohelpsomehow, but when I leap at him, my body passes straight through his.

Like I no longer exist at all.

Hopeless now, I look back to my body, which grows paler with every second. As if in emphasis, the golden light dims in unison with my failing heartbeat.I’m running out of time.Worse still—I can do nothing to stop it. Nothing to slow it down, nothing to heal the wound at my throat, and nothing to stanch its bleeding. Nothing to save my friends.

“If you kill me”—Frederic bares his teeth at Dimitri, who lifts him into the air by his collar—“you’ll never find it.”

The grimoire.

If not for that evil little book, none of this would have happened. If only I’d snatched it from Father Achille when I had the chance, if only I hadn’t dropped it in Les Abysses—

“Where is it, Célie?” Mila asks urgently. “Where did he hide it?”

“I don’t know!” I wring my hands again, stifling tears. “He—he used his blood to turn it invisible, but I didn’t see where he—”

---