Page 1 of The Shadow Bride

Part One

Chat échaudé craint l’eau froide.

Once bitten, twice shy.

Chapter One

Reflection

The simple chime of a music box is all that fills the silence.

I watch the trinket from across the bedroom, figurines turning in a mechanical dance, their painted wings sparkling in the glow of a single candle. Reid lit the taper earlier this evening while I feigned sleep. At dusk, Lou tiptoed across the floorboards to draw back the curtains, hoping to let in the moonlight, but storm clouds obscured the night sky and shadows crept through my window instead. They swathe me like a cloak as the fairies dance in their halo of light.

“Are you all right, Célie?” Mila whispers from the chair by the bed.

After the grotto, she found a tear in the veil near Saint-Cécile, slipping through it to linger near me in the realm of the living. Though she speaks very little—and asks me to speak even less—I cannot decide whether I appreciate it or not. I cannot decide whether I want her here at all.

“I’m fine,” I whisper back.

And the fairies continue their dance.

Lou and Reid brought the music box from my room in Chasseur Tower, along with all my other worldly possessions: beeswax candles and bottles of rose perfume, paste jewels and storybooks with cracked spines. An emerald-green quilt across my bed. Astanding gilt mirror in the corner. The filmy, ridiculous nightgown I currently wear.

They meant to help by filling their home with my things.

They meant to remind me that I’m still Célie Tremblay.

They couldn’t have known I once coveted the fairies on this music box as much as I loved them. I longed to steal their wings and fly to their realm, to enchant wild creatures and court my own fairy prince. My nursemaid, Evangeline, gave me the box for my eighth birthday, and for an entire fortnight, I spoke of little else until Filippa—irritated—snatched the music box from my nightstand and smashed it to pieces.

She regretted it instantly, of course, and glued the fairies back together as best she could. I never noticed the newfound cracks in their smiles. Perhaps I was too young then—too busy dreaming of grand, sweeping adventures and heart-stopping romance—or perhaps I simply didn’t pay attention. I stare at those cracks now, quietly hating them.

I have dreamed so many foolish things.

Turning away, I sigh heavily before inhaling once more—an instinctive reaction, one that fills my body with air it no longer needs.Mistake.My stomach constricts at the sudden influx of scent, and fresh saliva floods my mouth. My head pounds. My gums throb. Though I close my eyes against the nausea, the darkness of my eyelids shifts in a sickening kaleidoscope of color, pounding in unison with the heartbeats in the living room. Two of them. My fists curl even as my teeth begin to lengthen, and the saliva continues to flow. My throat contracts without permission, and for just a second, my gaze flicks to the bedroom door. Everything stills to a knifepoint.

Lou and Reid move just beyond it.

I can hear them in the kitchen preparing dinner—the gentle clink of cutlery, the occasional brush of their shoulders as they pass each other. Lou’s heartbeat accelerates slightly when Reid brushes a kiss against her temple. He chuckles when she swats his backside in turn. They’re wholly absorbed in each other.

Wholly distracted.

They won’t notice you, a familiar voice whispers in the back of my mind.Not until it’s too late.

And it’s true. Though I close my eyes, I can almost see the blood pumping through their bodies now, and I can imagine how it would taste—thick and rich and hot on my tongue,decadent, like a feast of kings. Mila wouldn’t stop me. We spent my last moments together, and though she hasn’t mentioned it, I know she feels partly responsible for my fate. Perhaps if she’d somehowforcedme through that wretched golden light, none of this would’ve happened, but she told me to choose instead.

She said if I didn’t, I’d lose my choice forever.

Ironic, that.

I swallow hard. No, Mila wouldn’t stop me—couldn’t stop me—but would Odessa? Tilting my head, I listen to her flick each page of her book as she pointedly ignores the sickly sweet humans. “They make my teeth ache,” she said yesterday before fixing me with her signature piercing stare. “When can we go home?”

Home.

To her, that means Requiem. Michal sent her here to watch over me, toguideme, but she never intended to stay in Cesarine. Deep down, I know Michal never intended it either. The last words he spoke to me still haunt my dreams—or they would if I ever slept.

Please stay.

He doesn’t know I heard him. I shouldn’t have heard him—not as my heart stopped beating—but I did. I heard him, and I can’tunhearhim. He begged me to stay, yet where is he now? Why didn’t he insist I remain with him on Requiem? And if not there, why hasn’t he joined mehere, in this miserable room, to help me through transition instead of Odessa? The questions sicken me—they’re ridiculous, pointless, the least of my problems—yet I cannot seem to let them go. To lethimgo. With little else to distract me from this scarlet haze, Michal has spread like a poison across my skin, and I cannot stop scratching at him.

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