Page 115 of The Shadow Bride

Before I can move, however, my mother seizes my arm as Filippa turns at last, and a legion of revenants follow. They descend from the trees on silent feet, their faces eerie and empty—those who have faces at all. The flesh has rotted from at least a dozen, and their bones flash pale and bright in the moonlight.Oh God.It is my sister’s cruel smile, however, that shoots a bolt of ice down my spine.

“Hello, Célie,” she says, tilting her head curiously between us. “Maman.”

Eyes round with horror, our mother stares at Filippa like she would a ghost, lingering on her no longer familiar features: the thick row of stitches, the mismatched brows and irises. The bloodless skin and the long black hair that shines so incongruouslyagainst the rest of her. Still smiling, Filippa extends her arms beneath my mother’s gaze as if relishing her shock. Her fear. “How long has it been since the funeral? More than a year, yes?” If possible, her smile stretches wider. It pulls her stitches too tight. “Have you missed me?”

Death curses again, and the cottage—it shudders, the chimney caving in on itself. Though I strain for any sound of Michal’s footsteps, I cannot hear him, and that silence echoes in my head as the toll of a funeral march. I twist out of my mother’s grip, but Filippa blocks my path as smoothly as any vampire. “If you enter, little sister,” she says simply, “you will not come back out again.”

As if to prove her point, wood splinters deep within the cottage, and an entire wall disintegrates. Michal is still in there, however; Michal still needs help. Stepping toe to toe with my sister, I snarl, “Move, Filippa. I do not want to fight you.”

Her smile hardens as the revenants shift with restless excitement. “Mydarlinglittle sister, always in precisely the wrong place at the wrong time.” She twirls her silver cross idly between her fingers as a sliver of moonlight pierces the clouds overhead. It plays strangely upon her face, casting her hewn features in sharp relief, deepening the hollows beneath her eyes and elongating the shadows of her cheeks. When our mother takes an involuntary step backward, satisfaction glows like hot coals in Filippa’s gaze. “You are running out of chances, ma belle, and I am running out of patience.”

I have little time for theatrics, however, and my sister hisses as I shove past her, catching my elbow and sinking her fingers deep into my flesh. “Do it again,” she says. “I dare you.”

Slowly, I look down at the blood trickling from my arm.

“Filippa,Célie.” Our mother pushes between us as my teeth extend, but her hands still tremble as she lifts one to each of us in supplication. Her lips pale. Her heartbeat deafening. “Enough of this, both of you. Please, I—I forbid you to fight one another. Not after I just—not afterwejust...” Her fingers stretch outward to cup Filippa’s cheek, and her wide eyes rove every inch of Filippa’s new face. “You’re here,” she breathes.

Filippa’s face twists in disgust—her stitches stretching,pulling—as she forces our mother’s hand to her chest instead, forces to feel her icy skin, her dead heart. “Well? What do you think of my skin now, Maman? Do you rejoice, knowing your daughters will remain forever young? Or do you weep because they’ve been touched by the Devil?”

Our mother blinks at the pure venom in her voice, and at last, she seems to see beyond her daughter to the woman beneath—to the depravity, to therage, to the wounds that cut so much deeper than we ever noticed.

Filippa doesn’t stop there, however. No. She moves our mother’s hand to her dead womb instead, saying, “I will succeed where you failed. My daughter will never question my love, my affection, and I willneverforce her to watch as I submit to my circumstances, as I succumb to them rather than teaching her how to think, how to speak, how tostand.”

Our mother recoils in shock—in horror—staring at Filippa’s belly.

“Tell me,” Filippa says, her voice softening dangerously, “what did you do when you discovered Pére’s infidelity? When he squandered your dowry to pay for his whore and to cover his debts—when he squanderedourdowry next? Did you ever want tostrike at him? Did you ever evenconsiderit?”

Though our mother tries to pull her hand away, Filippa will not allow it. And Filippa is so much stronger than her now. “You—you ask the impossible, daughter,” she says feebly. “You always have. If I had left your father, I never would’ve seen you again—”

“Do not pretend your cowardice had anything to do with us. Do not pretend you cared to see your children at all. You wereweak, Maman, and I amnothinglike you.”

Maman rocks backward with an anguished sound, and I tear Filippa’s hand away from her wrist. “You’ve crossed a line,” I tell her, but truthfully, she crossed it ages ago. Though our mother has never been perfect, she doesn’t deserve this cruelty. “Now get out of our way before I cross one too.”

“No, Célie, no.” Tears spilling freely down her cheeks, our mother shakes her head and clutches my arm as another wall of the cottage subsides. My stomach lurches.Michal.“This is not your sister’s fault, and it is not yours either. It is mine,allmine, and I am so”—she wipes at her face, trying to square her shoulders, to straighten beneath Filippa’s withering glare—“so terribly sorry for the pain I’ve caused you both. Your sister is right, darling,” she says to me. “I have been a coward.Worsethan a coward. I have been blessed with two extraordinary children, and I have never been the mother they needed. The mother they deserved. I have—failed them at each turn.”

At that, Filippa blinks, and Maman seizes her advantage, lifting a tentative hand to her cheek once more. “But how could you think I would ever weep?” Her eyes sweep across her daughter’s face, but no disgust stirs within them. With a start, I realize it never did. “How could this be the work of the Devil when I prayedfor it? Foryou? God gave my daughters back to me, Filippa.” She tears her gaze away to look at me now, and Filippa blinks again. She swallows hard, staring at our mother’s profile with that same searing heat, this time as if committing it to memory. “He gave you both back to me, and I will not waste my second chance.”

And though my sister does not acknowledge the declaration, perhaps cannot, she does look slightly—affectedby it. As the words wash over her, her expression seems to shift, a subtle softening around the mouth and eyes. When she realizes I’m watching her, however, it hardens all over again, and I wonder if I imagined the whole thing.

“And neither will I.” She steps backward, between two revenants—so similar to them, yet so different. “Whether you like it or not, Célie, the veiliscoming down, and if you stand in my way again, I will drive this silver cross through your heart.”

Though our mother gasps, I’ve had enough. I seize the necklace at her throat—wrap my hand directly around the cross—and wrench her closer as red-hot pain blisters my palm. “Wake up, Filippa. Your unborn daughter isn’t the only person you’ve ever loved.”

“And what of the man you love?” Another small, cruel smile plays across her lips. “Even if he survives Death, he’ll never surviveyou.”

I rip the necklace from her throat, dropping it at my feet.

“Get out of my way,” I tell my sister quietly.

“No,” she says.

And the stakes—they’ve become too high, too precious. Neither of us can stop. The lines have been drawn, and when Death laughs a moment later—a high, cruel laugh, followed by Michal’sroar of pain—I know which side I am on. Reacting instinctively, I move too quickly for Filippa to follow, too quickly for the revenants too, and I dive across the abyss into the cottage.

Smoke smothers my senses as I crouch in the kitchen, holding my breath and lifting an arm to shield my face against the heat. My eyes burn. My hem catches on the edge of a broken floorboard, but I tear the fabric away and leap over a pit where the hearth has exploded. Mathilde’s cauldron lies cracked on its side, her mantel half torn from the wall and her animal skulls crushed, scattered down the hall.

Burning. All of it burning.

Worse still, the planks underfoot seem to be—shifting,folding, the walls too. Deep cracks fracture the ceiling as it compresses inward like an accordion.Magic, I realize in horror. Mathilde’s houseismagic, and right now, it appears to be eating itself. Even as I think it, her cast-iron bathtub barrels toward me—I duck swiftly—crashing down the hall to the sitting room, which seems to be the mouth of the spell. It sucks everything inside, and I follow with a lethal sense of purpose, bursting across the threshold to find—

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