Page 145 of The Shadow Bride

No one answers. Michal and Dimitri agreed to wait near the water for as long as they could, yet I don’t see either one of them. And those shadows—my gaze snaps toward the orange tree above me—they seem longer than natural, darker, as the wind begins to blow harder. As the river starts to swell.

Dimitri and Michal have been here too long. If I don’t findthem soon, we could all be doomed. I glance around helplessly—until Michal’s arm snakes around my waist, dragging me behind the nearest tree. With a panicked cry, I nearly leap from my skin, but he claps a hand against my mouth. At my incredulous look, Dimitri whispers, “He’s here.”

And the entire garden explodes with darkness.

I clutch my head as pressure spikes through my skull and Death’s laughter rumbles around us—through the pitch-black, through my very bones—until I crash to my knees, unable to move. Unable tothink. Unable to see, hear, or evenfeelMichal and Dimitri, who might never have been here at all. Who might never have even existed—for who can exist in this deprivation, thisdearth?

Perhaps I cannot exist here either.

When Death speaks at last, I sense rather than hear him: “Who did you think I was, mon mariée?” And hisvoice—it feels like a hundred voices now, like a thousand, no longer filled with the warmth of humanity but cold and ancient and strange. Still familiar, however, as if the Death from our realm still exists within it, desperately clinging to existence. “Who am I but an absence? Who am I but the want of creation?”

No.I shake my head without a mouth to form the word, without a voice to speak it, and splitting pain cleaves through my being; the pressure is too much, too soon—

“I was the darkness in your sister’s casket.” Death constricts around me,suffocatingme, and I search blindly for Michal, for Dimitri, for anyone or anything with which to ground myself. There is nothing, however.Nothing, and now I am falling, my stomach swooping sickeningly. “I was the void in your mother’schest, the disappointment in your father’s. I am the hollow inside your sister. I am her sickness too, her hunger, and I am also your fear—and suchfearyou harbor, Célie. I have known and nourished you for so long.”

“I—I am not afraid of you.”

“Are yousure?” Death shifts with the words, and the darkness presses closer as a shape emerges at last—a long shape, a cold one, with a leering smile of white teeth and half her cheeks rotted, her hair like a cat-o’-nine-tails upon my skin. Slick with my blood, with her own fetid flesh.Filippa.And there is no Michal this time, no candles to light the way. There is only me—alone—and there is only Death, who wears the face of my every nightmare.

No.

Focus on just one sense, one detail.

The grass. I can still feel it beneath my knees, soft and warm from the eternal sunshine. It does not know this darkness; it tickles my fingers as I flex them into the earth, forcing myself to breathe, to expand my consciousness outward. The river. I can still hear it flowing. Salt. I can still taste it on my tongue.

It all means I am alive. Iexist, and— “I am not afraid of you.”

The words burst from me like a fire in the darkness, illuminating all those parts of myself I felt too ashamed to see—that Icanbe porcelain, and a martyr, and spoiled and soft and selfish too. That I can be incompetent. That time and time again, I have failed—both my loved ones andmyself—and will continue to do so often. I can be flighty and fickle, and I sometimes care too much when I shouldn’t—about society and its pressures, its rules, its people.

I am also loyal, however, and empathetic and curious and kind. My mind remains open and free of judgment. Despite everything,I have never hardened myself, even when threatened—even when scorned—because there is strength in my softness; there is courage in my vulnerability. I havenevergiven up. I have always seen the light in the darkness.

No.

All this time, I’ve been looking for someone else to lead me, to banish the darkness of my past, without realizing the darkness is part of me too. I cannot outrun it. I no longer want to, no longer need to—I am both the candle and the shadow it casts.

Iamthe light in the darkness.

And I am the darkness in the light.

Pushing to my feet, I stretch out my hands anew in search of Michal, and this time, I find him almost instantly. He has been here all along, searching for me too, shouting— “We need to go!Célie—” His hand catches mine, locking around it, and I drag him forward as Dimitri crashes into us with a curse.

“Fuck.What ishappening—” His limbs tangle with mine, but I seize him with my free hand, refusing to leave him behind. Instead I pelt through the flowers and force them to follow—crashing into a topiary, another—as the darkness begins to recede. Tomove. It sweeps ahead of us with the rising wind, and a shard of dread pierces my heart because—

Because he found it again—the way back, the tear in the veil. Because he isracingus, and if he gets to the door first, we will never defeat him.

Both Michal and Dimitri seem to realize it at the same time. “Keep going,” Michal says fiercely before lengthening his stride and pulling away from us,aheadof us, but even he cannot catch Death. That shard of dread twists deeper. What are we going todo?

The wind whips violently through my hair now—frantic, almost crazed—as the river rushes behind us in a fast, roaring torrent. “What if we don’t make it in time?” Dimitri asks desperately.

“I—I don’t know—”

Snarling, Dimitri tears an orange from a branch overhead and hurls it at Death’s shadow. He overshoots our momentum, however, and before I can do anything to stop it, the two of us tumble head over heels to the ground—and straight into Michal’s knees.

Though Dimitri and I flail in a tangle of limbs, Michal uses the collision to propel himself forward, launching back to his feet and diving toward Death. And from those fluttering ripples in the veil, Odessa’s garbled shout drifts toward us. “Célie, hurry!Hurry!”

But now Death is contracting, folding,squeezinginto himself—into the ripples—and Michal cannot stop him. Michal cannot even see the exit to pass through it.Iam the Bride of Death. Michal and Dimitri cannot return without me, so I leap, Islash—

I tear through the darkness like I would the veil, and it shudders in response.

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