Page 151 of The Shadow Bride

“If you’d asked me those questions a year ago, I would’ve said no.” I turn my cheek into his hand, and if any tension remainedin my body, it leaves me now.Is this what you want?Such a simple question should not have such a complicated answer, yet it does. Once upon a time, I wanted to be a dutiful daughter, then a wife. I wanted to be a huntsman—no, a huntswoman, the first of her kind. I envied witches; I coveted magic; and I longed to live within the pages of a fairy tale—to be the heroine vanquishing evil, the princess falling in love. Their stories seemed so preferable to my own. Their stories seemed so important.

I was forgotten by my parents.

I was abandoned by my sister.

Even my first love left me—as did my second, in his own unique way.

No. Perhaps what I really craved from those fairy tales had little to do with saving the world—with proving my worth, with leaving a mark—and everything to do with what came after. The happily ever after. Thehope.

Pressing a kiss to Michal’s palm, I murmur, “Death has a way of changing our perspective. Those things sounded so mundane, but now... now I do want to sit at that nursery window, and I want to sit at it withyou. I want to walk under that orange tree together—want to kiss you with pulp on our lips—and I want to listen to our families bicker. I want to laugh with my mother. I want to braid my sister’s hair. I want to watch Dimitri taste a chocolate éclair, and I want to drag you to Chateau le Blanc, where we can dance around the mayflower pole every spring. I never appreciated any of it before, but now...”

Michal seems to be holding his breath. “But now?”

I stand on my toes to kiss him—just the breath of a touch—before whispering, “Now I want it all, Michal. I wantyou.” Still, Iforce myself to acknowledge the city around us, the island, even Odessa, who stands a discreet distance away while pretending not to eavesdrop. “Unless—unless you’d prefer to go back to how we were? Odessa could still turn you.” I draw back to look at him—toreallylook at him, and to ensure he looks at me too. To ensure he hears this next part. “She could turn me too.”

He blinks, frowning slightly. “You would do that?”

“I would do anything for you.”

Atthosewords, however, a broad grin splits his face. As if unable to help it, he spins me toward the gangplank before drawing me back again, brushing my hair from my nape. He nips my skin playfully, his voice rough against my ear. “As much as I’ll miss biting you, Célie, there are an exceptional number of things we can do instead—things I’d much rather do, but things that’ll prove quite difficult while living with your mother and sister.”

“And Dimitri,” I add breathlessly, arching into him.

He kisses the spot he nipped, his tongue soothing the hurt, and I sink my teeth into my bottom lip to keep from gasping.God, I love him. I love him so much.

He chuckles under his breath. “I’d rather not hear my cousin’s name right now.”

“Fortunate, then, that my sister will kill him within the week.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He gazes past me toward the ship, where their raised voices already carry to us. Lou laughs loudly at whatever Filippa said. “I think there might be something there.”

I crane my neck to peer up at him through narrowed eyes. “And I stand by what I said—though if Filippa doesn’t kill him, my mother will kill them both. If we want any privacy at all, we’ll need to find our own place soon—” The words slip out before Ican stop them, but I cannot take them back either. My blush deepens. “I mean, if—if youwant—”

“Mademoiselle Tremblay,” Michal says with feigned outrage, spinning my hips around and pinning me against his hard body. Heat spikes through me, just as sharp and needy as before—better, even, because now we are free. “Are you...proposingto me?”

I lift my chin and scowl at him. “I am proposing you stop telling me about thoseexceptional number of thingsand start showing me instead, preferably somewhere far,faraway from listening ears.”

“Why?” He cocks a brow, his hands sliding around my back and hooking my corset strings. He pulls them tight. “Are you going to moan, pet? Are you going to scream?”

Leaning into his lips, I exhale softly. “Maybe I will.”

From somewhere behind us, Odessa sighs loudly. “I feel compelled to point outthisis not that place.” At the sound of her exasperated voice, I spring away from him, flushed from my head to my toes. Though I grin sheepishly, Michal grins without remorse—wide and unabashed and beautiful. He snakes an arm around my waist as Odessa prods him in the back. “Get off my isle, cousin.” To me, she adds, “I shall see you again at Yule, but—public displays of affection notwithstanding—you’re both welcome here anytime. My home will always be open to you.”

Home.

Warmth spreads through my chest at the word, like the first rays of dawn after a long night.

“Thank you, Odessa.” I place a kiss upon her cheek, infusing every ounce of my incandescent happiness into that kiss. Every ounce of my eternal gratitude. “For everything. I wouldn’t have survived Requiem without you.”

“Yes, you would’ve.” Smiling, she inclines her chin toward the ship. “Now go forth. Your family is waiting for you.”

I take Michal’s hand, and together, we stride across the gangplank to the ship. Waves lap upon the keel, and the wind picks up in anticipation as we join that family; it tousles our hair and caresses our cheeks. Though the island remains shrouded in shadow, I can almost see the sunlight on the horizon, waiting for us.Lifeis waiting for us.

And I am not alone.

Epilogue

Yuletide dawns cold and silver-white this year, and my mother insists on hosting all the festivities—though to her, of course, we’re simply celebrating Christmas three days early. “You missed a spot, young man,” she says now to Reid, pointing her sharp finger at the very top of the tree. “Just there.”

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