Page 36 of The Shadow Bride

Michal should be here by now. My panic spikes at the thought of why he hasn’t found me, but I ignore it. I just need to locate him, and together, the two of us will find a way to handle the revenants. We’ll deal with my sister too, perhaps bring her to Requiem for—for some kind of treatment. SurelyHow to Commune with the Deadwill hold answers, or else Odessa will, or even—

My eyes fall to where the grimoire lies beside the man.

I saw the spell once in my aunt’s grimoire, Coco said. When I asked her about it, she shooed me from her tent and forbade me from speaking of it. I think it was the only spell she ever feared.

A spell from that evil little book started all of this. Perhaps it holds the remedy too. Slowly, silently, I ease two fingers from the trellis, refusing to blink as the man continues his work at Frederic’s throat, intent and distracted. I might not get another opportunity like this one. If he leaves with the grimoire, we might not ever see it again. I can survive the burn of my sister’s cross; I can snatch up the grimoire before he plunges the silver into my chest.

I lift a third and fourth finger from the trellis, a fifth and sixth, holding my breath.

“A valiant effort.” Without looking at me, the man pockets the last of Frederic’s blood—along with the grimoire—before rising with a darkly satisfied smile. “But you’re far too clever to provoke me.”

“Who are you?”

“As if you don’t know.” Gesturing down his powerful body with a dismissive wave of his hand, he adds, “Though this part is rather new. Do you like it?”

A sense of paralysis seems to overwhelm me at the question. “I—I don’t—”

“That’s because you aren’t giving me a proper look.” He stalks closer, suddenly impatient, and lifts my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Go on, then. Drink your fill. I can wait.”

Roses snarl in my hair as I jerk away—because his words are too casual, too careless, to match the sheer violence in his wake. It frightens me. “Whoareyou?”

“Don’t play coy, mon mariée.”

His eyes bore into mine. At his feet, the grass has started to shrivel, his presence creeping outward across the entire garden. A bird falls dead from the tree beside us, and my body—it feelsstrange too. An awareness presses against my skin, raising the hair on my nape.

Mon mariée.

“No.” I shake my head instinctively at the words, holding tighter to the trellis—nearly leaping from my skin when the wood cracks beneath my fingers.

Mila told me I’d been touched by Death, yes, but she hadn’t meantliterally.

She meant it as a metaphor, an explanation for my affinity with the ghoulish and the ghastly after surviving Morgane’s torture—unwanted yet useful, especially during Frederic’s twisted experiments last month. He broke the very foundation of magic when he began tampering with life and death, and—and—He broke the very foundation of magic.

In sheer desperation, I contort myself around him, darting beneath his arm and trailing dead roses in my wake.

“That isn’t possible.” I lift my hands placatingly as he turns to follow me, grinning again. The priests of my childhood never taught about Death—not as an entity, a deity in its own right. There was only God, and angels, and demons, sometimes even the Devil, but never Death. “You aren’t— You can’t be—” At the last, my voice turns decidedly pleading because—because Death cannot have a body. Death cannot be standing in this garden with mercurial gray eyes and dark windswept hair, and he certainly cannot have adimple.

He called me his Bride.

Oh God.

As if he senses the direction of my thoughts, his grin widens, and his eyes seem to... swirl, somehow, like liquid silver. Hebrushes his hair away from them in a deceptively human gesture. Most would call the strands black, but they’re deeper than my own, almost blue like a raven’s wing.

“Youdolike,” he says shrewdly. “How interesting.”

Still backing away from him, I nearly trip over Frederic’s corpse. “H-How are you here?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” He nudges Frederic with his foot, and even though I despised Frederic—even though he deserved much worse than a quick and simple death—nausea rises at the sight of a boot on his cheek. At the smear of dirt it leaves behind. “This disgusting little insect upset the balance. He tore a hole through the veil when he stole Filippa from me—a permanent one this time. Not like the little cuts you leave behind.” Death presses harder with his foot, his eyes flicking to mine. “I detest nothing more than a thief, but you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? Vampires are the greatest thieves of all.”

Exhaling a harsh breath, I stumble to a halt and force myself to square my shoulders, to extend my hand. “Just give me the grimoire and I’ll be on my way. I’ll even”—I nearly choke on the words—“dispose of Frederic’s body for you. The Chasseurs will never need to know what happened here. They’ll never need to know aboutyou, which means you’ll be free to—to leave this place and forget all about us.”

Please leave this place and forget all about us.

“A tempting offer”—tilting his head, Death listens to something I cannot hear—“but your merry band of men sounds a bit preoccupied at the moment. Something about vengeance and vampires and tits for tats.” At that, my stomach plummets to somewhere between my feet, and I strain to hear beyond the garden. Death’spresence seems to have silenced our immediate surroundings—as if all fauna fled with the wind, or died like the bird—but to the east...

Those could be shouts.

Chasseur Tower is to the east. The harbor too, which means...

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