Page 59 of The Shadow Bride

That sob climbs higher in my throat.

“Ahh, submissive too! Be still my cold, dead heart.” Léandre’s wistful sigh belies the evil gleam in his eyes. He reminds me of the vampires in the aviary—beautiful and elegant as they discussed how best to split my body between the four of them. I am no longer human, however, and my body no longer trembles with fear. Now it trembles with rage—a rage so potent, so vitriolic, that when Odessa glances in our direction, still surrounded by guards and revelers, I meet her gaze headlong.Let her see me, I think savagely.Let her see what is to come.

Her brow furrows slightly at my expression. A flicker of unease.

Good.

“Oh, sweetling.” Pursing his lips in concern, Léandre wipes the tears from where they spill down my cheeks. “Oh, you poor wretched thing. You will need protection if you mean to stay in Requiem.”

“She has it.” Baring her teeth in a fierce grin, Lou lifts her hands, and the nearest of Léandre’s friends wince and draw back from the light sparking at her fingertips. Though I see the tension in her shoulders—the great effort it takes to remain motionless, upright—the others do not.Still no blood.“I suggest you let her go now, Leopold, and we part ways as unlikely friends.”

His head twitches in irritation. “Léandre.”

“Not an improvement,” Lou assures him.

Dead! Dead!

The king is dead!

The words still ring through the air like a war cry, and perhaps they are; this was a coup, after all—a triumphant one—and all over the isle, its citizens will be flooding the streets to fight or to feast or to mourn because their king is dead.Michal is dead.

I act without thinking. I act before Lou or Léandre even realizes I’ve moved, snapping his wrist and relishing the gruesomecrackof his bones between my palms. Surprise flares briefly with it—because that was easy, too easy—and Léandre releases me with a howl of rage. As if I’ve left my body completely, I feel myself move around him, slipping between two of his friends—

One of them seizes my collar, myneck, and pain erupts down my spine as she wrenches me backward. Cursing viciously, Lou leaps to incinerate her arm, but Odessa materializes quicker than both, her expression blazing at the chaos unfolding in her court. “Let her go,” she says sharply to my captor, a woman with flaming-red hair who glances to Léandre for permission instead. Odessa’s eyes narrow.

Ignoring her, he flashes a savage smile in my direction. “You’ll regret that, sweetling.”

I lift my chin and glare back at him.

“Enough, all of you.” Odessa pushes past us into the center of the circle. Though Pasha and Ivan both move to follow, bodily removing Léandre, she halts them with a curt hand. “You seem to have conflated my empathy for your plight with Michal as permission to do as you please. This could not be further from the truth.”

“Couldn’t it?” Though Léandre bares his fangs, he doesn’t dareattack her with a horde of sentries at her back. Instead he glares at me with unconcealed rage and longing. “Are you not still protecting her, just as your cousin before you?”

“This has nothing to do with Célie,” Odessa says in an impatient voice, “and everything to do with her master. Do try tothink, Léandre, won’t you? She is a Bride of Death. It would be foolish in the extreme to provoke him by attacking her.” She seizes the flame-haired vampire by the shoulder, adding, “And if you continue to ignore me, Violette darling, I will pry this arm from its socket and use it to flay you in the street during my procession. Do we understand each other?” Her grip on Violette’s arm tightens, and slowly, grudgingly, Violette releases my neck. “Good. Very good. Now—”

Throwing a disgusted look around the room, she walksupthe cage in the next second, ascending over the mob to stand tall and proud before them on top of the iron bars. Somehow more vampires have joined the fray; they spill out into the corridor, wind through the guards, yet all of them—allof them, even the oldest, the foulest—avoid Michal’s corner like it’s diseased. Keeping one eye on Léandre, I creep toward it.

Odessa clasps her hands as she surveys the hall, and the gesture is so achingly familiar that I pitch forward, stumbling a little, and catch myself on Pasha’s arm. He does not speak to me, does not stop me either, instead shunting me toward Michal as Odessa speaks in a clear, ringing voice: “The time has come, darlings, to get our house in order. We are not children”—she dips her head to the cage beneath her—“and we do not require playthings. We arevampires, and anyone who cannot comport themselves accordingly will lose the privilege of this isle.”

Though crashes and shouts still echo from deep within the castle—and strange music unfurls from the Old City—all vampires within earshot fall still at her words. After so much commotion, such silence feels unnatural, even oppressive, as hundreds of predatory eyes gaze up at her without blinking.

Except mine.

They fix not on Odessa but on the fallen man in the corner of the room. Beautiful and terrible and alone.

Michal.

Falling to my knees beside him, I pull his body into my lap, and its heavy weight feels so real, so solid and stark amidst the dreamlike quality of this night; if not for the wash of scarlet on his chin and unnatural hole in his chest, I could imagine he is simply sleeping. My tears fall thicker now. Faster. They fleck his cheek before trickling down his jaw and disappearing into his leather surcoat.

I never asked him how to sleep.The thought is bizarre, unwelcome, yet it strikes like a bolt of lightning as I hold him, as I stare hungrily at the smooth planes of his face. Only once have I seen it like this, before the horrors of the grotto—relaxed and untroubled, completely at peace. I clutch his waist tighter, rocking him slightly, hating the words and the lie.At peace.As if anyone could find peace after such a violent and unexpected death. His cousin tore his heart from his chest. The hole is still there—leering at me—and—and I never asked him about philophobia either, or where he would most like to visit in the world. Why did he visit Les Abysses so many times and Paradise only once? Did his parents name him after someone? A loved one?

Had Michal ever been in love?

Though Odessa claimed he lovedme, she also ripped out hisheart a moment later, and I—I don’t know what to do with any of it. Tracing his brows with my fingers, I memorize his face. I don’t even know how vampires honor their dead—if they honor their dead at all. I do not know what Michal planned for himself, and the likeliest one who does is the vampire who killed him.

You never asked, he told me, and now I never can.

Somehow, we always seemed to talk about me—about my past and my sister and my parents. Are his parents still alive? Did he turn his father and stepmother like he turned Mila? But—no. Even as my eyes dart around the hall, searching for pieces of his face, I remember Odessa’s supercilious voice:In his entire existence, he has sired only his ungrateful little sister.And she hated him for it.

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