Page 78 of The Shadow Bride

Realization dawns.“That night you left the castle...” My voice trails off as I drift back to a different time, a different life, when Michal warned me—still human—not to roam the isle without him. “When you claimed you had business elsewhere, you came here, didn’t you? To interrogate Mathilde about me.”

Michal inclines his head.

“Why?”

“Your scent resembles hers.” He lifts a shoulder, but the movement is too tense to be careless. “I recognized it almost instantly, though I didn’t know what it meant at the time.”

Mathilde hides a smirk behind her bowl of café. “You should’ve taken a leaf out of my book, petal, and stayed hidden. Death might fancy us, but no good ever comes from other people knowing it.”

“Oh, not this again,” Guinevere says in a bored voice, and together, we whirl toward the sound. “Death neverfanciedyou, Mathilde, and for someone who claims to disparage company, your garden always seems occupied.”

She drifts up through the pond in the next second—rollingher eyes at the bear—and I startle at her unexpected presence, remembering the last I saw her. Or rather, the last Idreamedof her, alive, as she danced arm in arm with a human D’Artagnan.Beware of your sister.Unease shivers down my spine as I stare at her now, but at least Michal’s eyes still glow silver too.

A strange comfort.

“What—what are you doing here, Guinevere?” I ask testily.

“The same as him.” She sweeps a disgruntled hand toward the bear, which growls at her with its eyes closed. “Though I’d never choose a bear as my disguise. A swan, perhaps,” she says thoughtfully, glancing at the pond, “but of course you would reserve your ire for me either way. Typical. May I ask where else Ishouldbe, Célie darling? Safe havens such as these are becoming few and far between.”

“Safe havens?” Michal asks sharply.

Guinevere’s eyes widen in shock and delight upon realizing he can see her. “Well,helloagain, Michal. My, my, my, how fortuitous this invitation turned out to be.” Guinevere settles into the fourth chair at the table and casts him a flirtatious look, batting her lashes and twining a ringlet around her finger. When he stares back at her, expressionless, her smile falters slightly. She blinks at him in confusion before flicking her silver eyes to me. They bulge in horror. “Why aren’t you touching him? Why can he see me, Célie? What have youdone?”

Now Michal does smile, sleek and knife sharp. “I think you know, Guinevere.”

A beat of silence.

Then Guinevere swells, shooting from her chair in outrage, her mouth opening and closing like a fish, while Mathilde snortsand nearly falls out of her own. “This is—you cannot—Michal, howcouldyou?” Guinevere wails, wringing her hands as Michal rolls his eyes. “Iwaited. I was—I wassavingmyself for when you—”

“Savingyourself?” Mathilde guffaws wildly now, pounding her fist upon the iron table. “Ha! You’ve been spreading your ether to every dangling participle from here to Amandine for the last five hundred years. It never would’ve worked between you. This one prefers an ingenue.” She jerks her thumb at Michal before clicking her fingers again, and a book thuds inside the cottage. It ricochets off the doorjamb and flies into the garden, soaring straight through Guinevere’s forehead. Michal catches it on instinct.

“The Big and Little Deaths: A Ghost’s Guide to Self-Gratification,” he says dryly, arching a brow. “Niche read.”

Mathilde bows her head, still cackling and enormously proud of herself. “For your pleasure, Guinevere.”

Michal’s blood creeps into my face, painting my cheeks scarlet with mortification. Because this has gotten ridiculous. Snatching the book from Michal, I fling it back into the cottage and snap, “We can discuss self-gratification at another time. You made a blood oath to tell us about the revenants, Mathilde.”

She wags a gnarled finger. “Ah, petal, but I never saidwhen.”

At Michal’s black look, however, her crooked grin fades, and she gives another disgruntled harrumph. “Oh, allright. Wretched spoilsports.”

Still, she takes her time fishing the blackened frond from her café before dumping the rest on her dead azaleas, which lap up the liquid greedily, shudder, and shoot up another inch. Then— “You’re a Bride of Death,” Mathilde says grudgingly, “so you know the requirements. I should’ve died at the ripe age of nine—slidright off a crag in La Fôret des Yeux and split open my head—but Death chose to spare me in the form of Josephine Monvoisin.”

When I gasp, she nods in grim delight. Guinevere sighs, plucking an azalea from the vine and tucking it into her décolletage. She glances plaintively at Michal.

He closes his eyes as if pained.

“She found me at the bottom of the cliff, and she must’ve sensed his presence—was always a bittoointerested in Death, if you ask me. Obsessed, even.” Shrugging, Mathilde pauses dramatically to slurp the dregs of her bowl with relish. “My own mother didn’t care whether I lived or died, so Josephine insisted I return to the blood camp with her and that wraith of hers.” She clicks her fingers in agitation, trying to remember the name.

“Nicholina,” Guinevere says by rote.

“Aha!” Mathilde snaps triumphantly. “Nicholina. Never liked her.”

“You don’t seem to like anyone,” I point out.

“Too right you are, and for good reason—Josephine took me on as an apprentice of sorts, so she could poke and prod me every chance she got.” Mathilde’s lip curls. “I was just a child, so I let her do it. Couldn’t wait to be rid of her, though, so I seized the chance to return to Chateau le Blanc when my dear old maman died. Never looked back.”

She hesitates with surprising thoughtfulness, tapping her fuzzy chin. “Learned a lot from her. Evil woman, to be sure, but more powerful than anyone should be.”

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