Page 90 of The Shadow Bride

At first, I do not notice when they still.

Nor do I notice the air as it thins, the frost as it creeps up my whisper-thin gown. Indeed, I do not notice anything until the castle itself steals over my feet, trapping them in solid ice. Startled, I glance down at my snow-white hands, at the shocking red of my fingernails. They match the winterberries growing in my hair.

The trail of blood glistening upon the ice behind me.

“Finally,” my sister says in a bored voice. “I thought you’d never fall asleep.”

“Filippa?”

I whirl in disbelief, nearly tumbling to the floor when my feet refuse to move, still frozen solid. And in a sickening swoop of intuition, I realize this isn’t a dream at all—not with my sister standing feet away from me, cold and cruel and wrong, and not with that look of apathy in her unnerving eyes. One black and one green.

“What are you doing here?” Craning my neck to look around us, I gape at the glittering walls. The blood behind me, I realize, is not blood at all but a cloak of vivid crimson. I cannot place the fabric, however; it ripples in the strange silver light like liquid, like my hand might slip through it,intoit, if I dared bend down to investigate. “Wherearewe?”

My gaze catches on the pedestal table in the middle of the room—snowflakes carved into the palest of wood—and the elegant bouquet of frozen snowdrops at its center. Behind it, the grand staircase sweeps upward to a sparkling landing before dividing and rising out of sight. I kneel to inspect the glasslike floors, where an evergreen forest has been sculpted beneath the ice. “Is this the spirit realm?” I ask in wonder.

She lifts a delicate shoulder before smoothing the near translucent fabric of her sparkling white gown. She does not wear a crimson cloak or berries in her hair. Instead, she appears almost wraithlike with her spill of black hair and bloodless skin, a dark gash in the fabric of this place. “Almost.”

I glance down again, unable to help it. Shadows seem to drift through the evergreens beneath the ice, and—if I look closely—they could almost be... people. I repress a shiver when one moves too close, revealing muted yet undeniably chestnut-colored hair.

Frederic.

I jerk backward, away from him, stomach rolling.

“Why do you breathe?” Filippa asks abruptly, tearing me from my shock. Myconfusion. “You are a vampire, ma belle. You are dead, and the dead should not care of such mundane things.”

My gaze flicks up to hers in growing horror. Because my sister has trapped the soul of her ex-lover in the floor. Because besidehim, Evangeline gazes up at me too, her eyes desolate and empty. “B-Breath allows us to scent things.”

“Oh?” Filippa arches a mocking eyebrow. “And what do I smell like?”

I inhale reluctantly, preparing for the worst, but instead my confusion deepens. My brow furrows. Because she—she doesn’t smell like a revenant. I draw back slightly, inhaling her scent again. Again. But—no, there is no rot. The snowdrops on the table blacken and crack upon my realization, but Filippa pays them no heed. Instead she lifts her chin in a gesture so like our mother that the sight of it feels like a physical blow to my chest—or perhaps she has simply frozen the air inside me too. It makes nosense.

The loup garou—the privateers, even the Archbishop—smelled of decay and fetid things, of despair, but beyond that, none of them could communicate; they could hardlythink, let alone speak. Not like Filippa.

Something went wrong with that spell of Frederic’s—or something went very, very right.

Mathilde described the hole Frederic and Filippa tore through the veil as unique, unlike the rips the other revenants created. Anyone who has seen the maelstrom would agree, but... just how far do those differences go?

“Well?” Filippa slowly trails her fingers across the frozen snowdrops. “Do I smell like roses?”

A shiver runs down my spine at the suggestion. At that memory of roses and rot, of candle smoke and of true, suffocating darkness. I will not be frightened of my sister, however, or her newfound alliance. “You smell like you always do, Pip—like beeswax candles.”

The lie rises of its own volition, or perhaps not—perhaps,despite everything, I want to goad her, to gauge her reaction. Perhaps I want toseethat flicker of irritation in her eyes, that subtle tightening of displeasure, and—

Hope sparks in my chest as her eyes indeed narrow. As her lips purse.She doesn’t want to smell like summer honey.The awareness dawns slowly, though I don’t yet understand it.

Instinctively, I push harder: “This palace looks exactly as I always imagined it—straight from the pages ofThe Winter Queen, isn’t it?” I gesture to her gown, to the delicate silver hairpiece nestled at her crown, and a muscle starts to feather in her jaw—a slight movement, yes, but a damning one all the same. “You’ve certainly dressed the part. The cape is a nice touch. Did you sew the little diamonds yourself?”

With an ominous crack, the ice begins to splinter between our feet. “I know what you’re doing, ma belle,” she says coldly, “but you will not find what you seek in me. I suggest you stop looking.”

That spark of hope kindles now, climbing higher, and I take another step forward, desperate to—to shake her, perhaps, toembraceher. To make her remember how much we once loved each other. Because the palace, the gown, the threats, even her alliance with Death—she seems to have donned each like armor, which means...

Perhaps there is still something inside her to protect.

“You’ve never been a monster, Filippa,” I say fiercely.

“I do not expect you to understand.” Filippa stands rigid, hands clasped at her waist in the perfect imitation of my mother, and watches our nursemaid drift aimlessly through the trees. “Nor do I require your approval. Though we once resembled each other, we have never been the same. Perhaps it is for the best I look likethis now, and you look like that—our faces rather reflect the truth of it, don’t you think? I am a monster who looks like a monster, and you are a monster who looks like God.”

“How can you say that to me?”

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