Page 95 of The Shadow Bride

Dread congeals in my stomach. “Promise not to hurt them.”

“I will promise no such thing.” At my expression, his grin fades, and he turns away as if unwilling to look at me. Quartz beads hang from the lip of a third pot; they clink gently in the breeze as Death avoids my gaze. “I hear them, you know,” he says after a long moment, and gooseflesh creeps down my neck at the unexpected confession. “The dying. They call to me—not with their words, but with their spirits. In those final seconds, they crave the peace of my embrace.” Another long pause. “You did not.”

“I didn’t?” I stare at him, rapt, and try to remember, but my memories of Filippa’s coffin swirl together in a sort of abyss now, like my own personal maelstrom. Time ceased to exist inside it. I ceased to exist too. There was only Filippa and Morgane, madness and magic, and the soul-deep surety that I was going to die. No one was coming to save me, and Morgane would never allow me to live. The hopelessness had been paralyzing. The desperation had been more so. Which is why it all sounds so unbelievable now—that Death spared me, that I somehow resisted him in that eternal darkness.

Now I look away swiftly, murmuring, “Do you speak back to them?” At his inquisitive glance, I gesture to the pots around us. “The dead and the dying?”

“These are not the dead, Célie. These are simply bodies—empty shells, if you will. Their spirits have already crossed over. But,” he adds, speaking over me when I try to interrupt, “once upon a time... yes, I think I did speak back to them, in a way.”

Though a thousand more questions erupt in response, I settle on the most useful. “But you hear them even in this form?”Perhaps the most useful two or three.“The dying are still able to—well,diewhile you’re in our realm instead of yours? Their souls arestill crossing over to—” I stop abruptly, pinning him with another wide-eyed stare. “Wheredothey go after they cross?”

“How should I know?”

“YouareDeath—”

“And you ask a lot of questions.”

He pivots abruptly, his silver eyes narrowing, and—as the revenants shift, tense and restless—I know I shouldn’t push him any further. Whatever just passed between us, Death did not like it. He did not like it at all. As if to distract himself, he reaches out to snatch the nearest pot before recoiling again just as quickly because—because the symbolscuthim.

Black blood spills from his fingertips.

I recoil at the sight of it, at the peculiarsmell, as he curses viciously in a language I don’t recognize. Then, like a flip has switched inside him, he seizes the pot with a snarl and flings it across the grove, where it shatters against the trunk of a dying birch tree. Ash—the remains of aperson—trickles to its roots, and I blink rapidly at the unexpected violation. At the sheer violence of it. More cuts open across his palm from the contact, but they heal almost instantly.

And that answersoneof my questions, at least. I watch in horror as his fingers curl into his palm, hiding the fresh skin there.

“Apologies, my sweet.” Smoothing his hair now, he exhales a harsh breath and closes his eyes as if regretting his loss of temper. As if trying to regain his control. Sure enough, when he turns to face me again, he speaks with frightening calm. “Show me where Cosette has hidden her urn, and we can be rid of this foul place.”

I stare at him incredulously.My sweet, he calls me.

We, he says.

I don’t like the sound of either one; I don’t like them atall, and I liked his outburst even less. The sheerdangerof my situation reasserts itself with those swirling silver eyes. It immobilizes me for several long, tense seconds. “I don’t—” I shake my head and start again, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I don’t know where they’ve hidden it. Ascension is sacred to Dames Rouges. Even Coco would never tell me—”

“Do not,” Death says with that terrible, leering smile, “lie to me.”

Shit.

The revenants shift closer in response—close enough now to see their rotting skin, their sunken eyes. The latter gleam in the shadows around the grove like those of nocturnal beasts. I resist the urge to shrink away from them. To shrink away from Death, whose eyes no longer gleam like his revenants’ but actually start toglow.

“Be reasonable.” I gesture around us with as much poise as possible, conscious of every single movement. “Why do you think there are no names on these pots? They don’twantus to know who resides here, and those marks—the blood witches painted them to keep people like us from doing precisely this.”

Us. We.

Death steps forward then. He stalks closer, sliding his hands into his pockets. “I make a much better friend than enemy, darling.” Before I can speak, he bends his face to mine, articulating succinctly to ensure I hear every word. “You want to be friends, don’t you? You want to play nicely?”

Holding my breath, I nod.

“Good,” he breathes. “Now go get the pot.”

And because I am alone—trapped—surrounded and outnumbered by Death and his undead creatures, I turn on my heel to do just that. I still lift my chin, however. I still keep it high as I pick my way across the grove to the farthest corner. There, two familiar pots hang without beads or glass or feathers as adornment; they hang separate from the rest, cloistered together on a birch tree partially hidden by the enormous fir beside it.

I eye the pots warily before bending to seize my nightgown. With a jerk of my wrist, I tear a strip of silk from the hem and wrap it around my hands, careful to cover all my skin. Then—with gentle movements—I slide the right pot from its branch, sending a silent apology to Coco and praying she might somehow hear it.Forgive me.

“Here.” I thrust Josephine’s ashes toward Death a moment later, feeling sick, but he clicks his tongue again, unwilling to touch it. And that—that brings me a savage sort of satisfaction.Death can bleed. Death can feel pain.I tuck the information away as I lower the pot to the ground instead.

When he instructs me to remove the lid next, to extend my hand over her ashes, I tell myself fiercely that it might not work this time.This isn’t All Hallows’ Eve.Still, my vision narrows, and my ears begin to ring as he jerks his chin toward a nearby revenant, who stalks forward to hand him a silver knife. Because it’s all too familiar, too harrowing to experience again.

My blood is different now than it was then—my blood is partMichalnow—and—and even if it weren’t, Josephine has no body.I cling to the latter like a lifeline, repeating it over and over again, forcing my eyes to stay open, to watch as Death draws the blade across my palm. I wince at the sting of pain.

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