Page 96 of The Shadow Bride

She cannot rise without a body. Filippa had a body.

Death tips my hand over Josephine’s ashes, and together, we hold our breath as my blood trickles into the pot—less violent than on All Hallows’ Eve, yet somehow even worse for it. Because I am still just as weak as I was then, still just astrappedas that frightened human girl in a glass coffin.Please don’t let it work, I think desperately.Please let my blood fail.

We wait several long seconds for something to happen. Though the revenants keep their distance—hollow-eyed and silent—the birch trees seem to bend in the wind as if watching too. Death stands preternaturally still for another moment, his eyes fixed and his brows furrowed, before gently cracking open the pot and spreading the blood-soaked ashes upon the ground instead. As they congeal into misshapen lumps under Death’s ministrations, my stomach twists.

And we wait.

Chapter Thirty-One

Broken Butterflies

After five more minutes of staring down at the foul concoction, my breathing starts to ease, and the trees—they draw back as if satisfied.It didn’t work.The realization feels surreal—unbelievable, evenimpossibleafter all the horrible things I’ve seen, yet even Death cannot claim his experiment has succeeded.

Josephine’s ashes remain just as lifeless as ever.

Just as dead.

“It didn’t work,” Death echoes softly, and despite the relief coursing through my body, I still tense in response to that lethal note in his voice. He turns slowly to look at me, and I cannot read the emotion in his too-bright eyes. Then— “Youdidn’t work.”

Ah.

Swallowing hard, I choose my next words with great care. As powerful as Death might be, he also feels... fragile, somehow, just as porcelain as the fairies on my music box. Just as easily shattered too, and all the more dangerous for it. Unbidden, my eyes drift to the disintegrated pot across the grove. “The ritual required my blood, but my blood no longer exists—not as it did, not undiluted.”

Death’s face splits into a truly frightening smile. “I suppose I’ll need to find another Bride, then, won’t I?”

“There are no others.” Speaking in a low and calming voice, Ipull my hand away, and I edge backward as surreptitiously as possible. “I’m the last one.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s true.” Though his eyes flash at the lie, he allows my fingers to slide from his, bending down to pick up a shard of Josephine’s pot. Then—equally slowly, equally calmly—he grasps my wounded hand, drawing one jagged edge across the cut there. Deepening it. I bite my tongue to keep from crying out at the sting of Coco’s enchantment. “Mostof my Brides have crossed over, yes, but not all—not all, Célie.”

You should’ve taken a leaf out of my book, petal, and stayed hidden.

His eyes never leave my face as he crushes the pottery shard and sprinkles the powder between us. His tendrils of rot creep over my bare feet. They feel like ice, like the darkness of my sister’s coffin. Clenching my chin to keep it from trembling, I force myself to straighten, to meet his gaze directly. Because I am not Mathilde. It is too late for me to hide. “Perhaps you missed something in the grimoire. Perhaps there’s another spell—”

He jerks the hateful black book from his pocket, snarling, “Do not patronize me,darling. As I said before”—he rips the first page from its spine—“this book”—he flings it at my face before tearing another—“is as useless”—another, another, another—“asyou.”

True fear spikes in my chest as the pages cloud my vision, as that rot climbs higher, as I sense the revenants moving closer. Though I canfeeltheir hunger, I cannot see them; I cannot seeanything, and I strike out at the next page blindly, catching it between my fingers. “Stop!Stop—”

I stumble forward as Death wrenches the page away. “No, no,” he says, laughing darkly and crumpling it with the others in his fist. “You don’tdeservethese, so you don’t get them—andwhile we’re at it, neither does your precious sister or your darling Dimitri.”

Every other thought falls away with my hand, and I leap away with a hiss of pain as the wind lifts, as the branches shift, and as sunlight bathes my shoulder.

Dimitri.

There is only one reason Death would connect Dimitri to this grimoire. And with the realization comes a wave of resignation, an oppressive heaviness in my limbs as the pieces finally click into place:Your sister found a cure, Dimitri told me in the grotto.

Whatever that cure might be, it must involve Death.

“Dimitri is your spy,” I say. “You made a deal with him too.”

A rather sinister smile spreads across Death’s face as I slide down the trunk of the nearest tree, settling among its roots. “Oh, Dimitri isn’t so terribly bad. He painted part of the portrait for me, yes—and quite a vivid one too—but he must’ve missed something important on All Hallows’ Eve. Filippa was not conscious for it, and regrettably, I killed Frederic before I could ask for details.”

I refuse to cower as he drops into a crouch before me, the silver of his eyes still gleaming malevolently. “Perhaps I do not need La Voisin after all.Youcan fill in the gaps for me. We must start with you and your sister, of course, but the two of you weren’t the only siblings involved, were you? Dimitri and Odessa played their roles too, and also Michal and Mila Vasiliev—the respective black sheep and golden goose of the family. Did you know their father was a drunkard?”

I know I shouldn’t rise. I know a reaction is exactly what he wants—to unsettle me and to fluster me, to trick me into revealing something I shouldn’t—but I also cannot help it. Not whenMichal and Mila aren’t here to defend their family. “Their father was a cleric,” I say tightly.

Death inclines his head. “Forgive me. I didn’t realize the two were mutually exclusive. You won’t want to hear, then, about how his father drank them into destitution.”

My hands curl into my skirts, nearly tearing through the fabric at his politely mocking expression. I should tell him to stop. I should tell him to shutupbecause this has nothing to do with All Hallows’ Eve. It has nothing to do with my sister or the revenants either, yet when I open my mouth, it isn’t condemnation that spills forth. “How do you know all this? How do you knowhim? Michal said you did him a favor—”

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