Page 99 of The Shadow Bride

From the beginning.

Right.

With a deep breath, I begin to pace, trying and failing to collect my thoughts. Panic creeps higher up my throat. This situation has spiraled wildly out of control, and every second we spend here is a second wasted. We need toact. “My mother—”

“—is safe at the moment.” When I open my mouth to argue,still flushed and disoriented, Michal says curtly, “Death needs to keep his leverage, and you cooperated tonight. What message would it send if he kills her now? How likely would you be to cooperate again?”

Another shiver sweeps through me, and I force myself to sit on the bottom step. To feel the stone beneath my hands. “He seemed so angry. Volatile.”

“Let’s hope he stays that way.” At my confused look, he adds, “An angry Death means we still have the upper hand.” Cursing under his breath, Michal stares at his headboard without truly seeing it, and the weight of my words seems to settle over him. “Theveil. I should’ve known.” Then, louder— “Tell me the rest. Tell me all of it.”

With a deep breath, I nod and attempt to do as he says. To slow down. To start at the beginning. And as I concentrate on the chill of the steps, their timeworn smoothness, the words come a little easier as I recount everything that happened tonight. Michal’s expression remains inscrutable through it all, except when my voice hitches at Death threatening my mother. Here, his lip curls slightly, but he doesn’t interrupt; he doesn’t speak at all until after I’ve stumbled through the rest, and a fresh bolt of anxiety shoots through me as I remember Death’s parting words. “The village! Death said—Michal, he told the revenants to burn it to the ground.” I vault to my feet. “I need to go back. We need to—to try to save their homes somehow. The blood witches—”

“—can rebuild,” he says firmly. “There is nothing more we can do. Because of Coco, they managed to evade Death—an incredible feat, if he’s as volatile as you say. And it makes sense. He isn’t accustomed to experiencing human emotions. Anger, pride,greed—they’ll be running rampant through his new body. I assume they’ll have turned him into an arrogant bastard.”

“They have,” I confirm, though I still feel uneasy. “Death knows Mila has been spying on them too. She could be in danger. We need to warn her right away—”

“And we will.” Across the room, his night-dark eyes glint with intensity, withconviction. “We’ll send word to everyone—Louise, Cosette, Beauregard, even Jean Luc, who will in turn spread word to their people. Likewise, every creature in Requiem will know how to dispatch Death’s revenants after tonight. Odessa will see to that.”

Though my body remains tense, my mind recognizes the truth in his words. The revenants, at least, can be addressed; their deaths will mend the holes they’ve created. Still...You will no longer need to fear my embrace, will no longer need to grieve your departed loved ones.Death’s voice drifts like a specter in my thoughts. We have a much greater problem than the revenants now, but—as we have no immediate solution—I ignore it for the moment, focusing instead on Michal. The tightness in my shoulders eases slightly.

“You aren’t alone in this, Célie,” he continues. “Death tried to frighten you tonight. He tried to isolate you, and he will continue to do so. No matter how he makes you feel, however, you must remember that you have the control. You have the advantage. You have—”

“You,” I say without thinking.

He blinks as if startled, and for several seconds, his body goes completely still. I cannot read his face. Though his response is not unexpected, it still brings a lump to my throat. For once, I wish he’d simply let go, let live, let meseethose emotions he triesto keep buried—for his own sake as well as my own. Because the vampire before me is only one fraction of the whole; before this, Michal was a young man who loved his family so deeply that he made a deal with Death, sacrificing everything for them.He—did me a favor once. I’ve regretted it every day since.

I cannot help but think, however—if push came to shove—he would damn the consequences and choose the same all over again. To save Mila.

To save me.

He inclines his head. “For as long as you want me, Célie.” My breath catches at that, and I know he hears it because he closes his eyes—just for a second, as if the sound of it pains him somehow. And I want to ask why; I want toknow, but his eyes have already snapped open. “Did he hurt you?”

Though I shake my head, my eyes flit unbidden to my hand, and he doesn’t miss that either. His expression darkens.

“Come here,” he says.

My feet respond instinctively; despite the quiet menace in his voice, I close the distance between us without hesitation, and I perch on the edge of the bed, turning to face him with a murmured, “I promise I’m fine—”

He takes my hand before I can finish, however, his touch exceedingly gentle as he turns my palm upward to examine the cut from Death’s silver knife. I curl my fingers to hide it. “It really doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.” Still I watch, transfixed, as his pupils dilate, as his fingers sweep up my forearm before hesitating on the soft, delicate skin of my inner elbow. I should be riddled with Death’s fingerprints by now, but I’m not.

Because of Michal.

He still seems to sense exactly where the marks should be, however, because his eyes glint with cold and lethal promise when they finally meet mine. “I intend to be there next time Death pays a visit. He will never touch you again.”

Gooseflesh erupts down my arms at the change in his tone, and with it, the more immediate situation reasserts itself—namely, his looming presence, his sinister expression, and his gloriously and inescapably naked body. Awareness returns with a wave of heat. It burns up my cheeks and ears, and I swallow hard, fixing my gaze upon his face and refusing to look below his neck. My stomach still tightens, however. It still flutters with anticipation. Because I am anidiot, and I should’ve—I don’t know—demanded he dress himself at the onset of this discussion, or fled across the room and held it at a much safer distance.Like across the kingdom, I think with another inexplicable shiver.

If I had, perhaps I wouldn’t now be realizing how Michal resembles an ancient pagan god, every inch of his body chiseled from stone. Perhaps I wouldn’t be noticing how the candlelight reflects upon his chest, his arms, his torso, throwing each contour in sharp relief. Or how his presence here seems so much larger than anywhere else—potent, almost overpowering—despite him kneeling before me on silk sheets.

His eyes slowly heat as the silence stretches between us. As he gently—so gently—brushes a thumb across my knuckles. “Take my blood, Célie. Heal yourself.”

Oh God.

Flustered, I clamber away from him with a stammered, “I—I really am terribly sorry about dropping in on you like this. R-Really sorry.Terriblysorry. This is—” I wave an agitated handtoward his body, staring resolutely across the cavern. At least the revenants within the maelstrom have gone—burned, probably, if the lingering scent of smoke in the air is any indication. “This isn’t—I mean, my hand doesn’t even hurt, and—and I should probably check back in on my mother. Yes.” Nodding like a lunatic, I cringe at how horribly light my voice sounds in the cavernous room. Howhearty. “Like you said, she’s probably fine—and I’m fine too—but I did leave her alone in a castle full of vampires—”

Michal’s arm snakes out to catch my waist before I can slide from the bed and melt through the floor.

“Nice try,” he says in a low, even voice, “but Pasha and Ivan are stationed outside her door. Why are you running from me?”

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