Page 105 of The Shadow Bride

“Takeadvantage?” Dimitri’s eyes bulge. “You cannot be serious—”

“How have you even beenmeetingDeath?” Odessa abandons the mannequin to stalk forward, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Hopping from the settee, Panteleimon spreads his tail feathers and clicks his beak rather menacingly as he trails behind her. “I would’ve noticed—”

“You’ve been a bit busy, Des, and I can’t say I blame you—” At the first vicious peck of Panteleimon’s beak, however, Dimitri leaps backward with a curse, glaring down at the punctured leather of his boot. “Call off the cavalry, will you? Deathfindsme. All right? He finds me, and after I answer a couple of questions—nothing nefarious—I drink his blood. With it in my system, the bloodlust fades—vanishes, even. I haven’t killed anyone since All Hallows’ Eve.” He seizes his sister’s hands. “After what I did that night, Ineverwould’ve returned without being sure I had it under complete control.”

Michal’s jaw looks likely to snap. “As if you’ve ever been in complete control—”

As surreptitiously as possible, I bend to adjust the hem of my nightgown, grasping the veil near the floor and tearing upward as I straighten. I don’t know why I do it, except—well, if thisisthe moment, Mila should be here too. And I pray she is. I pray she’s been here all along, watching this terrible scene unfold, perhaps searching for a hole to slip through—

“They’re making a real mess of things, aren’t they?”

Sitting next to me—or rather, drifting several inches above the settee cushion—Mila folds her legs beneath her and watches Michal and Dimitri with a strangely distant expression. After another moment, she says, “The revenants followed Death’s word to the letter. The blood witches’ village is gone—burned to ash—and half the forest with it. When the fire reached Domaine-les-Roses, the constabulary alerted a local contingent of Chasseurs, but I left before they arrived.”She was there, I realize with a start,watching the whole time.The thought brings a sliver of comfort, of relief that she stayed out of sight.

“The flames burned me.” She holds out a hand without looking at me, revealing the opaque wound sprawling across her palm. “I... felt it,” she says simply. “It hurt.”

My brows flatten at that—at this incontrovertible proof that the veil between realms is in danger. Though I want to question her further, to warn her she cannot continue to spy, I keep quiet instead, unwilling to alert the others to her presence just yet—not while Michal and Dimitri continue their bitter argument, and not while she seems so very... far away. Is it the pain of the burn affecting her, or has something else happened since last we spoke? Perhaps in his rage, Death threatened her too.

I take her hand, squeezing it in silent question.Are you all right?

A small smile touches her lips, and when she speaks again, she sounds even farther away than before, uncanny and unfamiliar. “It’s strange... they’ve been angry for so many years that I can scarcely remember them otherwise, yet they didn’t start that way. It consumed their identities without them even noticing—until they could no longer see themselves, let alone the other person, through the hurt.” The words stick in her throat, as if even now, she cannot bear to loosen them. I suspect they aren’t about Dimitri anymore. Tearing her gaze away from her brother, she says quietly, “I just wish it could’ve been different. I wish I’dknown. It feels so much sillier on this side of things—to have wasted so much time. Indulgent, even.”

She turns to me, and for the first time since meeting her—since watching her waltz past my bedroom door—she truly resembles a ghost. An imprint. A shadow of her former self. “Why do we always treat them the worst? The ones we love most?”

And I cannot remain silent any longer.

“Because we can,” I murmur. “Because it’s safe.”

She shakes her head sadly. “No, it isn’t.”

Across the room, Michal and Dimitri stop arguing at the sound of my voice, and both turn toward us in unison. Odessa follows suit. Though a trace of silver light still flickers in Michal’s narrowed gaze, he seems unable to see his sister now. Too little of my blood remains in his system, and I—I don’t know how to feel about that. It hardly matters now, anyway, with Mila pulling her hand from mine. “You need to help them, Célie. Please.”

“It isn’t really my—”

“Itisyour place. It is. Michal isn’t the only one who loves you.” Squeezing my fingers, she nods to Odessa and Dimitri, who also seem to have put the pieces of our conversation together; they search the air around the settee for any sign of Mila. “You’ve been part of this family since the moment you stepped foot on Requiem. Do not waste it like I did.”

I rise to my feet with her. “You wasted nothing, Mila. Your hurt mattered too.”

“Perhaps”—she dips her chin in acknowledgment—“but he mattered more.”

“Célie?” Michal approaches warily and extends a hand. “Is Mila here? Does she want to speak?”

I do not take it, however; at the slight shake of Mila’s head, I sweep past his outstretched arm and wrap my own around his waist, folding him into a tight embrace. “This is from her,” I murmur against his chest as she fades from view. He returns the pressure after several tense seconds, after which I pull backslightly. “And this is from me.” Rising up to my toes, I press my lips against his, and I pour every ounce of my regret into that kiss.

Why do we always treat them the worst? The ones we love most?

Michal has come to expect the worst from people.

We all have.

Chapter Thirty-Four

A Gesture of Friendship

The Chasseurs didn’t find Filippa until three days after she disappeared. Her body washed up on the shores of L’Eau Melancolique—throat slashed and skin withered—and a fisherman alerted the local authorities, who sent word to the Archbishop in turn. I still remember the moment I heard the news; I’d been sitting in a dark corner of my mother’s bedroom, flipping through the pages ofThe Winter Queen and Her Palacewithout truly seeing them. The curtains drawn. The candles doused.

When a knock sounded on the front door, I glanced up at the shadowed shape of my mother. She hadn’t left her bed since waking to discover her eldest daughter had vanished in the night. She didn’t move now either, even as the quiet knocking continued. With my father away on business and no servants left in the household, she should’ve been the one to rise, to dress, to invite the guests below into our home. She did none of those things, of course. Instead she stared at the ceiling with heavy eyes and matted hair, her nightgown rumpled and her sheets unkempt.

It hurt so much to look at her.

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