Page 32 of The Shadow Bride

“We aren’t friends, Célie Tremblay. You’ve made that very clear.”

I swallow hard. “What if we were?”

“That you would eventhinkof friendship while you plan to maim and murder my loved ones proves you are quite incapable of it.” He recites the words as if verbatim, his voice flat, and with a shock, I realize they belonged to me. He—he memorized them. As before, he waits for me to respond, and as before, I have no idea what to say. Did I everapologize for accusing him of murder?

Did I ever thank him for defending me in the aviary? In this very harbor?

“Things have changed since then,” I say instead.

“Have they?”

“We aren’t—” I clear my throat, forcing myself to hold his cool gaze. He warned us about the revenants this morning. He didn’t need to tell us—didn’t need to sail all this way—but he did, inadvertently saving Lou and Reid from the Archbishop in the process. He saved Jean Luc too, despite those chilling last words:I myself do not care if you live or die.I exhale a slow, measured breath at the thought of him in the alley, biting his wrist before offering it to me. Stroking my hair as I fed. “We aren’t enemies anymore, Michal.”

“And that makes us friends?”

“I don’t know what it makes us.”

We stare at each other for a long second, neither willing to give anything else—and it’s enough. For now, not being enemies is enough. As if reading my thoughts, Michal gives a terse nod. When he steps around me, however—his gaze sliding back toward the ship—his entire body stills.

“What is it?” Instinctively, I freeze too, and the hair on my neck lifts as Michal’s lip curls. I glance around us. “Michal? Do you smell something?”

He shifts slightly in response, turning his face into the wind. My body does the same, as if it senses something beyond my awareness. Something dangerous. “Doyou?” he asks.

“I—” Another gust of wind blows past at that second, and with it, the faint scent of decay brushes my cheeks, sweeps down my nose. I recoil instantly, whispering, “Revenants.”

Michal nods. “What else do you smell? Focus on the scent.”

“But I can’t—”

“Yes,” Michal says, his voice hard, “you can.”

Make it so, and it will be.

Closing my eyes, I inhale deeper now, try to catch that faint tendril of miasma and follow wherever it leads. There are so many smells here, however—too many smells, an overwhelming amount—and it takes several seconds to ground myself beside him, to sift through the salt and sweat and stink of the harbor. And then—

There.

My eyes snap open at the first waft of that scent on the breeze: sharp and metallic and heady. My fangs descend without warning. “It’s blood,” I tell Michal in dawning realization. “I smell revenants and blood.”

Chapter Eleven

Death of a Thief

We follow the trail to the end of the harbor.

Around the corner of the last building—tucked between a grubby pub and the open sea—three revenants hunch over a terrified couple. Even moving at full speed, trying and failing to keep pace with Michal, I categorize each detail of the scene in rapid succession: the revenants’ bloated bodies, their privateer uniforms, the water dripping from their mottled skin.

Drowned, I realize in alarm.

My blood must’ve resurrected them at the bottom of the ocean.

Michal rips the first revenant away from the man—badly injured, bleeding profusely from bites in his stomach, his thigh—while I dash for the woman, who cowers behind a barrel of crème de menthe and clutches her wounded arm. If possible, her eyes widen even further at the sight of me. “Oh God,” she whispers.

Too late, I realize that Michal’s cloak has fallen open to reveal my bloody nightgown, that my incisors remain long and sharp.

His shout spurs me into action.

“Get out of here, Célie! Take her and go!”

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