Page 33 of The Shadow Bride

Covering my mouth with one hand, I seize the woman after thrusting the second revenant away; bile rises in my throat at how its flesh bursts under my palm.Don’t breathe.I repeat the words in a manic stream of consciousness, whisking the woman away fromthe waterfront.Don’t breathe, don’t breathe, don’t breathe—

“You,” the third revenant gurgles.

Something like recognition sparks in its watery eyes, and it catches my hair before we round the corner. It wrenches us backward as pain radiates across my scalp. I gasp—breathless with it—and at the scent of the woman’s injury, fresh pain sears my throat. It doesn’t hurt like it did before, however; Michal’s blood still courses through my system. It dulls the ache. It strengthens me, and with a curse, I reach backward, grasping the revenant’s swollen wrist and twisting with all my might. It releases us instantly, and I bolt through the harbor before it can recover. Though the woman screams anew—screams loud enough to wake every corpse in the kingdom—her arms clamp viselike around my neck.

I don’t realize she’s clawing at me until I release her several streets away.

“Vampire!” Her shrieks rend the quiet of the garden path—somewhere deep in West End, judging by the ornamental shrubbery around us. She clutches her elbow in blind panic, shaking her head and backing into a trellis of dead roses. “It’s a vampire! Please, someone help me! Please, please,” she whispers to me, quieter now. “I have ch-children.” As if she were realizing a grave mistake, her eyes grow even wider, and she searches for something—anything—she can use as a weapon against me. My stomach pitches at the familiarity of the situation, at the cruelty of this particular jamais vu. How many times have I felt this same terror? How many times have I been unable to defend myself? “But don’t take them either! We—we wouldn’t t-taste right, and—”

“I would never hurt you.” My hands tremble as I lift thembetween us, as I slowly move to refasten Michal’s cloak. Hiding all evidence of my lie. “This isn’t what it looks like—”

She doesn’t pause to listen, however. She doesn’t care to hear my explanation. The instant my fingers touch the clasp, she flees back in the direction from which we came—toward her injured husband, probably, or perhaps her children.

I watch her go with a horrible sinking sensation.

She feared me just as much as she feared the revenants. Perhaps more.

“I wouldn’t let it bother you,” says a voice to my right, and when I turn, startled, all concern for the woman flees with her, vanishing up the path. Because that is Frederic stepping out from the hedge, and the sight of him steals the breath from my lungs. “Hello, little sister.” He bares his teeth in a savage smile. “Did you miss me?”

Cold fingers of dread creep down my spine.

The last time I saw this man, he’d cleaved the very world in two for love. That overbright look in his eyes now, however—that isn’t love at all. No. That look is hatred, and the full force of it sends me back a step. Why would he possibly risk coming to this dead rose garden in the middle of the day while the Chasseurs still search for him?

“What are you doing here, Frederic?” I ask warily.

“What do youthink?”

With the jerk of his head, he gestures behind him, and there—

There stands my sister.

It turns out Mila didn’t need to find her at all. She found me.

The ground seems to tilt at the sight of her, an apparition pulled straight from my darkest nightmares. Except she isn’t anapparition anymore. No, Filippa Tremblay is just as solid as I am, just asreal, and the black stitches down her cheek—those are real too. I stare at her in horror. My eyes are sharper now; they see all the things I missed while trapped beside her in the grotto.

They see how... unnatural she looks.

Though I knew Frederic stole her body from the catacombs, reversing the blood sickness Morgane inflicted and sewing her remains with bits of other people, I hadn’t realized the extent of the damage. I should’ve known better. I should’veprepared. Her flesh had been rapidly decomposing when Morgane forced me into her casket before La Mascarade de Crânes. Even Frederic’s magic could only do so much to preserve her.

Now she stares back at me with the face of a chthonic deity: half hers and half not. To the left of the stitches, her skin remains her own, ivory and smooth, with her emerald eye intact and her eyebrow black as her hair. To the right, however, her skin is too pale—as pale as my own—with an eye that once belonged to someone else. The iris isn’t emerald but deep brown. Almost black. And her eyebrow there—it’s several shades lighter than it should be.Also stolen.She wears a gown of pure white with sheer sleeves as if she cannot feel the cold, and at her crown, a delicate silver hairpiece nestles. The diamonds look like ice. Like snowdrops in a winter palace.No gloves, I realize abruptly.I was right.

Unbidden, my gaze next falls to my sister’s stomach.

“She’s still dead,” Filippa says.

Her voice holds no inflection. No emotion.

I wince at the sound of it. Three simple words. Three perfect blows. Despite all Frederic’s careful planning, my blood failed to resurrect their daughter too, and—and what does thatmean?

Was it truly my sister tormenting me, or did I imagine her voice in my head? If the former, how? And if the latter...why?

Why has any of this happened?

Swallowing hard, I glance around for Mila before accepting she isn’t here—I am alone—and force myself to return Filippa’s hollow gaze. I resist the urge to approach her, to console her, because she wouldn’t want it. She wouldn’t want my questions either. Even undead, my sister is still my sister, and her grief isn’t mine. As if sensing my thoughts, she shakes her head and clicks her tongue reprovingly before I can apologize. “The world doesn’t live and die at your fingertips, ma belle.”

At that, Frederic grimaces before stepping forward with a resolute expression. “This time it did.” The wind ruffles his unkempt hair—dirtier now than I’ve ever seen it, and longer too. Shadows have crept beneath his eyes. Combined with the sickly pallor of his skin and the dark stubble along his jaw, he looks... haunted. “You aren’t supposed to be here, Célie.”

In his hand, he holds La Voisin’s grimoire.

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