Page 49 of The Shadow Bride

“I think she’s trying to pretend it never happened.” Lou glances up at Talon, who has grudgingly flown from the mezzanine floor to the top of the screen in order to better eavesdrop. “Makes it easier for you, I suppose. You can decide when and where to broach the subject. And to answer your other questions—Talon followed you this morning. He saw someone murdering Frederic, and he flew to Chasseur Tower to warn me. By the time I reached the garden, you’d already left for the harbor. I couldn’t catch you.” Her lips purse abruptly. “Thankyou for that, by the way—leaving without saying goodbye.”

I glare at Talon, unfastening Michal’s cloak before stripping my nightgown overhead. It crumples in a stiff pile at my feet. Once, I might’ve shuddered at my nakedness in another’s presence, but it feels rather less important now.I think she’s trying to pretend it never happened.

Of course she is, and that—that really is for the best. It’s what I want too. My mother refused to support me as a Chasseur; why would she ever accept me as a vampire? Still, the thought weighslike a pit in my stomach, heavier than I expected. I probably disgust her now. Perhaps she even fears me. Perhaps that’s why she refuses to acknowledge that I’m no longer human.

The injustice of it rears its head like a snake, striking at me without warning.

All at once, it matters very little that I didn’t want her to bring it up—she still should have. She is still mymother.

“I wrote you a note,” I tell Lou stiffly, “but I’m sure you already know that since you were having me followed.”

“As if I could ever tell Talon what to do. Helikesyou, Célie, and he could tell you were upset when you fled the house. Anyway, we both feltverybetrayed upon learning you’d run off to Requiem again—”

“Again?” Stepping into the tub, I hiss at the blistering temperature of the water. “I wasabductedthe first time—”

“—and we went to your room to have a nice long cry about it. That’s when your mother arrived.”

I dip my hair beneath the water, scrubbing the strands with lavender soap on the side table. “And you let her in the house because—?”

“We didn’t,” Lou grumbles. “A certain vampire of yoursbroke down our door, in case you’ve forgotten. It wasn’t like we could pretend not to be at home. She saw the blood on our table straightaway, and she nearly went into hysterics—she said she knew you’d been there because she’d just visited Jean Luc, and she wasn’t leaving until we produced you.”

My stomach pitches like I’ve missed a step, followed by a swift, sickening spurt of shame.Jean.How could I have forgotten him? “How is he?” I ask quickly.

With the cup and pitcher on the table, Lou rinses the soap from my hair. “Coco was able to heal his wounds, but... he lost a lot of blood, Célie. A full recovery is going to take time.”

I lower my gaze, unable to speak around the sudden knot in my throat—unable to defend myself at all. He nearly died, and it would’ve been entirely my fault. “Is he the one who sent the Chasseurs?” When Lou says nothing, I wrap my arms around my waist, feeling sick. “He wanted to kill us? To killme?”

“He doesn’t knowwhathe wants to do with you.” Sighing, Lou shakes her head, and tendrils of her long chestnut hair slip free from the knot at her nape. The freckles across her nose stand out in sharp relief. “But I think it’d be best if you stay here until he figures it out. Jean Luc has never been particularly even-tempered, and when Reid tells him about the revenants, he might conflate his approaches to the undead.”

“He might kill us all, you mean.”

To her credit, Lou doesn’t lie this time. “He might.”

In true Lou fashion, however, she refuses to dwell, plunking the pitcher down and saying, “Anyway, I was gently shooing your mother from the wreckage of my kitchen when she threatened to storm the shores of Requiem alone. She said she knew the harbormaster, and he would tell her exactly which ship to board.”

“And you couldn’t have prevented her? You trapped a revenant in a hatbox, for goodness’ sake!”

“Well, I wasn’t going to do that to yourmother, Célie,” she hisses, “and I couldn’t let her come alone either. She has no idea about the dangers here. Even if this island wasn’tcrawlingwith vampires, magic has broken, hasn’t it?” Grudgingly, she lifts a hand, and we stare at her trembling fingers together. “It’s like you said—thatidiot Frederic tampered with the natural order, and without the natural order, magic cannot exist as it should, including the enchantments on this isle. They’ll be volatile. Erratic.” Her gaze flicks to the screen, to the paper-thin silk with its once vivid violets and golden geese. The flowers have withered.

The geese are skeletons.

“I have to mend the veil,” I say softly.

“Do you knowhowto mend it?”

“No.” I cast a fleeting look around the screen as a bone-deep chill settles inside me. “After what Coco said about her aunt’s grimoire, I thought maybe it might hold the answer, but...”

“We don’t have it,” Lou finishes. “I hope Frederic is rotting, wherever he is.”

Part of me agrees, but...one problem at a time.

I need to deal with my mother.

With a sigh, I look back to Lou—determined yet unsure how to return Satine Tremblay to Cesarine—and find her staring up at the mezzanine. After a long moment, she flicks a finger to where a dozen painted portraits leer down at us between the shuttered windows. During my last stay on Requiem, those portraits became as familiar as old friends: three beautiful women draped in scarlet, the hook-nosed boy with his hounds, the lecherous old man with bulbous eyes. All of them appear dead now, except for—

The crone with a wart on her nose.

“Mathilde,” Lou says simply, and my brow furrows as I remember. “My great-great-grandmother.”

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