Page 56 of The Shadow Bride

Lou nudges my ribs, gesturing toward the ceiling, and every excuse I might’ve given vanishes in a wisp of smoke. Because—it’s them.

Odessa and Michal.

They’re here.

Half-hidden behind the balustrade of the gallery, they stand locked in a heated argument, wholly oblivious to the scene below—wholly apathetic—as the revenant attempts to tear the bars from its cage. I stare at them in abject disbelief, my mind struggling to reconcile how two people for whom I’ve come to care could ignore such cruelty in their presence.

It is not my job to rein in Yannick, Michal once told me, but I thought—

My heart plummets.

Foolishly, I thought he might be—well,changingsomehow, because the Michal who stroked my hair in that coffin, the Michal who risked his life in the grotto, cannot be this Michal too. His eyes narrow to glittering slits as he looms over Odessa. “If you do not reveal their identities, cousin, the blood of this entire room will be on your hands. Is that what you want? A massacre?”

Odessa throws back her head and laughs in response, but the sound lacks all mirth. “How rich to pretend you care about these people. Now let thisgo. No one brought a revenant into the castle. According to my sources, it found its way inside all on its own, and where one goes, others will follow. This is a real threat. If we do not address it, we’ll have much greater problems than ribbon and fairy wings—”

“Butterfly wings,” he snarls.

My eyes widen as I realize about what, or ratherwho, they are talking.

Lou’s nails bite into my forearm now. Lifting a finger to her lips, she shakes her head when I move to rise, her turquoise eyes huge and her freckles stark. Even Dimitri places a restraining hand upon my shoulder. My mouth goes strangely dry at their reactions.Because we have nothing to fear from Michal and Odessa, which means we have nothing to fear from anyone in this room. They just need to—to stop this, whatever it is, and release the revenant. Or perhaps notreleaseit, but—

It snaps its teeth at a vampire who gets too close, and the rest of them jeer, shifting, pacing in a way that reminds me inexplicably of the cage they formed on All Hallows’ Eve. A cage in which they trapped not a revenant, but other vampires, before tearing them to shreds. Juliet’s screams ring in my ears at the memory.

And more than one pair of eyes flit to the gallery now, tracking every minute move of their king.

“Michal.” Hissing his name through her teeth, Odessa does not cower from their audience, or the vicious light in his eyes. Instead she steps ever closer. “I do not think you realize how precarious our situation has become, so allow me to phrase it plainly: if you do not protect this isle, someone else will.”

Her threat only seems to amuse him.

“Oh?” he asks silkily, arching a brow, and I crane my neck to look at Dimitri, silently beseeching him to intervene. Whyhasn’the intervened? This is his cousin, after all, his sister, hisfamily. “Is that someone you?”

Though Michal’s voice remains light, his bearing seems to darken with the words, to pulse with a heavy and indefinable sense of power. Of presence. When he steps closer to Odessa, she winces slightly as if she too feels his weight. “As you have spoken plainly, Odessa, allow me to speak plainer still:Iam king of Requiem, and I will defend this isle until darkness claims us both. If you do not agree with my methods, you may leave—allof you may leave—but know this—” His black eyes flick to the revenantbelow, to the vampires around it, who have fallen preternaturally still as they watch. As they wait. “When I discover who did this, I will find you, and I will make you carve a stake from your loved ones’ bones before driving it through your heart.”

Bile rises in my throat.

He shouldn’t be saying these things. The mood of this room—it feels different from the mood on All Hallows’ Eve. It feels poised on a knife tip, and my unease deepens when Odessa moves in front of Michal, stepping right onto the balustrade to block his view of the room below.

From my vantage point, however, I can still see him.

I can still see her too.

Dimitri.I entreat him silently, desperately, but he turns his face away from me. His fingers tighten on my shoulder.

“We cannot act in the interest of one at the expense of many, and we cannot—wecannot—lose our heads.” Odessa lifts her chin in defiance, and emotion much darker than anger fissures behind her eyes when she speaks again. Emotion much deadlier. “Otherwise, one might question why you sent me to a witch’s house in Cesarine rather than to find your own family. My ownbrother.” A bitter pause. “If Dimitri hadn’t found us in Cesarine, would you have ever looked for him?”

Dimitri’s grip turns painful now. He still does not interrupt, however, not even as Odessa and Michal lock eyes.

In that single look, something unspoken passes between them—a dark understanding—but it vanishes too swiftly to follow. “I assumed he was dead,” Michal says, lifting a careless shoulder. “Alas, we couldn’t be so lucky.”

Odessa recoils as if he struck her.

Beside me, Lou suppresses a groan while several vampires hiss in outrage. Worse still, one tosses the blood from his goblet high, and it soars toward the gallery in a magnificent arc, missing Odessa and splattering Michal’s polished boots. The room draws a sharp, startled breath as Michal glances down at the blood.

Michal, no.

He cannot hear my silent plea, however, and when he strikes, no one can move fast enough to stop him. He simply steps from the gallery and appears with his hand at the offending vampire’s throat, squeezing until the latter’s eyes bulge. Every hair on my body stands up, and my intuition screams at Michal’s reaction—not only the violence, but also something else, something critical that I cannot see or explain. I can onlyfeelit. This entire situation—it does not make sense. It does not belong, does notfit, and didn’t Michal defend his cousin only hours ago? Didn’t he urge Odessa to speak with him, to listen to his explanation?He seems different now, he told her.He seems better.

Yet even as this bizarre sense of wrongness spreads, the atmosphere in the room shifts again. It coils like a serpent in the grass, and Michal has not yet realized the danger.

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