Page 89 of The Shadow Bride

“Oh, I have no doubt darkness elicits memories better left forgotten, but I think you’ve conflated fear of darkness with a fear of something else.”

“Like what?” I ask warily.

“You tell me.” He rests his forearms upon his knees as he studies me, his black eyes glittering. “What is it that hides in the darkness?” A suggestive pause. “Or rather,who?”

I narrow my gaze on him, not quite understanding his implication but not quite liking it either. Defensiveness pricks at my subconscious, and I tear up another sprig of rosemary for something to do with my hands. “No one can hide from me in the dark anymore.”

“Then you shouldn’t fear closing your eyes.”

Reluctantly, I do as he says, and I hear the air shift as he nods in approval. “Good. Now silence that glorious mind of yours and listen.”

I cannot help but crack one eye open suspiciously. “Do you really think my mind is glorious?”

He smirks down at me. “You know I do. And that is exactly the problem. Newborn vampires—all vampires, really—struggle with sensory overload until they learn to focus their attention. And you need to focus your attention in order to relax.”

“That feels counterintuitive.”

“Close your eye, Célie.”

My lips twitch as I shut it again, but this time, I allow Michal’s voice to wash over me like a balm.

“Imagine it like fire,” he says. “A wildfire is much harder to douse than, say... candlelight. And sorting through the sheer quantity of information we perceive can feel like standing in a wildfire. It’s too much. It’s excessive. Such an onslaught triggers a physiological response even in vampires, making it impossible for us to relax. If we narrow our attention, however—focusing on just one sense, one detail—that fire narrows too.”

My eyelids flutter. My grin gradually fades. “Into a candle.”

“Into a candle,” he repeats. “Sight is the easiest one to extinguish—you’re doing it now by closing your eyes. Next is scent. You can extinguish that by—”

“—holding my breath,” I finish, “which leaves... sound?”

His fingers brush my knee. “And touch.”

They vanish a second later, leaving me adrift in the treacherous darkness of my eyelids.You are not afraid of the dark, I tell myself fiercely.Not afraid, not afraid, not afraid.

Michal’s voice softens as he continues. “Focus on anything else you feel—the cool satin of your gown, its individual fibers, the moss and lichen underneath you. The damp earth. The tree roots. Even the air on your skin. Imagine each as a candle and simply... snuff them out.”

Swallowing hard, I try to do as he says, and to my surprise, my focus sharpens on the individual sensations without difficulty. I feel them. I separate them from my body one by one, and I hold them apart in my mind’s eye, blowing out each candle in turn. A thrill of satisfaction shoots through me—because I did it; for once in my life,I actually did it—yet now I am truly adrift without the mainstays of touch. Panic climbs up my throat once more, but Michal’s voice still finds me in the darkness. He’s still here.

After everything, he refuses to leave.

“Now do the same for sound. The wind through the trees, the ice melting, that rumble of thunder over the sea. If you listen closely,” he adds, “you can even hear Mathilde bickering with Guinevere and D’Artagnan.”

So I can.

Sitting with Michal, each noise seems to amplify as I shift my attention from one to the next, allowing them to build until they wash over me in a strange and soothing orchestra. My body grows heavier at the lilting chords, at even the faint voices of Mathilde and guests. My thrill of satisfaction quiets in their wake, and even the panic in my chest gradually eases.

Because I’m not alone anymore. Not truly. Not even in the dark.

Michal is here, and his voice wraps around me too—it cradlesme as I take a last breath, as I hold it, as I blow out each candle and wait until the last possible moment to blow out his too.

Pressing a kiss to my forehead, he murmurs, “Cak i sunce mora spavati.”

But I’ve extinguished his candle before I can properly hear him, and I tumble headfirst into a dream.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

An Audience with the Ice Queen

The dream starts out pleasantly, like a scene straight from a book of fairy stories: a castle of carved and gleaming ice rises around me, and snowflakes drift from the ceiling like falling stars. Some of them flowing and flowering, others sharp and crystalline. They glitter upon my fingertips, my cheeks, and I smile before catching one on my tongue.

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