Page 94 of The Shadow Bride

His previous words echo as if from a great distance, despite how I nearly clip his heel.I’m afraid I need your help with a little experiment.

Oh God. Ohno. I shake my head to clear it, convinced I’ve misunderstood, but—but why else would he need my help?Myhelp, specifically? Why else would he break his deal with Filippa to bring me here? Though I desperately try to remain calm, my voice still climbs an octave too high as I say, “You want to resurrect La Voisin.”

It isn’t a question, but he answers it all the same, slipping the grimoire from his pocket and lifting it into the air without looking at me. Strolling through the trees without a care in the world. He even starts towhistle. “I knew you were clever.”

My eyes widen on the hateful little book, and I wrack my thoughts for a way to—to distract Death somehow, to delay him as long as I can. “But Frederic—the ritual required his magic too. It required a blood witch. You’ll need one in order to—”

“Alas, your blood is the only requirement.”

“What aboutyours?” I ask without thinking—because truly, it doesn’t matter whose blood he uses, only that he uses no blood at all. We cannot allow anyone else to rise from the grave, andespeciallynot Josephine Monvoisin. “Or—or do you not have any? Blood, I mean.”

“At the risk of encouraging that stupid idea in your head”—he glances back at me, arching a brow and returning the grimoire to his pocket—“yes, I have blood in this body, but it would be equally foolish to attack me. Death cannot die.” Disappointment must flash across my face because he chuckles darkly, then extends his hands to the forest around us. “And Ihaveused my blood, Célie darling, or did you think yours created all of our new friends?”

Though I refuse to acknowledge the revenants around us, I can still see them moving in my periphery, and they far outnumber my original estimation. Again, both relief and dread crest through me at the realization—because these revenants aren’t my fault, and because—

I swallow hard.

Because who knows how many Death has created.

“Please—” I lengthen my strides to keep pace with him. “Whatever it is you’re planning, I implore you to reconsider. The veil is already in pieces, and if you resurrect—”

I come to an abrupt halt, however, after bursting into a grove of birch trees and nearly colliding with Death’s back. My mouth parts in shock. In awe. All around us, whitewashed pots sway gently upon ethereal branches, and I recognize both with a sickening bolt of clarity. “No,” I whisper, retreating an instinctive step.

We shouldn’t be here.

This grove—it is sacred to les Dames Rouges, forbidden tooutsiders except by explicit invitation. I should know. Cloaked in scarlet, I accompanied Coco here on the night after the Battle of Cesarine—along with Lou, Reid, Beau, even Jean Luc—and it was one of the most mournful and unsettling experiences of my life.To honor her blood, Coco told us, cutting open her chest and using her own to paint strange markings upon her mother’s pot,and its magic.

Ascension.

It is the last rite of a Dame Rouge, in which loved ones lift the witch’s ashes to their final resting place, freeing their spirit and granting them eternal peace. Typically, the entire camp would join the bereaved for the ritual—and a silent vigil beforehand at the deceased’s pyre—but the circumstances surrounding this ascension had been different. Secret.

Coco ascended her mother, yes, but she was never meant to ascend her aunt too.

Unbidden, my eyes drift to the farthest corner of the grove, where two pots hang alone.

Death turns slowly to face me, his silver eyes almost glowing in the muted light. “Something the matter?”

I take a deep, calming breath and hold it, forcing myself to remain exactly where I am. I cannot flee. That much is clear. I also cannot help him, no matter the consequences. “Why do you want to talk to La Voisin?”

His eyes narrow as he considers me for a moment, as he tilts his head in contemplation. “All right, Célie,” he says at last. “In another show of good faith—in an offer offriendship—I will confess that her grimoire has been... less useful than I’d hoped.” His attention flits to the pots overhead. There are no names todistinguish them, no identifiers whatsoever as to whose remains could hide within. As if realizing the same, he adds irritably, “I might never have killed Frederic if I’d known how prosaic this would all become without him.”

“And this”—I gesture to the pots, the grove—“has something to do with your experiments on my sister?”

“It has everything to do with my experiments on your sister.” Death bends to examine a particularly low-hanging pot, this one adorned with dove feathers around the mouth. “Surely you’ve realized Filippa is different. She can think, even reason, beyond the base impulses of a revenant.” He lifts a shoulder—the portrait of indifference—but his eyes shine a bit too brightly as he studies the painted markings. “I want to know why.”

“And you think La Voisin can tell you that?”

“Among other things.”

“Whatother things?”

“Perhaps she can tell us why the hole Frederic and Filippa tore through the veil is so... different than the others.”

I frown at him, startled.Different than the others.It’s true, of course, but I never attributed the difference to Frederic and Filippa specifically. My mind catches on the thought; it snags, but I cannot follow the thread with Death standing in front of me. Not when he curses at each pot bearing the exact same markings. “Fucking blood witches,” he says.

Edging around him to avoid the sunlight, I say, “If their absence is any indication, I—I don’t think they like you much either.”

Death grins as he straightens to inspect another pot. “Oh, I’ll find them eventually. Never fearthat.”

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