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My eyes widen in horror, however, as Jean Luc reaches the isle at last.

Like Odessa, he doesn’t hesitate, unsheathing his Balisarda and diving straight for Frederic. Snarling again, Dimitri blocks him, but Reid sprints forward with a silver knife of his own. And Odessa—she rises from the water like a vengeful spirit, her eyes narrowing when Jean Luc and Reid attack her brother.

Before either can even move, she hurls Reid into Filippa’s coffin, which topples over with Filippa still inside. My sister’s body rolls across the stone, her limbs sickeningly limp—end over end—before coming to a halt near the water. Frederic lunges after her with a curse.

“We have to do something!” Even as I shriek the words, however, the golden light continues to fade, hardly a light at all now. My heart lodges in my throat. Because how can I possibly leave them? How can Ileave? My gaze darts wildly between their faces.

Jean Luc lands a blow against Odessa, and her skin sizzles as she tries to evade him, to protect her brother’s back. Reid has vaulted to his feet and now circles Dimitri, searching for an opening to Frederic, who clutches Filippa in his arms.

And Michal—Michal pulls himself to my coffin just as Coco and Beau arrive.

“You need todecide, Célie.” Without warning, Mila seizes my shoulders and shakes me in earnest, distracting me from my friends. “You can’t help them now, and your time is almost up. Do you understand me?” She shakes me harder when I struggle to move past her, to find a way tohelp. “If you don’t choose now, you’ll lose your chance forever. There’s nothing you cando—”

But events have spiraled dangerously out of control. Everywhere I look, my friends attack each other. Beau swings wildly at Dimitri, but the vampire knocks the sword from his hand like achild with a tin soldier. Eyes wide, frenzied, he then yanks Beau toward him, sinking his teeth into the soft flesh of Beau’s throat. Coco and Odessa scream in unison, and both launch themselves at Dimitri at the same time. Odessa reaches him first.

With another inhuman snarl, he flings Beau aside and snaps his sister’s neck.

Even Mila shrieks now, releasing my shoulders and flying forward—determined to stop him—as Coco catches Beau and the two roll into the water. The golden light flickers once, twice, but Odessa—I can’t leave her. Though I drop to my knees, Mila shoves me toward the last of the golden light. “Go, Célie! Odessa will heal!”

“I can’t—”

“GONOW!”

When I shoot into the air, however, the two walls of water that Lou held at bay crash together in a cataclysmic wave. Water floods the islet, and Jean Luc slips in the current, seizing Dimitri’s legs as the sea bears them both away. Reid clings to Filippa’s coffin as Lou steps onto the last bit of stone. Her eyes blaze with fury at the scene before her: Coco towing Beau to shore, Odessa lying prone, Michal clinging to my coffin, and Frederic and Filippa—

Gone.

With a hollow, sinking sensation, I realize they’ve taken the last of the golden light with them. My chest gives one last, shuddering breath before falling silent too. No one notices, however.

No one except Michal.

He leans over my body, his beautiful, ashen face crumpling at the exact second my heart fails. He can hear it. He knows.His forehead collapses against mine in defeat, and I cannot help it—I shift closer, rapt, as his lips begin to move. “Please stay,” he breathes.

With the last of his strength, he drags a hand through the blood on his chest and presses it to my lips.

Epilogue

It is a curious thing, the scent of memory. It takes only a little to send us back in time—a trace of orange juice on my fingers, a hint of faded parchment under my bed. Each reminds me of childhood in its own strange way. I would sneak into the garden at midnight to pick the oranges, peeling them in the moonlight and eating them fresh. On the parchment, I would write my own fairy tales and keep them secret from my sister, tucking them into the shadows beneath my bed. Hiding them there.

She wouldn’t have understood their meaning. How could she? I hardly understood those stories myself—tales of swans and magic mirrors, yes, but also of betrayal and death. In some, my heroines would triumph, conquering great evil and dragging their prince back from Hell. In others, the prince himself would be great evil, and he and my heroine would rule Hell together, hand in hand and side by side.

Those stories were always my favorite.

When I wake that morning, the first thing I see is snow. It falls thickly, silently, from an overcast sky, and it kisses my cheeks in a gentle caress. It softens the sound of waves. Calloused fingers brush the hair from my face as I sit up, glancing around the boat. “How do you feel?” a deep, familiar voice asks.

The sound of that voice should set my heart racing. I never thought I would hear it again.

My heart, however, remains quiet. It remains still, and if I listen hard enough, I might think it doesn’t beat at all.

“Hungry,” I say, accepting the gilt mirror in his hand.

Though he tucks the blanket tighter beneath my legs, concerned, I do not feel it. In truth, I do not feel anything—not the cold, nor the warmth, nor even the heady rush of his touch. It set me aflame once. It dragged me down to Hell.

Lifting the mirror now, I gaze upon my reflection in the snow. I trace the row of dark stitches, examine the pale skin that is not my own—the slightly lighter brow and the emerald eye—and I smile.

Perhaps we can rule it together.