Page 137

“Good,” he murmurs. “Very good. You seem to have forgotten how this arrangement works, so allow me to remind you: If I tell you to join your sister, you will join your sister. If I tell you to bring her back, you will bring her back.” He places his free handtenderly on her stomach, and the dank scent of Filippa’s fear spikes through the grotto. “If Itellyou to slit your mother’s throat, you will slit her throat, and what’s more—you will begratefulfor it because if you don’t, you will never meet this stupid fucking baby. Do you understand?”

Filippa blinks, recoiling slightly at the threat, before her entire body morphs—before it hardens, and she shifts from prey to predator within Death’s very hands. Leaning even closer, she bares her teeth at him in a chilling smile. “Yes.”

“That’s better.” Nodding once—his own smile tight—he caresses her stomach one last time, his breath fanning across her face. If he is trying to break my sister, however, we’ll be here all night, and already, the ache in my chest has deepened, throbbing now. It feels almost like a heartbeat, yet instead of pumping blood, it spreads... emptiness, a void, like a knife carving out my veins. The pain slows my thoughts, making it difficult to think, but—without Michal—I know that I am dying. The unbreakable bond has broken.

“Are you finished?” I ask flatly. “Should I jump now, or are you planning to ravish my sister in front of our dying mother?”

“Don’t be so dramatic. She is hardly dying anymore.” Death waves his hand, and my mother—who’d been gasping for breath in Odessa’s arms—manages to stand, supporting her own weight. Her breathing eases, and her color returns. Reid immediately moves to examine her with Lou on his heels, while Death releases Filippa with a shove in my direction. “Ticktock, ladies,” he says in a cool voice. “I shall care for your mother until your return.”

Our mother swells indignantly between Lou and Reid, but before she can charge toward us, can intervene, Filippa offers herhand. When I stare at her, making no move to accept, she rolls her eyes and snaps, “Take it.”

I have no desire to take my sister’s hand, however; in this moment, I’ve never desired anything less. Understanding my refusal implicitly, she scoffs and wriggles her fingers. “I do not offer my hand out ofaffection, ma belle. We need to enter the maelstrom together, lest it separate us. This is not my first trip to the realm of the dead.”

“I remember.” The emptiness spreading inside me has started to seethe, and sweat drips from my fingers—down my spine—in a way that should not affect a vampire. Perhaps I will follow Michal in the natural way instead; perhaps his loss will burn me from the inside out. “I am the one who took care of your arrangements—allof your arrangements.” Perhaps it is not the time or place to rehash the past, but my niceties vanished the instant I slid a knife through Michal’s heart. If I’m honest with myself, they should’ve vanished much sooner; my sister never deserved them at all. And perhaps it makes me spiteful, makes me cruel, but another truth falls from my lips in a rush of resentment. “I was the one you left behind.”

Filippa’s eyes flash. “Idied—”

“You were leaving either way.”

With that, I seize her hand just as she moves to rescind it, sliding my fingers through hers just like we did as children. “Will it hurt?” I ask her.

She shakes her head, focusing hard on the maelstrom instead of my face. “Dying is not scary, Célie.” We take one step together, then another, and I almost miss her next words as we leap into the heart of the waves. As we descend into the realm of the dead.

“Living is scarier.”

Between one blink and the next, Filippa and I fall easily, painlessly, and land like feathers atop a pillow of soft grass.

I roll onto my back, holding a hand over my eyes to shield them from a brilliant sun; it hangs above us in a pristine sky of purest cerulean. A deep sense of serenity permeates the air, accompanied by a warm summer breeze that wraps around my limbs, and—just like the thick oaks lining the distance, like their sweeping branches and lush foliage—I lift my face to it. That hollow inside my chest has disappeared, replaced by an overwhelming and inexplicable desire to stroll through the flowers, or perhaps to lounge on a bank of the nearby river.Strange.

Blinking slowly, I look around, trying and failing to place our surroundings. Wherearewe? Though I don’t know what I expected to find through the maelstrom, it certainly was not this. There are no revenants here, no creeping tendrils of decay; there is no eldritch haze to paint the flowers and trees in shades of gray. No snow and no ashes and no ghosts.

Instead the sound of rushing water, the scent of it, mingles with a faint hint of oranges.

This cannot be right.

I climb to my feet, turning in a slow circle to examine all sides of this—this place.A garden, I realize in a burst of awareness. And on the wings of that thought comes another, swifter still: I recognize it. I recognize death and its warm, golden light, though the gentle laughter from All Hallows’ Eve has vanished.This is where I would’ve gone.The thought lifts the hair on my nape, and I feel strange, but not—not frightened.

Instead adrenaline courses through my body with each beatof my heart until my lungs ache, and my vision blurs. I glance up at the sun again. It feels—hot. Uncomfortably so. My skin heats beneath its rays, but—no. I frown again.

No, that isn’t right.

That isn’t possible.

I rest a hand on my cheek to check my temperature, my forehead, my neck, and beneath my fingers—

“Oh God.” My voice comes out a croak as I glance at my sister, at her perfect and unblemished face. “Oh God, oh God, ohGod.”

“What is it?” Standing slowly, Filippa takes her time stretching each of her limbs. She hasn’t yet noticed that her skin,myskin, feels warm. And my heart—it’s beating in my chest, frantic and stuttering andalive. And—and I just saidGod. I marvel at the word. I said it—I said it four times—and my throat didn’t catch fire. I touch it again just to be sure, and my fingers come away free of blood. My injuries have healed too.

Gaping at my sister, I pray this isn’t a dream—that I’m not hallucinating—but the thought withers when she blinks back at me with two emerald eyes.

Two. Emerald. Eyes.

Disbelief rises as I stare at her pale face, smooth from forehead to chin without a single stitch in sight. Her soft pink lips twist into a frown, but it is abeautifulfrown. It isherfrown. A sob builds in my throat, but on the way to my mouth, it erupts instead as a squeal. “Filippa!”

She balks at the sound, her brows snapping together in alarm. “What is it? What’s wrong?” When I lunge toward her in reply, catching her hands and squeezing—withoutbreaking her bones—she rears backward in surprise, snatching them away just asquickly. “What are you doing? Get ahold of yourself, Célie. You’re acting like you’ve seen a—a—”

“A ghost?” Unable to resist my own excitement, I bounce a little on my toes. “Not quite. In fact, I’d say the opposite—feel your wrist, Pip.”