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We’re all waiting, even me—especiallyme, waiting and waiting for something to happen, for Michal to sweep to his feet and regard us with that cold and penetrating gaze, to mock us for accepting his death so easily. Any second now, he’ll wrench his heart from Odessa and slide it back in his chest before snapping her neck neatly in two. He’ll toss her into the revenant’s cage with Léandre, and he’ll force us to watch as the creature rips them both to pieces. Because he is Michal Vasiliev.

Hundreds have challenged him in his thousand-year reign, yethe alone remains—didn’t Odessa herself speak those words before All Hallows’ Eve?Here there is only darkness, and darkness is eternal.

Creeping numbness spreads though my limbs as I watch him now, willing his body to rise.

Any second.

When Odessa drops his heart, however, it hits the parquet floor with a sickening, mundane thud.

And something ruptures inside me.

Lurching to my feet, I fling aside Dimitri’s hand and bolt across the room, skirting around the revenant’s cage and skidding to a halt when Léandre rises up to meet me. All at once—like another spell shattering—everyone else moves too. Vampires dart from the shadows like cockroaches, some vanishing through the door and others swarming to Odessa, while Lou appears at my shoulder. I pray she doesn’t start bleeding again. “Célie—”

“He’s DEAD!” Shouts echo through the corridors now—screeches and inhuman shrieks—ricocheting from the walls with a feral sort of glee, of rage, of disbelief until the entire castle seems to vibrate with the calamitous news, until the streets below teem with it too. “The king is dead!”

Dead! Dead!

The king is dead!

“LONGUE VIE À LA REINE!”

“Long live the queen!” A vampire near us screams the words, cackling wildly as she flings the revenant’s cage open, and the winged creature lunges into the thick of the room, snapping and snarling—sinking its teeth deep into Léandre’s foot—before sprinting through the door and out of sight.

Odessa stares after it with wide eyes. “Fuck.”

Longue vie à la reine! LONGUE VIE À LA REINE!

“This is bad.” Lou seizes my hand and backs around the now-empty cage, her eyes darting frantically in search of an escape. “This is really bad. This wasn’t supposed to happen like—”

“Pasha! Ivan!” Odessa snaps her still-bloody fingers, and Pasha and Ivan attempt to detach themselves from the scores of guards pouring into the room, each adorned in their night-dark uniforms and golden crests—except it isn’t the dragon and cross any longer. Now two foxes dance around a pillar of flame with words I cannot read, and the realization dawns swiftly, intolerably, sickening in every way.This was planned.Raising her voice over the tumult, Odessa thrusts her hands toward the door and contorts to see Pasha and Ivan through the crowd, but Dimitri appears at her elbow instead. “The revenant!” She thrusts him toward the door, panicked. “Catchit! Do not let it escape!”

With a quick nod, he darts after it, and—and he knew too. Hemusthave known, which means everything he said in the grotto—

This was all planned.

“He’s DEAD!”

“Dead.”

“The king is dead!”

Lou’s hand grows slick in my own. “We need to get out of here.Now.”

Behind Odessa, a sallow-faced vampire tracks her movements with predatory intensity. She hasn’t noticed him. Amidst the chaos, no one has noticed him, yet when he strikes—lunging for her throat—Odessa shrieks and whirls, decapitating him with a single swipe of her hand. Her eyes glow with indignation. “Howdareyou? It has beenthirty secondsinto this regime—”

Snarling across the room, Pasha and Ivan shove their way toward her, and I—

I dart to Michal’s body.

Léandre’s friends descend after two steps, however, forming an ominous circle around me and Lou. Desperate now, I strain to see through the gaps in their elegant bodies, searching for any opportunity to break through them. Because we must reach Michal before they do. We must—help him somehow, protect him, though my thoughts skitter wildly at how to do either of those things when he—when he looks so—

Dead! Dead!

The king is dead!

The floor starts to tilt, and blood roars in my ears as Lou presses her back against mine. We might be outnumbered, outmatched, but she will not leave me; I will not leave him either. Furious pressure builds behind my eyes as the shrieks outside escalate. Lou is right, this is not good, yet Iwillreach Michal. If it kills me, I will drag his body from this place, and I will—my chest shudders—I will bury him. No one deserves to die alone in the corner, but especially not Michal.Not him.I choke on another sob, darting forward, refusing to yield even as the vampires block my path, hissing and leering in anticipation.Please not him.

“Look how she trembles.” Léandre’s eyes glint with fervor as he steps down from the cage overhead. Deliberately gentle, he takes my chin in his hand, guiding my gaze away from Michal with the ease and entitlement of an aristocrat. Beneath us, the floor tilts again, and I grip his wrist to steady myself. He raises his golden eyebrows with a condescending smile. “Oh, how quaint you are, Célie Tremblay. Howlovely. At last, we meet Michal’shuman pet—though not so human anymore, are you, my sweet? Still learning to be a vampire, yes?” He turns my face this way and that, examining it from every angle before exerting the barest pressure on my chin. I lift obediently to my toes, where I can see Michal’s body over his shoulder.I can see Michal.