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“And did you everreadJosephine’s grimoire?”

Mathilde leers in evident pride. “Of course I did. She might’ve been powerful, but I was a plucky thing, even then. I snuck intoher tent and flipped through it every chance I got. Tried to tear a page out of it once, but the damned thing refused to give it to me—so I copied it down instead.” With a wince and a flick of her wrist, a single sheaf of parchment appears between her fingers. “She took my blood for it, after all.”

Yellowed with age, the parchment carries childish handwriting in faded black ink, with a familiar title across the top:

A SPELL TO RESURREKT THE DEAD

Recognition flares, and I lean forward to tug the page from her grasp, skimming it eagerly. Frederic’s scratch marks are absent in this version—Mathilde would’ve copied the spell before he was born—but the chillingBlood of Deathremains the same. I turn the page over in search of something else, something new about the revenants, but find nothing. Michal bends to examine it over my shoulder, and even Guinevere pauses in curling a ringlet around her finger to listen.

“Is this it?” I look to Mathilde, crestfallen. “You—you really don’t know how to defeat them?”

“More words in my mouth,” she says irritably, snatching the page back. “You asked about her grimoire, and I answered you. What you’ve forgotten, silly girl, is that I lived with La Voisin. Do you think I let her steal my blood without learning how she put it to use? Do you think I didn’t know her tricks? OfcourseI did. I followed her that night, and I watched her resurrect that corpse. I watched it nearly bludgeon her unconscious too, watched it take a bite out of her leg before she managed to kill it again—permanently this time.”

“How did she do it?” Michal asks with an edge to his voice.

But—something niggles at the back of my mind, growing more insistent with each word she says. I’d never thought of it before, never questioned how any of the spells in La Voisin’s grimoire came to be. In wake of Mathilde’s explanation, however, it seems painfully obvious—ofcourseLa Voisin would’ve tested each one. She wouldn’t have committed any of them to her precious grimoire if they hadn’t proved successful, which means... “Did she tear a hole through the veil too?” I ask urgently.

Mathilde’s eyes snap to mine. “That, petal, is the more interesting question.”

The bear at the pond lifts its head.

“When Josephine resurrected that poor man, she tore a hole through the veil, all right, but asmallone—it healed itself the instant she incinerated him. Turned him to powder,” she adds in answer to Michal’s question. “Fire.It’ll kill any undead creature, won’t it? Ashes to ashes, and all that. Vampire, revenant—doesn’t matter in the end.” She waves a dismissive hand, but nothing in her words feels trivial to me. Instead my skin crawls at the implication. Worse still is that niggle at the back of my mind. It insists I look at it—acknowledge it—but I refuse, recoiling from it instinctively.

When Josephine resurrected that poor man, she tore a hole through the veil, all right.

It healed itself the instant she incinerated him.

Though Michal’s hard gaze settles upon my face, I refuse to look at him too. “Is there no way to help them?” he asks. “Only death?”

Mathilde skewers him with a pointed look. “They’re alreadydead, Michal. We can only outrun it for so long—outrunhim. No one lives forever.”

A heaviness settles over the garden with her words, and even the plants seem to wilt just a little more.

Mathilde doesn’t seem to notice, instead continuing without missing a beat: “But the hole that night is nothing—nothing—compared to whatever opened on All Hallows’ Eve. I’ve never sensed anything like it, which leads me to believe something went wrong with that spell of Frederic’s.” She pauses significantly, her eyes bright as they find mine. “Or something went very, very right.”

Neither Michal nor I question how she knows about the grotto and Frederic. This is exactly the information we needed. Mathilde has given us a way to protect Requiem, Belterra too, and now we can start mending all those little rips of which Mila spoke.Fire. It’ll kill any undead creature, won’t it?

Why, then, do I feel so sick?

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I turn to look at Michal. “What do you think?”

Guinevere floats to the armrest of his chair, resting her chin on her fist and glaring at him in unabashed resentment. “Yes, Michal, whatdoyou think about your dead lover and her dead sister?”

I flinch at that, but Michal ignores her, searching my face for a long moment—or perhaps a single second—before his gaze drifts past me to the pond. His jaw clenches. “I think it’s time to leave.”

It seems our truce is over.

That lump in my throat spreads, almost choking me now. I cannot bring myself to move. I cannot bring myself to leave. When I do, everything will change again; everything will break.

We can only outrun it for so long.

“The first agreeable thing you’ve said all morning.” Heedless, Mathilde slaps her hands against the table and uses them to push to her feet. “D’Artagnan will escort you from my property.”

“D’Artagnan?” Frowning, I glance toward the bear as it lumbers to its feet. Sure enough, its—his—eyes gleam familiar and amber from the thick black fur of his face. When he makes an odd chuffing noise that sounds like laughter, I recognize his voice. His sharp teeth. My heart pitches to my feet.

“I told you to beware of your sister.”

Chapter Twenty-Five