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Chapter Twenty-Eight

To Go Below

I dress in scarlet as an act of rebellion. It’s a small thing, perhaps a trivial one, but just because I’m working with Michal doesn’t mean I’m working for him. It feels important to start on equal footing, to remind him that he cannot simply order me around like I’m his servant, or worse—I tug at the silk bodice irritably—his pet .

When I meet him in his study at seven o’clock sharp, he appraises my gown with a wry look, as if trying not to grin. My eyes narrow to slits. “Red is my favorite color,” I tell him haughtily.

Silhouetted in the doorway, he fastens his black traveling cloak with deft fingers. “Liar.”

“I am not lying.” A pause. “How do you know when I’m lying?”

“You make too much eye contact. It’s disconcerting.” He plucks another thick black cloak from a hook by the door, holding it aloft and gesturing for me to slip my arms through the sleeves. Startled, I do just that, hesitating when he says, “Is there nothing I can say to change your mind?”

The burns across his face have vanished, as have the ones on his hand, leaving behind only smooth, pale skin. My stomach turns slightly at the sight. They’ll remain until I drink something stronger than absinthe. Perhaps Arielle visited him again. Perhaps someone else. The thought brings bile to my throat, and I pull away from his touch, chastising myself inwardly. I didn’t think to bring my own cloak, a beautiful creation of ivory wool and silver buttons. I’d been too determined for Michal to see the scarlet. “Not a thing.”

Unable to conceal his smirk any longer, he brushes past me into the corridor. “As you wish.”

“Why did you want me to wear green?” I ask him suspiciously.

His only answer is a dark chuckle.

As when we arrived in Requiem, a single ship floats in the harbor. Michal doesn’t pause to see if I follow as he strides up the gangplank to the sailors who stack simple wooden boxes along the bow. Clutching a stitch in my side, cursing Michal and his preternatural speed, I hasten to follow. My teeth ache from the bitter wind. “Michal! Could you please slow—?”

The question dies on my tongue, however, as the wooden boxes take shape in the lamplight. I skid to a halt atop the main deck, staring at them. “Caskets,” I breathe.

They’re stacking caskets.

Michal’s traveling cloak billows behind him as he turns. “Yes. Requiem, Ltd., is the majority supplier of caskets to Belterra.” When he smiles, his fangs glint coldly in the bolt of lightning overhead. Already, freezing mist coats our clothes, our hair. The storm tonight promises to be a nasty one. “We have quite the monopoly on the market. No one can compete with our prices. Come along.” His gaze flicks irritably toward the sky. “The storm is almost upon us.”

A deafening clap of thunder sounds in response, and I jolt forward, catching his sleeve as he speaks a command to one of the sailors. They work in that same rhythmic fashion as before—clearly under compulsion—stacking and stacking and stacking the caskets until I can hardly see beyond the deck. “M-Michal.” My teeth chatter now, and my entire body trembles. It isn’t from the cold. “Why do you need to export c-caskets?”

“We don’t,” he says shortly, frowning and leading me belowdecks to the ballroom. Though someone has lit another lantern here, the light does nothing to assuage the knot in my chest. It only illuminates more caskets—these grander than the ones upstairs, carved from ebony and sandalwood with gilt trim, silk and satin linings. “We export them to smuggle vampires into Cesarine. Inspectors rarely look inside the caskets.” A distant part of my mind registers that he says rarely instead of never , but I can’t worry about those inspectors who do look inside. Not right now. “It’s much simpler this way. Cleaner. After the ship passes inspection, we slip into the city without notice. We won’t need to climb inside for another couple of hours, however. Not until we near the city.” He slips leather gloves from his pocket and hands them to me. “Here. Take these.”

But gloves are useless against the cold that grips me.

“Michal, I can’t—” The words die as my gaze lands on the coffin nearest him. It looks just like Filippa’s: rosewood, with two life-sized swans carved atop the lid, each wearing a laurel crown. Did Requiem, Ltd., produce her coffin too? Hot sick rushes up my throat at the thought, and I clamp my mouth shut to stop from vomiting all over Michal’s pristine boots. “I—I can’t just climb into a casket. I can’t.”

“I remember.” At this, he withdraws something else from his pocket—a strange glowing jewel. Perfectly round, it looks almost opaline, shot through with veins of luminous white and iridescent hues of blue, green, and purple. “Here. The last of the witchlights. A show of good faith from La Dame des Sorcières of old.” He presses the jewel into my hand, and another boom of thunder drowns out the sailors’ shouts as the ship lurches out to sea. When I tumble sideways, Michal steadies my arm, casting a dark look at the ceiling. “Along with the weather.”

I thrust the jewel back at him with trembling hands. Because light won’t help inside a casket . Nothing will keep away the scent of death, the feel of Pippa’s brittle hair in my mouth. Already, I choke on it, stumbling back a frantic step and knocking into the casket behind me. With a strangled noise, I leap sideways— away from it—but I trip on my cloak and nearly crash to my knees instead.

Michal catches my elbows before I can fall.

His brows draw together as I sink to the floor anyway. He descends with me, kneeling now, his eyes tracking the rapid rise and fall of my chest. I know my pupils have dilated. His nostrils flare, and I know he scents my fear. I can do nothing to stop it, however, nothing to battle my body’s response when all I can see are coffins . When all I can smell is summer honey and rot . “What is it?” he asks in confusion. “What’s wrong?”

No one is coming to save us.

“I c-can’t get into a casket, Michal. Please, there must be another way.”

His frown deepens. “Your fiancé has ships all over these waters looking for you. The king has ordered inspections of every vessel. Squadrons of soldiers patrol the kingdom as we speak, and both huntsmen and witches alike scour the streets of Cesarine on orders from the Archbishop and La Dame des Sorcières. You’re the most sought-after person in the whole of Belterra—and that doesn’t even include the vicomte, who has offered a reward of a hundred thousand couronnes for your safe return. I believe you’re familiar with him.”

A shuddering laugh wracks my frame.

Yes, I’m familiar with him.

Lord Pierre Tremblay, humble servant of the Church and Crown, devoted husband and father, and a man I haven’t spoken to in almost a year. Under different circumstances, his reward of a hundred thousand couronnes for his daughter’s return might be touching. As it is, the vicomte doesn’t have two couronnes to rub together, and I still remember his last words to me, low and furious: No daughter of mine will disgrace herself with the Chasseurs. I won’t allow it. Do you hear me? You will not be joining—

“I can compel ordinary men to forget your face,” Michal says, replacing my father’s baleful green eyes with his black ones, “but if a Chasseur or Dame Blanche sees you, I’ll have to kill them.”

“No.” Gasping, I struggle to my feet, and Michal releases me instantly. “No killing.”

In any case, the risk is too great; we have no idea who’ll inspect this ship, and if anyone recognizes me, they’ll drag me back home to West End. I’ll never uncover the truth about the killer. I’ll never make sense of my strange new ability or the looming darkness, never have another chance to prove myself to my parents and Jean Luc and Frederic. I’ll be thrust once more into a glass box—no, locked —and this time, my parents will throw away the key.

No. That cannot happen.

My eyes dart wildly for another solution and land upon Odessa’s desk in the center of the ballroom. Her mountain of scrolls still lie atop it, but beside them, glinting dully in the lantern’s light—

Another bottle of absinthe.

Thank God. My heart leaps, and I lunge for the foul green liquid as if my life depends on it. When my hand closes around the bottle, however, Michal’s hand closes around my wrist. He shakes his head with a sardonic twist of his lips. “I don’t think so.”

“Let me go .” Though I jerk and twist to weaken his hold, it remains unbreakable. Surprisingly light, yes, but unbreakable all the same. I lift my chin. “I changed my mind. I can do this. I can climb into a casket.”

He snorts derisively. “With absinthe?”

“ You drink it.”

“I drink all manner of things that you don’t, and let me assure you—absinthe is perhaps the most offensive among them. Have you ever tried it?”

“No.” I plant my feet determinedly, stubbornly, and at last, he allows me to wrench the bottle away from him. I clutch it to my chest. “I stole a sip of my mother’s wine once, though. It can’t be much different.”

Michal stares as if I’ve lost my mind, perhaps plucked it from my head and tossed it out the window. And perhaps I have. Perhaps I don’t care. I wrestle with the bottle’s cork beneath his critical gaze, just managing to unstopper it when a distant crash sounds outside.

Both of our faces snap upward.

“What was—?” I start to ask.

In the blink of an eye, however, Michal disappears up the stairs. I hasten to follow, clumsy and slow in his wake, and some of the absinthe spills onto my hands. Its spicy scent—anise and fennel and something else—wrinkles my nose as I dart up the stairs and skid to a halt on the quarterdeck, sliding a little in the rain. It comes down in great sheets now, as if God himself pours buckets of it upon our heads. In seconds, it soaks me to the skin, but I push sopping hair from my face to follow Michal’s line of sight.

To the north, just visible through the gale, another ship struggles to remain aloft in fifty-foot waves. Its foremast has splintered in the winds, and the entire vessel pitches sideways, precariously close to capsizing. My entire body goes cold with realization.

“Michal!” The wind carries away my shout, however, and I duck swiftly as another bolt of lightning flashes. Caskets slide in every direction. The crew—half-drowned—rush to secure them, but even compulsion is no match for the storm. With another earsplitting crack, one wooden box crashes into another, and both pitch over the railing and into the sea. “Michal!” Wind tearing at my cloak and hair, I fight to reach him, to seize his arm. “That ship—the entire crew is going to drown if we don’t—”

“We cannot help them.”

At his words, the splintered mast of the other ship separates completely, and a vicious swell drags the bow under, along with half of the ship’s crew. The other men shout and charge forward to secure the vessel, but it’s too late. Their ship sinks in earnest now. In the next second, lightning strikes another mast, and its sails spark and catch fire. Horror fills my belly at the sight, and my hand tightens on Michal’s sleeve. “But we have to help them! Michal!”

But he only gestures dispassionately to the churning water around us. Sharp, broken bits of other ships pierce the waves like tombstones rising up in a cemetery. And that’s what it is, I realize—a cemetery. “There is no saving them,” Michal says. “No one finds Requiem except those who are born or created there.”

“ What? ”

“The isle is secret, Célie.” Voice curt, Michal turns his back on the sinking ship, on the dying men, but I can’t tear my eyes away. He seizes my elbow and steers me to the sheltered alcove by the stairs. “Your precious Louise’s ancestor cast a spell of protection around it many years ago. Most simply drift off course when they near Requiem, but others—like our friends here—are too skilled to be dissuaded. And so the enchantment kills them. They never reach the isle.”

“It—it kills them?” I repeat in disbelief.

“Except on a witch’s holy days.” Lightning bleaches Michal’s hair bone white, casting shadows beneath his eyes and cheeks, and when his mouth twists viciously, he truly looks like a denizen of Hell. “A clever loophole, that. La Dame des Sorcières claimed it as a protection for her people—a counterbalance to the enchantment. For three weeks of the year, Requiem lies completely exposed and vulnerable to the outside world.” He arches a meaningful brow. “Samhain is one of those days.”

I clench the bottle of absinthe so hard that my fingers ache. The sea has claimed all but the ship’s stern now. My stomach plummets as the men’s shouts fade beneath the roaring wind, the deafening thunder. Though I stumble forward, determined to—to help them somehow, to lower the lifeboat, I manage only three steps before Michal catches my cloak and drags me back to shelter. A wave surges up and over the handrail a half second later. I cling to him helplessly as our ship pitches in response. “So Lou and the others—they won’t be able to pass through the enchantment until All Hallows’ Eve?”

“At midnight precisely.”

“And if they come early?”

Together, our eyes follow the last man as the sea swallows him whole. “Pray they don’t,” Michal says simply.

By the time he finishes speaking, the entirety of the ship and its crew have vanished. Just... vanished. My heart beats a heavy, painful rhythm in my chest. It’s like they never existed at all.

We stay that way for another long moment, staring out at the waves as wind and rain lash around us. I only realize that I still clutch Michal when he firmly disentangles himself and turns to stalk belowdecks. At the last second, however, he hesitates, casting an unreadable look over his shoulder. “The lifeboat wouldn’t have saved them,” he says.

My chest aches because it’s true.

And when he disappears down the stairs, I lift the bottle of absinthe to my lips and drink.