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Chapter Fifty

The Necromancer

When my eyes snap open, I leap from the bed, panicked and disoriented, and almost lose my footing in the semidarkness. The embers of the fire still smolder gently, illuminating Lou sprawled across the same squashy armchair. Behind me, Coco fills the room with soft snores. Thank God. Exhaling a shaky breath, I lift a finger to my lips as Talon shifts on the mantel, blinking his beady eyes at me.

“Shhh,” I whisper to him. “I just—I need to talk to Michal.”

Though he clicks his beak in disapproval, I tiptoe up the stairs regardless, not pausing to don a robe and slippers. I don’t want to wake Lou and Coco. This could be nothing, after all—just a nightmare—and the last thing we need is another false alarm. My heart still threatens to palpitate, however, as I push open the door and step into the corridor.

“What are you doing?” Pasha’s harsh voice immediately greets me, and I whirl, clutching my chest and biting back a scream. His glare turns accusatory as he crosses his arms, as Ivan closes in behind me. Candlelight casts their faces in soft, flickering shadow. “You shouldn’t be out here, casse-couille. It’s almost sunrise.”

I take a step backward and collide with Ivan’s chest. “I n-need to see Michal. It’s urgent.”

He chuckles, but the sound lacks all good humor. It doesn’t even sound human. “Define urgent.”

“Please—”

“Célie?” Michal himself stalks up the corridor then, seeming to materialize from the darkness, and I nearly weep with relief at the sight of his frown. His pale hair appears tousled, as does his shirt, like he pulled it over his head in a hurry. “What happened? I thought I felt—”

“ Michal. ” Ducking around Ivan, I race to meet him, wringing my hands and trying to tell him everything at once. “I think I crossed the veil in my sleep, or—or maybe not—and I saw, well—it could’ve just been a dream, but—”

His black eyes search mine intently, and he catches my hands in his own. “Slow down. Breathe. ”

“Right.” I nod fervently and squeeze his fingers, struggling to ground myself in the corridor. In this moment and this reality. “It started as a dream, but everything was cold—unnaturally cold, just like when I cross the veil. And I think—I think I was inviting you to a garden party, but when I came to your room, there was this light .”

“You were in my room?” he asks, voice sharp.

I shrug helplessly. “I don’t know. I think maybe I was, but like I said, it could’ve been a—”

“It wasn’t.” Shaking his head curtly, he glances over my shoulder at Pasha and Ivan. His jaw hardens, and he leads me down the corridor and around a corner, down another set of stairs, away from their prying eyes and ears. “Or at least, it wasn’t just a dream. I felt you there. You”—he releases a harsh, incredulous breath—“touched my face.”

I stare up at him in horror as silence descends between us. Because I did touch his face, and if he felt it—if he felt me — “But it was a garden party,” I whisper. “There were roses and bottles of blood—”

“It might’ve started as a dream, but it didn’t end there. It sounds like some sort of astral projection. Have you ever crossed the veil in your sleep before?”

“Astral projection?” I repeat faintly. “I don’t—Michal, I don’t know what that is—I don’t know what any of this is—but the roses and blood vanished when I saw you. The dream became sharper somehow, and there was this light in the middle of the grotto.”

“You must’ve woken up.” His brow furrows, and I can practically see the gears turning in his mind. He doesn’t understand this any more than I do. “What happened after you saw this light?”

“I followed it out to the islet. I sort of—floated across the water, and Mila was there.” My hands tighten around his, and my eyes widen as the full scope of the scene returns in a wave of terror: my sister’s supine body, her peaceful expression, the hands crossed gracefully upon her chest. And the stitches. Bile surges at the memory, and I choke on it, unable to accept their existence—unable to accept that the Necromancer, that he— “We have to go back to the islet.” Pulling on his hands, I search desperately for any sign of his obsidian study doors, the suit of armor or the family tree. “The Necromancer is here , Michal. He brought my sister’s corpse to Requiem, and he hid it—hid her —in the cavern by your bedroom. We have to go there. We have to—to help her somehow—”

Even as I say the words, I realize how ridiculous they sound. Because how can we help my dead sister? How can she be here at all? Her body burned in the catacombs with all the others, and even before Coco’s Hellfire—there was nothing peaceful about Filippa’s face the last time I saw her. For Christ’s sake, half of it was missing . That her body could be here on Requiem is impossible, unthinkable, the sickest of all traps the Necromancer could’ve laid. And if it wasn’t a dream, it most certainly is a trap. The same grim realization spreads through Michal’s eyes as we stare at each other.

Before he even opens his mouth, despair punches through me like a knife—because of course I can’t ask him to put himself at risk; I shouldn’t even go myself , yet the thought of leaving Filippa’s body in the hands of the Necromancer makes me physically ill. Already, he has desecrated her. What else does he plan to do?

Michal exhales slowly, and the force of his gaze would knock me backward if he didn’t still hold my hands. “This could be dangerous,” he says.

“I know.”

“It could be a trap. Your sister might not be here at all. The Necromancer could have slipped into your mind somehow and altered your perception. He could do much worse with witchcraft.”

“She’s my sister, Michal.” I choke on the words, swallowing bile and remembering Filippa’s own words from so very long ago. I’ll never let the witches get you. Never. We couldn’t have known what the promise would cost us, but even then—at twelve years old—she meant it. She would’ve never left me to the Necromancer. Not even dead. “But if you’re right—if she isn’t here, and this is all an elaborate ruse—I need to make sure. I need to know .”

“But why ?” His eyes dart between mine in a desperate bid to understand. “Why risk it at all? Your sister is dead, Célie, and the Necromancer can’t resurrect her without your blood. If you go down there, you could be playing right into his hands. Unless”—he lowers his voice—“you want him to resurrect her?”

I stare at him in shock. In disbelief. Then, wrenching my hands away— “Of course I don’t want him to resurrect her! How could you even think that?”

“I had to ask—”

“You didn’t, but if you saw what I saw—if you knew what he’s done to her body—” But of course Michal doesn’t understand. I hardly understand myself. The risks should far outweigh the reward, yet the thought of the Necromancer keeping my sister’s corpse, mutilating it, is just as intolerable as him resurrecting her. “He can’t have her,” I say with ringing finality.

“Fine.” Michal speaks through his teeth with forced restraint, glancing up the stairs we just descended. For all I know, Pasha and Ivan could be listening beyond them, waiting for Michal’s instruction. “Then allow me to go and retrieve—”

“You aren’t going anywhere without me. I am the bait, remember? Our trap on the balcony didn’t work, but his —we can use it to our advantage, Michal. We know where the Necromancer will be, and we know what he wants. If go together, we have a greater chance of capturing him than ever before.”

“But the others—”

“Who knows what spies the Necromancer has in the castle now?” I throw my hands up in frustration—in panic —because he still doesn’t understand. My palms have grown damp with sweat now, as cold as the stone around us. They shine pale and bright in the torchlight. “If we alert the others, he might flee. He might take my sister and vanish into thin air, and who knows when he’ll next try again? Who knows what else he’ll do to her? I refuse to wait another week, another day, another moment to stop him. After Pip and... and Mila... and...”

“You.” Michal clamps his teeth together, flexing his jaw in thinly veiled patience. “He won’t stop hunting you until you’re dead. Do you understand that? Do you understand how this might end if we aren’t clever?” When I glare at him, resolute, he catches my hand once more, stroking my fingers as if trying to collect himself. To calm himself. “You’re determined to do this, aren’t you?” When I nod, he shakes his head and says, “Do you have a weapon in that nightgown, at least?”

I hitch my skirt up without hesitation, revealing the silver knife at my thigh. “Courtesy of Louise le Blanc.”

“Remind me to thank her.” With a low curse, he brushes a swift, hard kiss upon my forehead. “Promise me that you’ll stay close, and you’ll listen to everything I say.”

A frantic nod. “Of course.”

“I mean it, Célie. If we do this, we do it together.”

Together. Though the word itself solves nothing, it sounds inexplicably like hope, like a promise, and I squeeze his hand in response, breathless with it. “I swear.”

We stare at each other for another long moment. Then— “Close your eyes,” he says, and cool air rushes through my hair as I oblige.

When I open them again a moment later, we stand on the shore of the islet.

Though moonlight shines from the far end of the cavern, otherwise, the entire grotto lies dark and silent. Even the waves have fallen calm tonight, lapping gently against Michal’s boots.

The peculiar white light has gone.

I stumble out of his arms, unsheathing the knife from my thigh and searching the barren piece of rock. Not only has the light gone, but also the glass coffins. They’ve simply—vanished. Only damp, mica-flecked stone remains where they rose from the ground like pillars less than half an hour ago. “Do you have a witchlight?” I ask Michal desperately.

Without Filippa’s body, this can hardly be a trap, and if this isn’t a trap, perhaps—

My stomach sinks in hideous realization.

Perhaps it really was just a dream. Perhaps the Necromancer isn’t here at all, and I imagined the entire thing.

Frowning, Michal pulls the stone from his pocket. I snatch it from him before I can change my mind, thrusting it toward every corner of the islet. Nothing appears in response. My shoulders slump—my heart sinks—and crestfallen, I glance back at Michal. I felt so sure she would be here. So absolutely certain what I saw in my dream was real. Or perhaps—my chin quivers now, and I clamp my teeth shut, determined not to cry—perhaps I just wanted it to be.

Because even desecrated, even stitched together by a madman, I could’ve seen my sister again. Just for a moment, I could’ve pretended she still lived.

No. I could’ve pretended I kept my promise.

Slowly, I lower the witchlight to my side. Because I don’t know what I want anymore. I don’t even know what I’m doing here—or why I feel such bitter disappointment that I haven’t walked into a trap. “You were right,” I whisper at last. “I’m sorry. She isn’t—”

“Wait.” Frown deepening, Michal steps farther onto the islet. His nostrils flare. “I smell blood magic.”

Blood magic.

The words crash over me like a club to the head, and I dart forward to clutch his sleeve. Of course. “Are you sure?”

He nods again, his eyes narrowing as he studies the air in front of us. “I’ve never scented it stronger.”

Warily, he stretches out a hand, and instead of passing through thin air as it should, it—it thunks against something. My mouth falls open. Hastily, I too fling out a hand, and my fingers collide with cool, smooth glass. Gasping, I drag them left and right to gauge the size, the breadth, of the invisible object before me. “It’s a coffin,” I breathe after several seconds, my voice tinged with disbelief. “Michal, it’s a coffin .”

He doesn’t answer, and when I pull my fingers away, they’re covered in blood.

As if I’ve uttered a magic word, the coffin materializes on a platform before me, and inside it, Pippa lies just as cold and still as ever. My heart twists, leaps, nearly cleaves in two as I gaze down at her. Even in death, her raven hair falls exactly as I remember it. Her rose lips are just as full. If not for the gruesome stitches down one side of her face, she might only be sleeping—an enchanted maiden waiting for her prince.

My bloody fingers press harder upon the glass. They further smear the strange symbol I never noticed in my dream: an eye with a line slashing through it in blood. Pure, unadulterated hatred pounds through my veins as I realize the Necromancer must’ve drawn it there. He must’ve known I’d come. “Can you help me with the lid?” I ask Michal in a low, fierce voice. The Necromancer will not have my sister, and he will not have me either. “We need to move her body before he comes back—”

A choking sound is his only answer, and I whirl, confused.

The tip of a silver blade protrudes from his chest.

It takes several seconds for the sight of it to penetrate—for my mind to understand the darkness seeping across his shirt, for my eyes to widen in horrified disbelief. Though I reach for him instinctively, he staggers backward, staring down at the knife as if he doesn’t understand it either. Blood spills from his mouth.

“ Michal. ”

I rush for him now, but someone seizes my nightgown from behind, wrenching it backward until I collide with someone’s chest. Though I try to whirl—stabbing wildly—Babette slams my hand against Filippa’s coffin, and the silver knife slips from my fingertips. It skids across the ground and knocks into a polished boot.

“I didn’t want to do that,” says a horribly familiar voice. “I hoped you would come alone.”

Wrenching his Balisarda from between Michal’s shoulders, wiping the blood on the blue of his pants, Frederic steps into the glow of my witchlight, and his smile is more genial than I’ve ever seen.

Upon his wrist, he bears the same smeared eye as the coffin, and this— this can’t be happening . Perhaps I’m dreaming again—or—or something else, something sinister—because Frederic cannot be a blood witch. Because Frederic cannot be here , on this islet, with the hidden corpse of my sister.

“Hello, ma belle,” he says fondly. “This might come as a shock, but you have no idea how much I’ve wanted to meet you. Properly, this time”—lifting his Balisarda, he shakes his head with what looks like regret —“without all the trickery. Would you believe I consider you something of a sister too?”

With a casual thrust of his hand, he pushes Michal into the water, and I watch, frozen, as the immortal, all-powerful vampire king reels backward, as he clutches his bloody chest with a desiccating hand.

Frederic must’ve grazed his heart.

No.

My entire body seizes at the possibility, and I can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t stop that deathly gray from creeping up his wrist. My mind refuses to believe it. Babette still holds me fast, however, and though I lunge toward him, her grip never falters. No. No no no no NO—

In the next second, Michal falls backward, slipping beneath the water without another sound.

Gone.

I press against Babette’s chest, staring at the spot where he used to be.

“Truth be told, I feel like I already know you. Pip was right. You have the exact same eyes.” Frederic’s voice—still affable, almost warm —reaches me as if through a long tunnel, impossible to hear. Because the water into which Michal vanished has stopped rippling. Another wave crests upon the rock. It erases every trace of him until nothing remains at all. Not even me. “It killed me to look at them every day in Chasseur Tower.”

Michal is gone.

“I’m sorry, Célie,” Babette murmurs.

“As am I.” Sighing, Frederic clicks his tongue in sympathy before pulling a syringe from his pocket. Vaguely, I recognize it from Chasseur Tower. The healers there once experimented with hemlock as a means of incapacitating witches, but the poison never differentiated between who used magic and who did not. I used the same injection on Morgane le Blanc. “But you never should’ve been with someone like that, Célie. Filippa wouldn’t have approved.”

My gaze snaps to his at her name. “Don’t talk about my sister,” I snarl.

“The same stubbornness too.” His gaze drifts over my face with a sense of deep longing. It lingers on my ivory skin, my emerald eyes, before he reaches out to capture a lock of my dark hair, testing it between his fingers. When I snap at his hand—unable to shove him away—the longing in his own eyes shifts, sharpens, into something altogether more harrowing. “Your eye will be the perfect match after I’ve brought her back.”

Sharp pain pricks in my shoulder, and the entire world goes dark.