Page 54

Chapter Fifty-One

Frostine and Her Summer Prince

When I wake, I see the world through a haze of bloody scarlet.

It tinges everything—the glass coffin above me, the cavern walls beyond, the witchlight I still clutch in my hand. Though my fingers twitch around it, they feel heavier than usual, clumsier. Just like my thoughts. It takes several muddled seconds for me to remember what happened.

Filippa.

Frederic.

Michal and Babette and her—

My heart gives a slow, painful tha-thump .

Her injection.

Oh God. Though the hemlock still runs thick through my veins—I can almost feel it congealing—I force my head to turn anyway, force myself to blink, to focus on the scene around me. My hands spasm with the effort.

Someone has changed my nightgown into an ensemble of opulent scarlet lace. The matching veil is what obscures my vision now. With tremendous effort, I lift it from my eyes, pull it off and away from my hair, but the movement costs me. Weakened, my arm falls back to my side, and I’m forced to stare—defeated—into the empty face of my sister. She still lies in the glass coffin beside mine. Beyond her, Frederic sits in a lifeboat with that same smeared eye drawn on the hull; he pores over the grimoire as the boat bobs gently with the waves. An empty bowl and wickedly sharp carving knife sit beside him, while his Chasseur coat and Balisarda lie forgotten at his feet. Discarded. My heart pounds furiously at the sight of them. They were only ever a disguise, anyway. A ruse.

Come now , he once told me. Does it not feel like you’re playing dress-up?

Adrenaline pours through me in a great wave of humiliation and fury.

Frederic is the Necromancer.

In my wildest dreams, I never would’ve thought it possible—not with all his talk of honoring the cause and reforming the brotherhood , but of course—my stomach clenches viciously—a Balisarda positioned him in a way nothing else could. With it, he gained access not only to Chasseur Tower but also to information about every creature in the kingdom. He would’ve needed that access to begin his... experiments, and if his purpose was always to resurrect Filippa, what better way to start than by earning the trust of his enemies? He was the one who found the first body, after all. In Babette’s own words, the circumstances were just too neat. Too perfect.

And I... I’ve been so oblivious.

My heart continues to pump the hemlock through my body in a treacherous, brutal rhythm, but instead of further weakening me, my limbs seem to be growing stronger. Blood rushes through my ears. He probably plans to find my body too, identical to the others, and present it to Jean Luc before weeping alongside him at my funeral. Closed casket, of course. Just like Filippa’s.

I’ll never let the witches get you. Never.

My vision tunnels on his profile, and I push against the coffin lid as quietly as possible. It doesn’t budge. I try again, harder this time, but the glass remains fixed all around me, resolute. Magic , I realize bitterly. He used the same to lure me here, to render himself and Babette and everything invisible. My eyes dart to the grimoire in his hands.

“Where is Babette?”

Even to my own ears, my voice rings out surprisingly strong, and Frederic lifts his head in surprise. “Well, well,” he says, clearly impressed that my body has worked through the hemlock. “The princess woke much sooner than expected. Makes this rather more difficult, but if you prefer to be awake...”

He shrugs, snapping the grimoire shut before lifting his sleeve. A fresh cut already glistens upon his forearm, and he dips his finger into the blood there before painting the same uncanny eye onto the grimoire’s cover. When he slashes a line through it, the grimoire vanishes instantly. Invisible.

“Babette,” I repeat, now clutching the witchlight so hard it almost gores my palm. “Where is she?”

“With any luck, she’ll be distracting your friends. I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much, though. You’ll be dead before they arrive.” He bends to retrieve the bowl and carving knife, glancing up briefly in between. “I hope you’re comfortable. I had to work with what was already on the island.” A small smile. “Pip told me you needed four pillows to even close your eyes at night. A coffin pales in comparison, I’m sure.”

My eyes narrow at the bizarre nostalgia in his voice. “Now that you mention it, I would much rather be standing, perhaps even in my own clothes, but someone has poisoned me.”

“Ah.” He has the decency to look vaguely rueful then, but even so, such a reaction from a murderer brings little comfort—and it makes even less sense. Judging by the carving knife in his hand, he hasn’t experienced a sudden change of heart. “I can assure you, at least, that I was not the one who changed your clothes—though I did pick out the gown.”

He says the words as if this is a gift. As if every young woman dreams of wearing such a beautiful and lavish gown on her deathbed. Oblivious, he leans back down for his rucksack, extracting a whetstone from its depths and dipping it into the sea.

I watch, nonplussed, as he sharpens the edge of his carving knife, wracking my thoughts for anything that could dissuade him from this madness . Because this Frederic—he seems different from the Frederic I knew in Chasseur Tower. Affectionate, somehow—almost exasperated—like he truly considers himself my older brother. Perhaps I can talk him out of everything. “Babette said you only used a drop of my blood on Tears Like Stars,” I say quickly. “Surely you don’t need to kill me.”

“You always did do your research. Our precious captain never realized just how valuable that mind of yours could be.” He steps from the boat with an appreciative chuckle. “I never liked you with that asshole either. You were always too good for him.”

I stare at him incredulously. If I could leap from this coffin and drive that knife into his chest, I would. “You assaulted me in the training yard.”

“And I apologize for that—but really, Célie, what were you doing with the Chasseurs? Did your sister not explain how despicable they are?” He shakes his head, and all benevolence in his expression hardens into the Frederic I’ve always known. His lip curls. “Time and time again I tried to prove you didn’t belong, and time and time again, you resisted. It makes sense, I suppose”—he glances at the dark cavern around us—“based on the company you now keep.”

All instinct to rationalize with him withers at that. “You’ve killed six creatures.”

“And I’d kill a dozen more—a hundred, a thousand —to resurrect your sister. Which is why,” he says fiercely, drawing to a halt beside Filippa’s coffin, “she’ll receive all of your blood instead of a drop. As I’m sure you know from your little romp in Les Abysses, the spell calls only for Blood of Death . Not very specific, that, and I don’t think we should take any risks. Do you?”

Cold creeps down my spine, and this time, it isn’t the hemlock. The way he speaks, the way he caresses the glass over Filippa’s face—Frederic isn’t affectionate at all; Frederic is twisted , and no amount of reason will sway him from his course. Bile rises in my throat. He sewed someone else’s skin onto Filippa’s face, for Christ’s sake, and he threatened to harvest my eye after he exsanguinates me. Crushing the witchlight in my hand, I smash it against the glass with a snarl. It doesn’t break. Doesn’t even crack . “My sister wouldn’t want this,” I spit at him.

“I’ve always found it better to ask forgiveness than permission.” After lifting the lid from Filippa’s coffin, he brushes his knuckles tenderly down the stitches on her cheek. When he speaks again, however, his voice holds no warmth, no devotion, instead dripping with slow-acting venom. It builds with each word. “Do you think she would’ve wanted Morgane to abduct her that night? To torture and maim her? Do you think—if she stood here now—she would choose death in order to let you live?”

Though I open my mouth to answer—to snarl at him—I close it again at once, the witchlight slipping in my hand. Because I don’t know what Filippa would choose if she were here. Not truly. I don’t know if she would give her life for mine, if such sacrifice is ever fair to ask of another. Even of a sister.

At twelve years old, she swore to protect me, but the promises of children are not the realities of adults.

Frederic glances up at me then, his dark eyes liquid with animosity. “You were never as naive as you pretended to be, ma belle. Even now, you know the answer—even now, you choose your life over hers—but it should’ve been you all along.” His hands tighten protectively on Filippa’s shoulders. “It should’ve been you who Morgane punished, you who Morgane killed. It was you , after all, who fell in love with a huntsman, and it was your beloved father who pilfered witches’ wares. Filippa did nothing— nothing —to deserve her fate,” he snarls, “and if I have to carve out your heart myself, I will reverse it. I will bring her back.”

Even now, you choose your life over hers.

Frederic won’t need a knife to carve out my heart. His words slide between my ribs, sharper than any blade, and impale me until I might bleed to death after all. My gaze darts back to her beautiful, ruined face. Did she truly blame me as Frederic does? In her final moments, did she wish I could take her place? Would she wish it now?

No.

I thrash my head against the thought. Frederic already slipped inside my mind once—more than once, if I’m honest with myself—and if I let him, he’ll hack the memory of my sister into pieces. He’ll sew her back together again as something gruesome and dark, just like he did to her body.

Bowing his head now, Frederic smooths Filippa’s hair, adjusts the collar of her simple white dress. The silver cross gleams bright and silver and perfect around her neck once more. Pressure builds behind my eyes as I stare at it—because it should’ve been there all along. It should’ve never left. Frederic should’ve mourned my sister with the rest of us, and he should’ve buried her with it. When I speak again, my voice cuts with accusation. “You gave her necklace to Babette. You carved over her initials.”

He waves a dismissive hand. “As a show of good faith and protection—Babette’s leverage, if you will. It never truly belonged to her, and she never should’ve staged it with her body.”

“Why stage her body at all? Did you want me to find her?”

“Of course we did.” He scoffs. “Jean Luc suspected a Dame Rouge of the killings. How else could we put him and your precious brethren off our scent? A blood witch needed to die, and Babette needed to disappear in order to continue our work.”

He lapses into silence then, smoothing the torso of Filippa’s gown. Preparing her , I realize with a sickening swoop of my own stomach. I can’t let him do this to her. To us . Gritting my teeth against a fresh wave of pain, I slip through the veil to check for Mila, for Guinevere, for anyone who could possibly help me. No ghosts linger in the grotto, however, and I fall back through the veil in blind panic, impossibly alone.

Instinctively, I reach for my throat—desperate to feel that small piece of Filippa, of family and hope—but there is only the slender weight of Michal’s silver ribbon.

Michal.

Those knives in my heart slip deeper as I glance back toward the water.

A week ago, I would’ve prayed for a miracle. I would’ve prayed that somehow, someway, Frederic’s Balisarda didn’t actually reach Michal’s heart. I would’ve prayed for him to leap from the water unscathed, cold and imperious once more. I stifle a whimper. Because now I cannot even pray for those things, cannot survive the disappointment when the heavens refuse to listen. Even if I survive, this fairy tale will never have a happy ending—and all because I wouldn’t listen. Because I forced him to follow me into the abyss, and because I couldn’t save him when he did.

I couldn’t even save myself.

If Michal isn’t already dead, he will be soon. And who knows if Frederic and Babette will spare the others.

This is my fault. All my fault.

My breath grows faster, harsher, with each thought, and darkness threatens my vision. Though tears prick at my eyes, I shake my head viciously against them. I can’t succumb to panic now. I can’t let it overtake me. If I do, Frederic will never get his chance—I’ll die before his knife ever touches me.

No. I search blindly for something—anything—to pull me from the brink. Because there has to be hope somewhere. There is always hope. Lou taught me that, and Coco, and Jean Luc, and Ansel and Reid.

And Michal.

His name blisters in my chest, warming me like the first embers of a fire. It shouldn’t, of course. He shouldn’t make me feel this way, but—I have lived, thrived, in a vampiric king’s castle for weeks. I have walked among monsters, danced with ghosts, and come to know them as so much more. That is the true reality of the world. Of my world. A ghost can be selfless, as kind and caring as any other, and a vampire can embrace you in a coffin. He can stroke your hair and whisper that you are worth more too. And sisters...

Sisters can love each other truly and eternally, even if they have their differences.

The thought lands like a blow to my abdomen.

Filippa wouldn’t have chosen herself if it meant sacrificing me.

Conjuring thoughts of her, of everyone , I raise my hand and smash the witchlight into the glass. It still refuses to crack, but something shifts in the darkness far above my head, just beyond the ring of light. A flash of wing. A beady eye.

Talon.

I smile—because I know, in this moment, my strength has never been like the others’. I am not cunning or fearless like Lou, nor am I strategic or disciplined like the Chasseurs. No. I am Célie Tremblay, Bride of Death, and my strength has always and will always be in my loved ones. My friends .

Talon swoops dangerously low, locking eyes with me, before soaring upward once more.

My elbow threatens to buckle in relief, and I hurl the witchlight toward Frederic when he too glances up. It collides with the glass in an earsplitting shriek. If he realizes Lou is on her way, he’ll kill me even faster. That cannot happen. Picking up the witchlight, I smash it against the glass again—and again, and again, until Frederic exhales slowly, forcing another smile. “I allowed you to keep that witchlight as a kindness,” he says with obvious effort to return to civility. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“Pippa knew you were a witch?” I ask, desperate to hold his attention.

“She learned in time. Magic fascinated her.”

With one last, fervent look at his beloved, he collects his bowl and knife, rounding her coffin with purpose now. Clearly, the time for talk is over, but if I let this conversation die, all signs point to me dying with it—especially with that knife in his hand. It glints crooked and sinister in the witchlight, goading me into speech. Because I refuse to go quietly. I refuse to let my friends die as collateral damage. “You asked her to run away with you.”

“Of course I did.” Though it isn’t a question, he answers it regardless. And he’ll keep answering me, I realize, if we keep talking about Filippa. With that horrible, avid light in his eyes, he seems unable to help himself. I just need to stall. I just need to distract him until Lou arrives. “And she agreed. If not for you and your father, much could’ve been different today. Who knows? Perhaps we would even now be lighting a candle and preparing for Mass on All Saints’ Day, hand in hand with Filippa and Reid.” He draws to a halt between our two coffins. “It no longer matters what could’ve been, however. Soon, all will be as it was before.” Motioning toward Filippa’s stitched face, he says, “As you can see, even Morgane’s damage has been undone, and in mere moments, Pippa will wake. She’ll breathe and walk and live again, and the three of us will be together once more.”

Three?

Unbidden, my gaze flashes to my other side, where I expect to see Babette’s little sister, Sylvie, in a third glass coffin. Nothing is there, however. Just empty air and dark sea. Perhaps he still cloaks her in invisibility. Her body wasn’t necessary to lure me here, after all, yet if Frederic is about to start the ritual, shouldn’t someone prepare her body too? Babette risked everything to help him.

“Don’t you mean the four of us?” I ask. “Where is Sylvie, anyway?”

The water ripples slightly behind him. “I couldn’t care less about Babette and her sister. Meeting her was a boon, yes—and sharing a common purpose—but as I said before, the spell doesn’t clarify how much of your blood Filippa will need. She gets every drop.”

“But Sylvie—”

“—is not my wife or child, and therefore not my responsibility.”

The words—spoken so simply—are more paralyzing than any injection of hemlock. I blink, convinced I misheard, before my eyes dart past him to Filippa. Though the plane of her belly still stretches flat and smooth, her hands lie clasped gently upon it, like she cradles a—a— “Oh my God.”

Though my mind instantly rejects the possibility, horror grows claws in my own belly, shrieking and scrabbling up my chest, my throat, leaving cruel understanding in its wake. The rendezvous, the note, the elopement—

The three of us will be together forever.

The three of us.

Frederic, Filippa, and—

“Frostine,” Frederic says in a strained voice, reaching out to graze Filippa’s fingertips. The knife in his hand reflects her pale face. “It’s a horrid name for a little girl, but I could never deny your sister. Though I suggested Snow as an alternative, she’d already set her heart on little Frost.”

It looks like Frost tonight.

“She—she would’ve told me. If Pip was having a baby, I would have known.”

“She wouldn’t have left you for any other reason.” He entwines his fingers with hers then, as if they aren’t cold and limp in his grasp. His mouth twists into a sad smile. “But Frost quickly became our entire world. She meant everything to us. The day your sister found out, she—she walked a mile in the snow to tell me.” His grip tightens, and Pippa’s fingers crack and bend within it. Gnarled now. “We were going to be a family.”

The word rattles through my mind like the tail of a cornered and angry serpent. Family, family, family .

They were going to be a family.

And my sister... she was going to be a mother.

Pressure builds behind my eyes at the revelation. Inside my heart. When shouts erupt from the shore of Michal’s room—when a raven shrieks—the sounds echo as if through a long tunnel, and all I can see is Filippa and her clasped hands. She never told Frederic about her ice palace. Perhaps she tried to forget it as the years passed, as her circumstances changed and her resentment grew, but she could never quite crush the white petals beneath her boot. A tear trickles into my hair. She finally found her summer prince, but instead of dancing in a snowdrop garden, she and her child were buried in it. Another tear falls.

“If it helps”—Frederic tracks the tear down my cheek, transfixed, and he somehow reaches through the glass to wipe it away—“I can tell her of your sacrifice. She might even mourn you.”

From across the cavern, Lou’s fierce voice rises above the rest, and the strange moment between us shatters.

Frederic’s wistful expression vanishes at the sound, and I flinch, crying out, as he jerks the knife upward, cutting the ribbon from my throat. “Perhaps we’ll even give our daughter yours as a middle name,” he says fervently. “It has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it? Frostine Célie?”

Though I seize the witchlight and swing it wildly toward his face, he captures my wrist and twists. Just like Filippa’s, my fingers crack and break in a fiery explosion of pain. He pries the stone from my hand with ease. It falls to the ground with a clatter—spinning in all directions, disorienting, blinding —and skitters toward the water’s edge, where—where—

My eyes widen.

Where an alabaster hand thrusts through the waves and crashes upon the shore.

A bloody and broken Michal follows.

He climbs from the sea with straining limbs, and my heart swells, stutters in disbelief at the sight of him. Even the sea cannot cleanse the blood still streaming from his chest. It sluices down his front in a macabre torrent of scarlet, staining his shirt, the rock, the witchlight itself. He shouldn’t be alive. He can’t be alive, yet he still drags himself forward with a guttural, “Célie—”

Above me, Frederic hesitates with his carving knife raised. I seize his wrist with newfound strength, newfound hope , and his face twists in shock as he turns and spots Michal. “What the—?”

With both hands, I push against him with all my might, and he relinquishes an inch or two, distracted before whirling back to face me. He bares his teeth. I have been around vampires too long, however, to cower at the sight of him now. Though my arms tremble with the effort, I hold him at bay. Filippa wouldn’t have stopped fighting, and neither will I. Until my dying breath, I will fight , and even after that too—

In the next second, the scent of magic explodes through the cavern.

The water behind us retreats in response, parting like the Red Sea for Moses to reveal Lou on the opposite shore. Her own arms strain with the effort to hold the waves at a distance. With a roar of fury, Jean Luc sprints toward us along the path on the seafloor, followed by Reid and Coco and Beau. Behind them, Dimitri has cornered Babette, and Odessa pulls on his arm in urgency.

They’re here.

I think the words even as Frederic seizes my hair, as a detached part of my mind realizes the distance between us is too great. When he wrenches my head upright and forces it over the bowl, I still thrash and claw at his wrist, however. I still buck and kick and thrust upward with both knees.

Though I shriek Michal’s name, he doesn’t answer. He cannot answer because he is dying too.

Just like the training yard , I think desperately, twisting my body, arching it, my heels slipping frantically against the glass. I refuse to give up. I refuse to cease fighting, and I refuse to allow Frederic to win. Eyes, ears, nose, and groin.

I repeat the words like a mantra in my head. Each second I say them is a second I live.

Eyes ears nose groin eyes ears nose—

This isn’t the training yard, however, and when my knee finally connects with Frederic’s stomach, he smashes my head into the side of the coffin. Pain explodes through my skull in a blinding wave, and hot, sickening blood trickles from my ear. It mutes the sounds of my friends’ shouts, of Michal’s gasp as Frederic kicks him away, until all I can hear is high-pitched ringing. The edges of my vision blur. Though I scrabble to right myself, I can’t find purchase, and Frederic—

A flash of silver. A searing pain. Though I try to cry out, darkness descends as I choke on something thick and wet, and the ringing in my ears reaches a pinnacle, growing louder and louder until I can no longer think, no longer breathe —

And everything ends in white.