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Chapter Fifty-Two

A Golden Light

As a child, I liked summer least of all the seasons. I never particularly enjoyed the heat, but sometimes—very early in the morning—I would climb into the tree outside my nursery window to watch the sunrise. I would lift my cheeks to that golden light, and I would bask in its gentle warmth. I would watch my neighbors open their windows, hear their first laughter of the day, and know a profound sense of peace.

Deep in the cavern, golden light breaks across the water.

Instinctively, I sense this isn’t the same as my childhood memory. This isn’t the sun, and I no longer sit in the tree outside my nursery. This is something different. Something... better. The longer I look at this golden light, the brighter it seems to glow, but I cannot quite name the feeling that emanates from within it. I cannot quite feel anything at all.

Though my breath mists as I drift in this nameless place, I no longer feel the cold. Odd. I no longer feel any pain either, and the ringing in my ears has fallen silent. Frowning, I peer down at my fingers, examining the dark liquid there. It paints my palms. It ruins the sleeves of my scarlet gown and stains the beautiful lacework black.

“Célie.”

Startled, I turn to find Mila watching me with a forlorn expression. I must’ve inadvertently slipped through the veil somehow, but that doesn’t explain the inexplicable tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. When the Necromancer attacked, I—I couldn’t help you, so I raced to warn the bird instead. Animals can sometimes sense spirits, even if we can’t truly communicate.”

“What are you talking about?”

Her gaze drifts below us, and I follow it to the barren islet that rises from the sea—smaller now with the tide, but no less familiar. Frederic leans over one of two glass coffins in the center. With one hand, he lifts the dark head of a pale young woman. In the other, he holds a large stone bowl, and even as we watch, it fills to the very brim with blood.

When he straightens, hurrying toward the second coffin, toward Filippa , my stomach twists with a profound sense of perversion—because my body still lies in that first coffin. I still lie in that first coffin, and blood bathes my hands and throat until I cannot tell where it ends and my gown begins. Though breath still rattles in my chest, my eyes stare upward without seeing.

They stare straight at me.

I drift closer, unnerved, and lift a tentative hand to my throat, fingers gliding with sickening ease across wet skin. Still no pain comes, however, even as I trace the jagged line where my flesh parts. Frederic wasn’t neat in his attack. He wasn’t clean. With one hand, he now lifts my sister’s head, and with the other, he tips my blood into her mouth. “Mila,” I breathe, unable to tear my gaze away, “why isn’t it cold here any longer?”

She slips her arm around my shoulders, and a creeping sense of dread lifts the hair at my neck. Her arm feels solid. Warm. “You don’t need to watch this. You need to prepare.”

“Prepare for what ?”

“Death,” she says sadly, nodding toward my broken body.

In my periphery, the golden light continues to shine, and if I strain, I can just make out gentle laughter. Except I don’t hear it. I feel it. It settles within my very skin, but I ignore it, staring at Mila incredulously.

“But I can’t— I’m not— No .” Wrenching away from her, shaking my head, I dart toward the islet and my body, toward Frederic and Filippa and Michal, who struggles to rise to his knees. “I can’t be dead . I’m right there .” I whirl to face her when she joins me, jabbing a finger at my chest. The blood at my throat spurts in gruesome time with my pulse. “Look—I’m still breathing. I’m not dying .”

She brushes the hair from my body’s face with heartbreaking affection. A tear trickles down her nose. “I’m sorry, Célie. It’s too late. You wouldn’t be here otherwise, and you won’t be able to stay long—not unless you choose to stay forever.”

Not unless you choose to stay forever.

At her words, the golden light seems to dim slightly.

Forever.

“No.” I repeat the word over and over again, refusing to hear any more. Refusing to acknowledge that wretched golden light. My friends have almost reached the islet now, and they—they’ll fix this. Lou and Coco will fix everything, and Jean Luc and Reid will deal with Frederic. Michal or Odessa will give their blood to heal me, and—and everything will be fine again. Everything will be fine.

“It might not be so bad,” Mila says tentatively, “if you do choose to stay. I’m here, after all—Guinevere is here—and your friends are all human. They would join us soon enough.”

Determined, I thrust myself back toward the veil, but I can no longer feel it there. The pressure in my head has vanished, so I fling myself upon my body instead, slipping into it and searching for purchase. I find none. Despair rises through me like the tide around the islet, and I try again, and again, nearly screaming in frustration now. I cannot be dying. I cannot be dead. I burst upward in a rush of tears as the golden light grows weaker. “I can’t stay here, Mila. Please , I can’t leave my friends, my sister —”

Odessa hurtles past us in a blur then, stealing my plea and knocking the half-empty bowl from Frederic’s hands. My blood splatters in each direction as she seizes his shoulders, launches him through the air. He lands hard upon the ground, but Odessa descends just as swiftly, clamping her fingers around his throat. His eyes bulge.

For one glorious second, it looks like she might end this. Like she might kill him before he can hurt anyone else.

Before she can snap his neck, however, Dimitri tackles her to the ground.

Oh God. I dart toward them, frantic, because my blood—it’s everywhere, and it’s fresh. It sprays the stone scarlet, coats the side of Frederic’s body, even runs in rivulets toward the sea. Oh God oh God oh God.

For anyone else, this scene would be straight from a nightmare. For Dimitri, this scene is straight from Hell.

“What are you doing?” Hissing, Odessa grapples with him, but her brother’s eyes have shifted into something feral and wild. “Dimitri! Stop it! Please, stop , and let me go—”

“He still has the grimoire,” Dimitri snarls, beyond reason.

I watch them struggle with maddening helplessness. I never would’ve anticipated this—that Dimitri could attack his own sibling, his own twin , but bloodlust proves stronger than even family, it seems. Without hesitation, he flings his sister into the sea, where she hits the water with a tremendous crash.

“ Odessa! ”

Though she can’t hear my cry, I still wring my hands and streak after her—then turn abruptly to streak toward Frederic instead. Because I need to do something. I need to help somehow, but when I leap at him, my body passes straight through his.

Like I no longer exist at all.

Hopeless now, I look back to my body, which grows paler with every second. As if in emphasis, the golden light dims in unison with my failing heartbeat. I’m running out of time. Worse still—I can do nothing to stop it. Nothing to slow it down, nothing to heal the wound at my throat, and nothing to stanch its bleeding. Nothing to save my friends.

“If you kill me”—Frederic bares his teeth at Dimitri, who lifts him into the air by his collar—“you’ll never find it.”

The grimoire.

If not for that evil little book, none of this would have happened. If only I’d snatched it from Father Achille when I had the chance, if only I hadn’t dropped it in Les Abysses—

“Where is it, Célie?” Mila asks urgently. “Where did he hide it?”

“I don’t know!” I wring my hands again, stifling tears. “He—he used his blood to turn it invisible, but I didn’t see where he—”

My eyes widen in horror, however, as Jean Luc reaches the isle at last.

Like Odessa, he doesn’t hesitate, unsheathing his Balisarda and diving straight for Frederic. Snarling again, Dimitri blocks him, but Reid sprints forward with a silver knife of his own. And Odessa—she rises from the water like a vengeful spirit, her eyes narrowing when Jean Luc and Reid attack her brother.

Before either can even move, she hurls Reid into Filippa’s coffin, which topples over with Filippa still inside. My sister’s body rolls across the stone, her limbs sickeningly limp—end over end—before coming to a halt near the water. Frederic lunges after her with a curse.

“We have to do something!” Even as I shriek the words, however, the golden light continues to fade, hardly a light at all now. My heart lodges in my throat. Because how can I possibly leave them? How can I leave ? My gaze darts wildly between their faces.

Jean Luc lands a blow against Odessa, and her skin sizzles as she tries to evade him, to protect her brother’s back. Reid has vaulted to his feet and now circles Dimitri, searching for an opening to Frederic, who clutches Filippa in his arms.

And Michal—Michal pulls himself to my coffin just as Coco and Beau arrive.

“You need to decide , Célie.” Without warning, Mila seizes my shoulders and shakes me in earnest, distracting me from my friends. “You can’t help them now, and your time is almost up. Do you understand me?” She shakes me harder when I struggle to move past her, to find a way to help . “If you don’t choose now, you’ll lose your chance forever. There’s nothing you can do —”

But events have spiraled dangerously out of control. Everywhere I look, my friends attack each other. Beau swings wildly at Dimitri, but the vampire knocks the sword from his hand like a child with a tin soldier. Eyes wide, frenzied, he then yanks Beau toward him, sinking his teeth into the soft flesh of Beau’s throat. Coco and Odessa scream in unison, and both launch themselves at Dimitri at the same time. Odessa reaches him first.

With another inhuman snarl, he flings Beau aside and snaps his sister’s neck.

Even Mila shrieks now, releasing my shoulders and flying forward—determined to stop him—as Coco catches Beau and the two roll into the water. The golden light flickers once, twice, but Odessa— I can’t leave her . Though I drop to my knees, Mila shoves me toward the last of the golden light. “ Go , Célie! Odessa will heal!”

“I can’t—”

“GO NOW !”

When I shoot into the air, however, the two walls of water that Lou held at bay crash together in a cataclysmic wave. Water floods the islet, and Jean Luc slips in the current, seizing Dimitri’s legs as the sea bears them both away. Reid clings to Filippa’s coffin as Lou steps onto the last bit of stone. Her eyes blaze with fury at the scene before her: Coco towing Beau to shore, Odessa lying prone, Michal clinging to my coffin, and Frederic and Filippa—

Gone.

With a hollow, sinking sensation, I realize they’ve taken the last of the golden light with them. My chest gives one last, shuddering breath before falling silent too. No one notices, however.

No one except Michal.

He leans over my body, his beautiful, ashen face crumpling at the exact second my heart fails. He can hear it. He knows. His forehead collapses against mine in defeat, and I cannot help it—I shift closer, rapt, as his lips begin to move. “Please stay,” he breathes.

With the last of his strength, he drags a hand through the blood on his chest and presses it to my lips.