Page 19 of The Shadow Bride (The Scarlet Veil #2)

Chapter Nineteen

Blooms of Heather

I do not know how long I sit in that corner with Michal, my eyes swollen and my face wet. Time loses all meaning. Distance too. Though I focus my senses on the east wing frequently, I cannot tell how many moments pass between each stretch. I know my mother remains safe, however.

Lou has bolted the door with magic and cast the entire room in strange silence, but I can still hear my mother demanding to leave—demanding to find me, demanding to summon Jean Luc and raze this entire isle. I close my eyes against the faint, echoing sound of her voice, inhaling deeply and committing Michal to memory: that rich, decadent scent of his blood, the woodsy leather of his surcoat. Both mingle with the lingering bite of Lou’s magic.

Dull pain pulses down my throat, behind my eyes, and I wonder again—for the thousandth time—why she stopped me from intervening. Did Lou really hate him so much? Did she really want him to die , or did she not think Odessa capable of committing such a heinous act?

When the doorknob rattles, I tense, but whoever it is doesn’t stop to investigate the locked door, instead following his companion to the entrance hall. Beyond it, the streets have succumbed to complete debauchery. Though eerie music continues from the Old City, the tone has shifted since Odessa and her retinue made their debut; the strings now shriek like saws, and the drums pound a violent and disconcerting rhythm. I struggle not to listen—not to examine the silence between drumbeats or the abrupt, bloodcurdling screams.

At one point, I thought I heard Monsieur Marc’s jubilant shout, but I quickly buried my ears in my hands.

If not for Lou and Dimitri, I could’ve prevented all of this. I sensed the shift in the air before Odessa killed Michal. I knew , somehow, that this time was different, that he was in real danger. I could’ve saved him.

She was just trying to protect you , says a small voice of reason. They would’ve torn you apart too.

But they didn’t. My eyes snap open as another wave of fury washes over me. They didn’t hurt us—they ignored Dimitri, and they feared Lou too much to attack when she fled the hall in search of my mother. And for all her posturing, Odessa refused to let Léandre touch me either. If only we had acted instead of crouching behind that urn, we might’ve been able to prevent such senseless violence. Now Michal’s heart lies outside his body, gruesome and frightening upon the floor, half-hidden in the shadows of a cage.

His heart .

Though I sense it there, I cannot bring myself to look at it—to even acknowledge it—and I cannot touch it either. I cannot return it to his body. That fury crests higher with the admission, and I hate myself for having such weakness. Such fear. I am the worst sort of coward, and I have failed him in utterly every way. Michal, who has never failed me once. Michal, who climbed from the sea with a knife in his chest when I needed him. Michal, who raced toward me— toward me—when I confronted Death himself.

He deserved so much more than this. He deserved so much more than me .

I remember his dismissive wave in Les Abysses when I accused him of planning to maim my loved ones. Every relationship has problems.

Focusing on the memory, I part his leather surcoat and allow bitter regret to flow through me; I focus on his empty chest, and I slip through the veil to search for him, just in case. No silvery form awaits, however. Wherever his soul has gone, it isn’t here, and snow falls gently upon the heather around his corpse. I frown at the sight of the small purple blooms. They grow straight from the black parquet floors, and Michal’s chest—my frown deepens. The hole has vanished, the skin there nearly glowing with vitality. Strange.

The tears freeze upon my cheeks as I glance at the cage, where more heather creeps over his heart.

“Michal?” Voice a whisper, I shake him slightly, but his eyes remain closed. “Can you hear me?”

I wait another long moment for him to answer. When he doesn’t, fresh tears trickle down my nose, and I return to the realm of the living, staring at the hole where his heart should be—dark and out of place against his broad alabaster chest. And I cannot fix it. I cannot fix any of this, yet I know I cannot remain sprawled upon this floor forever. Sooner or later, the sun will rise, and with it, Odessa will return with her nefarious plans.

She can choke on them, for all I care.

Unless the lock on the door has been reinforced by magic, it cannot hold me.

If Lou can still cloak an entire room, she can cloak us too. I can compel the necessary sailors at the harbor, and we can sail back to Cesarine—or to Chateau le Blanc. Odessa would not dare pursue us into the heart of witch territory. It would be the safe haven we need to plot our next steps, to regroup. We could research revenants in its great library. We could start our search for Death and my sister, could wait there for Mila’s report. We could take Michal with us.

We could scatter his ashes someplace peaceful.

I clench his lapels until my fingers ache, envisioning the grove of pear trees in winter—the stark beauty of snow upon their spectral boughs. He would like it there. Still I cannot bring myself to move. The instant I do is the instant this nightmare becomes real, and—and can one burn a vampire to scatter their ashes? Each time I’ve seen a vampire meet true death, their body has turned to—to—

Realization crashes into me with the force of a battering ram. It makes me dizzy, light-headed, as I sit bolt upright and stare at the hole in Michal’s chest.

His perfect alabaster chest.

Not an inch of it has desiccated, and according to veritably everyone, Michal became a vampire very long ago. In death, shouldn’t his body have returned to its true age like Yannick’s and Juliet’s did? Shouldn’t it be a withered husk? I spread my hands upon his shoulders with fervent energy, sliding them down his arms and feeling the contradiction. Though perhaps cool to the touch, his body remains hard and powerfully built, alive —and shouldn’t the scent of Lou’s magic have faded by now? My fingers curl almost brutally into his biceps. Perhaps a witch did enforce the lock on the door, or perhaps—perhaps death has changed since literal Death stepped through the veil. Perhaps Michal is dead, and this is just—this is what death looks like now. Perhaps flowers grow over all vampires in the spirit realm.

I brush a hand over his chest, and the scent of magic wafts with the movement.

It wafts from the wound.

Without making the conscious decision, I slide out from beneath him and dart toward his heart. Insidious laughter creeps up my throat, but I dare not release it. Not yet. Because if I’m wrong—

No.

I cannot think it, cannot even consider the possibility. Because Lou never would’ve controlled me with her magic otherwise. Pasha never would’ve left me alone under a simple lock and key, and Odessa— Odessa . I nearly choke on her name, remembering that blazing light in her eyes and her insistence—no, her desperation—that I remain in my room. She and Dimitri didn’t want me to see. For whatever reason, they didn’t want me to know she’d be plucking the heart from Michal’s chest like the strings of the violins outside.

I scoop it up from the shadows without hesitation now; whatever fear I might’ve felt has transformed into something else altogether, and I cradle it carefully between my palms as I dash back to his side. “Michal, you idiot ,” I say breathlessly.

Before the entire theory can collapse, I plunge his heart back into his chest.

For a moment, nothing happens.

Nothing happens, and I can hear each of my own ragged breaths in the silence. The scent of magic remains thick and sharp in the air—sharper now than before—as I force his chest back together and close the wound. Please. To whom I pray, I do not know, for God surely does not sully his hands with dead vampires and witches’ magic, yet I still do. I pray. “Wake up,” I whisper fiercely. “Wake up, Michal, or I’ll follow you through that maelstrom and find you. I’ll drag your soul back into this foul room or—or worse, I’ll stay . You’ll never know a moment of peace because I’ll be wherever you are too, pestering you and pestering you and never answering any of your questions. How many do I owe you now? Six?”

I suck in a breath, fingers shaking, as the edges of his skin try to knit themselves together.

“And those are just from a ten-minute conversation.” I press the edges tighter, holding them, but this wound seems too great for his body to heal on its own. “Imagine how many I’ll accumulate during an eternity of—”

“I don’t—need to imagine.”

Michal coughs, gasps, and I beam down at him through a haze of tears as his entire body shudders. I nearly lie on his chest now in an effort to close the wound, as if the strength of my will alone might make the difference, but he doesn’t seem to care. “Célie.” Chuckling low, he circles my wrists with his fingers, gently stilling my efforts. I cannot help it—fresh tears sting my nose as we stare at each other. His brow furrows. “What are you doing here?”

“You insufferable ass .” I cuff his arm lightly as one of those tears spills down my cheek. “How could you do something like this? How could you be so stupid ?”

“I said I’d collect you at dawn.”

Bemused, he watches the tear’s progress before frowning and lifting a hand to wipe it away. He grimaces at the movement, and together, we look down at the hole in his chest, which Lou’s magic still has not healed.

“What do we do?” I ask in a hushed voice.

He still lies flat upon his back, and I still lean over him, pressed entirely too close and probably covered in blood all over again. His head falls upon the parquet floor with a hollow thunk. “I need blood,” he says simply.

“Oh.” I nod hastily. Oh God. “Oh, right—”

“No need to look so frightened, pet.” He grimaces again, fingers exploring the mangled mess of his chest, before struggling to sit up on his elbows. “Arielle is waiting for me in Odessa’s room.”

“What?” I resist the urge to scowl, helping him rise and ignoring the sharp pinch in my stomach. “But—you’re meant to be dead. Odessa is meant to have killed you. Isn’t it rather dangerous to bring Arielle into the subterfuge too—for all three of you? Er, that is—” My eyes widen at the sudden possibility. “Odessa is part of the subterfuge, isn’t she? And Lou and Dimitri? This”—I gesture helplessly down his body—“was all part of some brilliant and hitherto secret plan no one included me in for reasons you’re about to explain? And it’ll preferably return the revenants to the grave and mend the veil too?”

I add the last part hopefully.

Michal falls back again, closing his eyes with a strangled laugh. It ends in a cough. “No. I mean—yes, Odessa assisted with the planning and coerced Lou into participating. I assume Dimitri stepped in when you refused to remain out of sight. But no to everything else.” He cracks open an eye to look at me as high, unearthly voices rise in harmony with the music outside. “Melusines,” he says at my unspoken question. “It seems not all the villagers will mourn my passing.” He looks disgruntled at the thought. “Odessa will be intolerable.”

I help him up again, and this time he drapes an arm across my shoulders; I wrap both of mine around his waist. “And just how,” I whisper with a glance at the door, “are you planning on reaching Odessa’s room without being seen? This place is crawling with vampires—”

His chin jerks toward the gallery overhead. “There’s a passage.”

“A secret passage?”

He flashes a grin, and at the sight of it—so natural and unguarded, so unexpected —my stomach swoops to somewhere around my knees. “Actually, we chose this room because the passage upstairs leads to a stage in the Old City, where a dozen minstrels wait to herald my miraculous return from the dead.”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, Michal.”

“But it is still wit, Célie.”

At my scowl, he winks—he actually winks —before bending his knees in preparation to—what? I follow his gaze to the balustrade and realize his intent. Michal is going to jump with a great gaping hole in his chest, and—I hasten to bend my knees too, to support him as we leap from the floor below to the railing above. Though I nearly stumble, startled at the speed with which I just moved, Michal seizes my shoulder to prevent me from falling.

“This passage connects to a dozen others in the castle to form transportation channels and escape routes for the royal family. As the last members of that family, Odessa, Dimitri, and I are the only ones who know of them.” His jaw clenches tight with pain. “And now you.”

“Are you all right?” I ask in concern. “We shouldn’t have—”

“I’ll be fine, Célie.”

I allow him to lead me to the center panel behind the musicians’ chairs, where he slides his fingers beneath the trim on its edge and swings the entire thing open. With some trepidation, I peer into yet another dark and dank passage. “Don’t think this absolves you from excluding me tonight.”

“I require absolution?”

My face snaps toward his in disbelief. “I just held your heart in my hand, Michal. Your heart . Worse still, I spent most of the evening thinking you were—”

His eyes search mine as if seeking an answer for something. “Dead?”

“Yes,” I hiss indignantly. “ Murdered by one of my only friends in this wretched place.”

Again, I glance toward the door. If any vampires wander too near or turn their attention too close to this room, the entire charade will come tumbling down on their heads. Shaking my own, I push him into the passage as gently as possible before swinging the panel shut behind us. We plunge into total darkness. Though I can still see well enough, I instantly regret the loss of light—or rather, the way my other senses heighten in its absence. The scent of Michal is enough to scramble my thoughts on a good day, let alone while clutching each other in the dark.

When he eventually speaks, his voice rumbles from beside my ear. “I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you about tonight, but Odessa... she preferred we didn’t involve you.”

“Why?”

To his credit, he does not lie. “No one judges you for it, Célie, but you’ve made your distaste for Requiem known. This isle is Odessa’s home.” A pause. “ My home. Quite simply, Odessa didn’t involve you because you didn’t need to be involved, and I deferred to her judgment because I spent most of the night dead upon the floor. For the plan to succeed, she needed to feel confident in it—and in her ability to make these decisions without me.”

“So she’ll just—what? Pretend to be queen until the two of you decide otherwise?” Then, before he can respond: “Why did you decide to do this? Does it have something to do with the revenants?”

With slight pressure on my shoulders, he tries to start up the passage, but I dig in my heels, forcing him to stay here until he answers the questions. With a sigh, he says, “Odessa doesn’t need to pretend. She is queen. Our performance tonight might not have been real, but the transfer of power was. I ceded the throne when I arranged for my public execution. For all intents and purposes, I am dead.”

I wait for him to continue. To explain. When he doesn’t, I glower up at him, but glowering isn’t effective as leverage. “You still should’ve told me,” I say at last.

“Like you’ve told me everything?” I recoil at that, and he seems to instantly regret the question, shaking his head and disentangling himself from my arms. Staggering slightly on his feet. After casting an apologetic look in my direction, he says, “We should go. The sooner I feed, the sooner we can leave—I’ve arranged a meeting with a witch on the far side of the isle shortly after dawn. She is very old, very private, but she might know how to kill a revenant.”

“A witch on the far side of the isle?” I repeat faintly. “You can’t even walk , Michal. And even if Arielle does help, how do you intend to traipse across the isle without anyone seeing you? You’re supposed to be dead — ”

“No one will see me.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I know this isle better than anyone, Célie. I knows its tricks, its traps, its secrets, and I know my own senses too—they’re sharper than those of other vampires because my body is older and stronger. Odessa is the only creature on Requiem who could track me, and fortunately for all of us, she has better things to do.” His jaw pulls taut enough to snap. “Are you satisfied now? Shall we go?”

I rush to support his elbow when he starts forward again, changing tack in an instant. “Yes, all right, fine , you’re very powerful—I shall find you a medal—but are you sure Arielle will be able to help you?”

“You needn’t join us if you’ll be uncomfortable, Célie. You can wait in the passage.”

My head is shaking before he even finishes the sentence. Because of course I cannot simply leave him to Arielle with such a serious injury. He almost died—I thought he did—and—and— “Is her blood potent enough to heal you?”

He keeps his eyes trained carefully upon the path ahead. “She is a werewolf.”

“Yes,” I snap, “but this isn’t a simple wound, is it? I can still see your heart through your ribs. Given the circumstances, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to drink something stronger? You—”

Michal halts abruptly. Sensing the change in him, I release his arm without another word, and violent flutters erupt in my stomach as the full weight of his gaze lands upon me. “Speak plainly, Célie. What are you suggesting?”

Shit.

“I, ah—” Panicked, I glance around us in search of an answer, but nothing in this dismal passage seems likely to rescue me. “I am merely suggesting you might heal faster—better—if you drink from someone more powerful.”

“You mean a vampire.”

“P-Possibly—”

“Which one?” When I do not answer, he sways again, planting a hand against the low wall beside him. His entire body bows with strain. “Which vampire, Célie? Name them, and it is done.”

For one belligerent second, I almost rattle off a name—any name—to spite the provocation in his eyes. Just as quickly, however, I imagine him actually feeding from the unknown person, and anger scorches through my chest, incinerating the possibility. And just like that, there is nothing else for it. Michal cannot feed from Arielle, and he cannot feed from anyone else either. “Me,” I say a bit forcefully, lifting my chin before I do the sensible thing and flee. “You’re going to drink from me. Now take off your shirt.”