The Shadow Bride

Book 2: Scarlet Veil

by Shelby Mahurin

Genres: YA Paranormal; YA Historical Fiction

Synopsis

In the thrilling conclusion of the duology set in the world of the New York Times bestselling Serpent & Dove series by Shelby Mahurin, a vampire and the woman who tried to kill him prove that true love can conquer anything, even Death. Perfect for fans of Sarah J. Mass.

Célie’s life is over. She took her final breath trying to save the people she loves—including the powerful and enigmatic vampire king, Michal, who refused to let her go. When Célie wakes, she cannot walk in the sun; she can hear her friends’ heartbeats and she craves their blood. Michal has cursed her to the eternal existence of a vampire.

But Célie isn’t the only dead roaming the earth. Her sister, Filippa, has returned as a shadow of her former self, and other revenants are rising from their graves intent on revenge. The fragile balance between life and death has broken, awakening an even darker force—and he is coming for Célie, ready to claim her as his Bride. With the fate of their world at stake, Célie and Michal must set aside their searing attraction to mend the veil and right the balance, once and for all. 

Release date: March 25, 2025

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 640

Sample

Chapter OneReflection

The simple chime of a music box is all that fills the silence.

I watch the trinket from across the bedroom, figurines turning in a mechanical dance, their painted wings sparkling in the glow of a single candle. Reid lit the taper earlier this evening while I feigned sleep. At dusk, Lou tiptoed across the floorboards to draw back the curtains, hoping to let in the moonlight, but storm clouds obscured the night sky and shadows crept through my window instead. They swathe me like a cloak as the fairies dance in their halo of light.

“Are you all right, Célie?” Mila whispers from the chair by the bed.

After the grotto, she found a tear in the veil near Saint-Cécile, slipping through it to linger near me in the realm of the living. Though she speaks very little—and asks me to speak even less—I cannot decide whether I appreciate it or not. I cannot decide whether I want her here at all.

“I’m fine,” I whisper back.

And the fairies continue their dance.

Lou and Reid brought the music box from my room in Chasseur Tower, along with all my other worldly possessions: beeswax candles and bottles of rose perfume, paste jewels and storybooks with cracked spines. An emerald-green quilt across my bed. A standing gilt mirror in the corner. The filmy, ridiculous nightgown I currently wear.

They meant to help by filling their home with my things.

They meant to remind me that I’m still Célie Tremblay.

They couldn’t have known I once coveted the fairies on this music box as much as I loved them. I longed to steal their wings and fly to their realm, to enchant wild creatures and court my own fairy prince. My nursemaid, Evangeline, gave me the box for my eighth birthday, and for an entire fortnight, I spoke of little else until Filippa—irritated—snatched the music box from my nightstand and smashed it to pieces.

She regretted it instantly, of course, and glued the fairies back together as best she could. I never noticed the newfound cracks in their smiles. Perhaps I was too young then—too busy dreaming of grand, sweeping adventures and heart-stopping romance—or perhaps I simply didn’t pay attention. I stare at those cracks now, quietly hating them.

I have dreamed so many foolish things.

Turning away, I sigh heavily before inhaling once more—an instinctive reaction, one that fills my body with air it no longer needs. Mistake. My stomach constricts at the sudden influx of scent, and fresh saliva floods my mouth. My head pounds. My gums throb. Though I close my eyes against the nausea, the darkness of my eyelids shifts in a sickening kaleidoscope of color, pounding in unison with the heartbeats in the living room. Two of them. My fists curl even as my teeth begin to lengthen, and the saliva continues to flow. My throat contracts without permission, and for just a second, my gaze flicks to the bedroom door. Everything stills to a knifepoint.

Lou and Reid move just beyond it.

I can hear them in the kitchen preparing dinner—the gentle clink of cutlery, the occasional brush of their shoulders as they pass each other. Lou’s heartbeat accelerates slightly when Reid brushes a kiss against her temple. He chuckles when she swats his backside in turn. They’re wholly absorbed in each other.

Wholly distracted.

They won’t notice you, a familiar voice whispers in the back of my mind. Not until it’s too late.

And it’s true. Though I close my eyes, I can almost see the blood pumping through their bodies now, and I can imagine how it would taste—thick and rich and hot on my tongue, decadent, like a feast of kings. Mila wouldn’t stop me. We spent my last moments together, and though she hasn’t mentioned it, I know she feels partly responsible for my fate. Perhaps if she’d somehow forced me through that wretched golden light, none of this would’ve happened, but she told me to choose instead.

She said if I didn’t,

I’d lose my choice forever.

Ironic, that.

I swallow hard. No, Mila wouldn’t stop me—couldn’t stop me—but would Odessa? Tilting my head, I listen to her flick each page of her book as she pointedly ignores the sickly sweet humans. “They make my teeth ache,” she said yesterday before fixing me with her signature piercing stare. “When can we go home?”

Home.

To her, that means Requiem. Michal sent her here to watch over me, to guide me, but she never intended to stay in Cesarine. Deep down, I know Michal never intended it either. The last words he spoke to me still haunt my dreams—or they would if I ever slept.

Please stay.

He doesn’t know I heard him. I shouldn’t have heard him—not as my heart stopped beating—but I did. I heard him, and I can’t unhear him. He begged me to stay, yet where is he now? Why didn’t he insist I remain with him on Requiem? And if not there, why hasn’t he joined me here, in this miserable room, to help me through transition instead of Odessa? The questions sicken me—they’re ridiculous, pointless, the least of my problems—yet I cannot seem to let them go. To let him go. With little else to distract me from this scarlet haze, Michal has spread like a poison across my skin, and I cannot stop scratching at him.

Why did he bite me, only to abandon me? Why did he leave me to the care of my friends—leave me to hurt them?

I don’t realize my hand grips the doorknob until my palm starts to burn.

With a hiss, I release it and leap away, glaring at the silver chain around the knob. Lou didn’t think such a precaution would be necessary. She argued when I insisted, but in the end, she honored the request by digging out the only silver jewelry she owned: an ugly, tarnished necklace that once belonged to her great-great-grandmother. In the kitchen, she now pretends to retch as Reid offers her a carrot, and I curl my injured hand into a fist.

“Hold your breath,” Mila says softly.

They won’t notice you, that terrifying voice repeats.

I stop breathing instantly at the sound of it, and after several seconds of hard-fought self-control, I force myself to back away from the door. Disappointment echoes faintly from wherever—or whoever—the voice comes. You’re going to starve.

It sounds like my sister.

“No, I won’t.”

I shake my head fiercely at the shadow in the mirror while Mila watches with wide eyes. And why wouldn’t she? I’m having a conversation with someone who isn’t here, and none of this—none of it—is

real. Filippa cannot be in this room with me. Even if Frederic’s ritual somehow worked, even if she returned as a spirit or—or as something else, I would still see her. Mila would hear her too.

My resolve hardens at that. More than anything, Mila’s silence proves that Filippa is still dead, and this is just a hallucination. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard voices, would it? I glare at the mirror. Faint cracks in its silver surface refract the light in a strange way, but otherwise, the glass stands still and silent. There is no tear in the veil, no echo of laughter. No flash of an emerald eye.

I still stare at the mirror hungrily.

I know better than to do this again. I know better than to hope.

I still stalk forward until I stand in front of the wretched thing, however, gazing at where my own reflection should be. Praying for the hundredth time—the thousandth—that this is the moment the dream ends. That the fairy prince will kiss me awake now, and the two of us will live happily ever after.

Please.

Though I stand there for several more seconds, waiting, nothing happens. I close my eyes again. Open them. Bitterness courses through me when the mirror remains empty, and I turn without thinking, seizing the music box and shattering it against the floorboards. The lullaby ends with a violent, satisfying crash, yet my fury doesn’t abate—instead it rises up my throat like vitriol, and I curse as the porcelain pieces settle. The princess’s vapid smile remains whole and intact. With an unfamiliar snarl, I stomp on it with all my might. I stomp on all of them—every single shard—until nothing but glittering dust remains, until my bare feet should bleed and ache. I want them to bleed and ache.

Before I can seize the silver chain, however, low voices sound from the entry. The front door opens with a soft swish, joined by the rustle of woolen pant legs, a silk gown. The steady beat of two more hearts. Two, not three. Light footsteps cross the threshold in the next second, and the door closes once more. “How is she?” Coco whispers.

“Did we miss anything?” Beau asks.

Jean Luc’s voice should join theirs now, but it doesn’t. He didn’t come.

Hard to keep them straight, isn’t it? that voice croons. Jean Luc, Michal . . . Michal, Jean Luc . . .

I struggle to ignore it, and the soft, wet sounds of Reid’s knife pause as he murmurs, “Nothing has changed.”

He’ll never love you.

I cringe and glance down at the residue from the music box.

“We didn’t want to wake her until dinner.” Lou stumbles slightly as Melisandre winds between her feet, and a sonorous purr punctuates her next words. “She seems . . . exhausted.”

Mila floats closer, lifting an arm as if to wrap it around me. To comfort me. When I tense, however, dreading the contact, she drifts to a halt, her arm falling to her side instead. “It’ll go better tonight, Célie,” she says softly as Coco and Beau unlace their boots. “Don’t lose

 hope.”

I resist the urge to scoff at her optimism. “And on what basis are you making that assumption? Last night? The one before that? How about last week?”

Mila doesn’t answer. She cannot answer—not truthfully, anyway—and instead we both listen as Beau asks, “Has she eaten anything else?”

Sometimes they forget I can hear them. Sometimes they pretend nothing has changed.

Reid continues his work with the knife, dicing meat and vegetables with an expert hand. The scent of them—gamey, earthy, perhaps venison and peas with the carrots—drifts beneath my bedroom door and congeals in my stomach. “Not since dinner yesterday.”

“And tonight?”

Reid doesn’t hesitate. “Deer. We’re hoping a larger animal helps.”

A larger animal. I stifle the urge to retch.

“I told you”—Lou lowers her voice, at least, but I still hear every word—“her body doesn’t want deer. We should’ve—I don’t know—found a bear, or—”

“Do we have bears in Belterra?” Beau asks abruptly.

Sighing in exasperation, Coco hangs her cloak, and the scent of her blood—my vision tilts again. I seize a bedpost for balance as she says, “How do you not know this? You’re the king—”

“I’m not the king of bears, Cosette.”

Odessa snorts from the corner.

“No, Beauregard,” Coco says in a long-suffering voice, “we do not have bears in Belterra, but if we’re being honest, her body doesn’t want animal at all. She needs to feed—really feed, this time. I told her we could help her hunt, but she refused.”

Closing her book, Odessa says rather puckishly, “Oh? And do you have experience hunting humans?”

A pause as everyone reluctantly turns to her. Though they’ve done their best to avoid her presence, they never ignore her outright—because of me, I think. Yesterday, she chastised Lou for feeding Melisandre cheese—“Do you have any idea what dairy does to a cat’s digestion?”—until Reid intervened, at which point she chronicled the history and mythos of red hair for nearly an hour. Coco takes a deep breath now. “Of course we don’t have experience hunting humans, but—”

“I do, actually.” Unlike Coco, Reid doesn’t bother to hide his distaste for the vampire in his kitchen. Somewhere between Odessa’s suggestion that Melisandre stank and that, historically, his hair meant he should’ve been sacrificed at birth, Reid lost his social graces. “Together, we could help Célie feed without harming anyone.”

“Ah, yes.” I imagine Odessa examining her nails with a polite lack of interest. “The huntsman. Tell me, darling, with all of your ineffable experience, how do you imagine that scene unfolding? Would the four of you—three of whom govern the whole of Belterra—descend upon the streets at nightfall in search of

Célie’s dinner?”

“We wouldn’t descend—”

“And what would happen if you found it?” Her voice deceptively light, Odessa continues without acknowledging him. “Perhaps a lovely young man hurrying home from a late night at the shop—would you corner him in a dark alley and politely ask him to offer a vein? Would you enchant his acquiescence if he refused? Hmm . . . no.” She taps a nail upon her chin in contemplation. “You are a huntsman, after all. Instead, you would probably incapacitate him while Célie took his lifeblood by force. Either way would result in harm. Probably even death.”

I stare at my feet, unable to truly see them, and listen to the soft disturbance of air as Reid shakes his head. “Célie would never hurt anyone.”

“Have you ever seen a newborn vampire feed?” Odessa’s voice grows unusually grave when no one answers. She cannot pretend to ignore my heightened senses; she wants me to hear every word. “You might’ve known Célie once, but she isn’t human any longer. She won’t be able to control her impulses, and that makes her dangerous. Especially to all of you. She is drawn to you, clearly—even loves you—but all emotion strongly felt turns to hunger in a newborn vampire. She needs to be among her own kind on Requiem. I cannot fathom why Michal allowed you to bring her here, but—”

“Célie didn’t want to live on Requiem,” Lou says irritably, interrupting her as my gaze snaps upward once more. “She told us just before she died.”

“And slaughtering her friends?” Odessa asks. “Is that what Célie would want?”

“That won’t happen.”

“If she smells your blood while feeding, Louise le Blanc, it will.”

“Well, then,” Lou says as she stalks down the hallway toward my door, “let’s hope she feels strongly about deer.”

A moment later, she knocks, and my knees seem to grow roots as the door cracks open. She pokes her head inside with a gentle, “Célie? Are you awake? I thought I heard—” Her eyes fall to the smashed music box and widen slightly. I swallow hard. “Is . . . everything all right?”

“My music box broke.” Though I say the words quickly, feverishly, the bedpost begins to splinter in my hand because I can’t—I can’t hold my breath and speak at the same time. I can’t prevent the scent of her magic from becoming a literal taste on my tongue, and—and— I choke on my next words. “But I—I think I can fix it. I think I can—”

Whistling under her breath, Lou crouches to swipe a finger through the glittering dust. Her lips twitch. “Damn. I don’t think even I can fix such an admirable fit of temper. Good for you, Célie, but—it is a shame. I had plans for this creepy little music box.”

I blink at her, nonplussed. “What?”

“Oh, I was going to hide it next to Reid’s pillow after he falls asleep tonight.” She waves an errant hand, and at once, her enchantment sweeps

over me, dulling the sharp edge of my hunger. Her own stomach emits a deafening rumble in response. She pats it fondly. “He tried to scare me the other day—hid under the bed and everything, bless him. He thought it’d be enormously clever to grab my ankle as I walked past.” A devious grin. “He has no idea what he started.”

“Why—why would he do that?”

“I might’ve dyed his eyebrows blue last week.” Eyes glittering impishly, she stands and dusts her hands against her pants before offering one to me. “Come to dinner, Célie. You shouldn’t stew in here alone.”

“I’m not alone,” I say reflexively.

Filippa’s laughter echoes around me again, and the hair on my neck lifts. My eyes dart to Mila, who frowns.

“Right, of course. Mila is invited too.”

Though I hesitate, staring warily at her outstretched hand, Lou grins and wriggles her fingers. “Oh, come on. Are you going to make us beg for your company?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer this time; she simply seizes my hand and pulls me down the candlelit hall toward the others. “Stop dragging your feet, would you? It’s just dinner. Nothing to fear among friends.” She glances back when I don’t respond, and Mila’s silver face reflects in her eyes. “Isn’t that right, Mila?”

“Quite,” Mila says with a valiant attempt at reassurance.

She doesn’t hear the faint laughter tinkling from the mirror behind us, however. I resist the urge to turn, to glimpse my sister spying on me in the glass. Yes, Célie, she seems to croon. Nothing to fear.

It’s just dinner.

 

Chapter TwoThe Seventh Chair

They set the table for seven, just as they’ve done every night.

I plaster a brittle smile on my face as we enter the open space that serves as kitchen and living room, and I ignore that seventh bowl. Just as I do every night. Because it doesn’t matter—it doesn’t—and Jean Luc’s continued absence cannot make me feel worse than I already do.

I cling to that conviction like a raft at sea as Mila drifts to Odessa.

“Célie!” Like clockwork, Beau moves first, bounding across the settee to fold me in a tight embrace. Coco follows at his heels. Soon both have wrapped their arms around me, and my throat constricts again as I stand rigid between them, locking my jaw and leaning away despite wanting to crush them against my chest and never let go. More laughter echoes through my head at the thought. Because I love them, I tell my sister fiercely.

Hmm. I’m sure that’s the reason.

Heart plummeting, I turn my cheek away from the line of Coco’s throat.

If either of them notices, they don’t say, but their eyes do dilate slightly as they pull away to grin at me. I affix my own in place, feeling slightly sick. I don’t need a reflection to realize my appearance has also changed. Though my skin has always been fair, it now gleams ethereal white, and my dark hair falls longer, thicker, heavier as it waves down my back, shining like glass in the candlelight. My friends’ lingering glances and sharp intakes of breath confirm what I already know: my face has become a weapon.

“We needed to step out for a couple of hours,” Coco says, slightly breathless, “but everything is handled now. How are you, Célie? Did you sleep well?”

Her words sound ominous, and though I want to ask her what has been handled, I don’t trust myself to speak. Instead I smile brighter and squeeze her hands without a word.

In truth, I haven’t slept in a week.

Filippa sounds almost bored in my head. The eternal victim.

“Well, I certainly didn’t.” Beau sweeps a chair from the table for me to sit, and I force myself to focus on him. On him, not my sister. The real and the tangible of this room. Above us, copper pots glint merrily, winking down at the chipped and mismatched bowls of stew. The entire apartment reeks of cheer, and it should be my favorite place in the entire world. Once upon a time, it might’ve been.

Now it feels like a prison.

“If this arrangement continues much longer,” Beau says without missing a beat, “I’m going to insist one of the witches in this household conjures a proper bed for the living room. I’ve had a crick in my neck for days.” He jerks his chin toward the folded blankets and stacked pillows on the settee, where he and Coco have been sleeping since we returned from Requiem a week ago.

“You’re the one who demanded we stay here—not that I’m complaining,” she adds hastily to me. “I’d rather be here than at the castle, especially with Chasseurs poking around.”

Still smiling, I nod and keep my mouth firmly closed. Though Lou’s enchantment remains, the scent of this much blood in a room is overwhelming. Especially Lou’s and Coco’s. Michal once told me the blood of magical creatures tastes more potent than human blood, and now I believe him. As particularly powerful magical creatures, my two friends smell delectable.

“You mean the lovely Brigitte?” Beau scoots my chair to the table as Reid takes my empty bowl and fills it with—not stew. Bile rises at the sight of it. Thicker and darker and altogether more repulsive than broth, meat, and vegetables, my dinner stains the white porcelain crimson.

Seventh time is the charm, you think?

Pressure builds

 in my ears at the sound of that voice, and I clamp my teeth to keep from snapping at it.

“Technically, Brigitte isn’t yet a Chasseur, but I don’t blame her for acting a bit”—Beau searches for the right word, heedless of my internal struggle—“perturbed tonight. There was another disturbance at Saint-Cécile earlier this evening. Grave robbers,” he adds to me in explanation. “An inconvenience, usually—a couple of bodies missing every few months—but they’re getting out of hand. They’ve dug up half the cemetery at this point.”

I frown at that, but no one else reacts much; they seem to have already heard the news. To my surprise, the voice in my head remains silent as well—but of course she does. I shake myself mentally, nearly cracking my teeth in frustration now. She doesn’t exist.

Odessa chooses this moment to scoff and rise from her chair, equally disgusted by the blood in my bowl, before disappearing down the hallway to her room. Mila follows. They never stay for dinner. Instead, Odessa will slip into East End to dine elsewhere, and Mila—unbeknownst to her cousin—will accompany her.

Beau frowns after them. “Such a warm, empathetic creature, that Odessa. Such keen emotional intelligence—she puts even Brigitte to shame.”

“That warm, empathetic creature can still hear you.” Reid drops into the seat next to Lou, leaving the chair between us open for our seventh dinner guest. I ignore that chair. I refuse to look at it. “So I’d be careful if I were you.”

“Nonsense.” Beau claims the seat on the other side of me, immediately tipping it back on its hind legs and lacing his fingers behind his dark hair. “If the lady vampire fancies a nip now, Célie can kick her ass for me.” He smirks in my direction. “Isn’t that right?”

“What?” Distracted, I speak without thinking, and I instantly pay the price; fire rips up my throat, and my eyes water at the sheer pain of it, at the potent taste of my friends on my tongue. I can’t simply ignore Beau this time, however, and I don’t think a simple nod or shake of my head will effectively communicate the scope of his stupidity. “Odessa is very old,” I gasp. “Very strong. I—I watched her rip out a vampire’s tongue with her bare hands.”

Odessa’s voice echoes down the hallway. “And never forget it, darling.”

Beau snorts and lands back on all fours with a plunk before tucking into his stew. “Don’t underestimate yourself, Célie. You’ve trained with the

Chasseurs. I’m sure you could rip out a tongue or two—preferably hers if she keeps pontificating about the best ways to enact a trade embargo.”

“Better than hearing her describe—in lavish detail—how all of your ancestors died,” Lou says wryly.

“Oh, no, she gifted me with that happy knowledge too,” Beau says. “Apparently, a stag gored my great-great-great-grandfather to death while he answered nature’s call on the royal hunt—”

I interrupt before either of them can gather steam, my head starting to pound once more. The blood in their veins smells delectable, yes, but the blood in my bowl smells foul. “That is disgusting, and I have no desire to touch a tongue.”

Liar.

“Perhaps you just haven’t found the right one yet,” Coco says judiciously.

“Speaking of which—” Beau turns to Reid before I can answer, and my hands fist in my skirt as his scent washes over me anew, as Filippa laughs and urges me closer. He points his spoon at the empty chair beside me. “Where is your insufferable little friend? He wasn’t at the castle this evening.”

Though I’ve been refusing to think of Jean Luc, the question still catches me by surprise—or perhaps it isn’t the question at all but the wording. Because he called Jean Luc Reid’s insufferable friend, not mine, and I—I suppose that’s true now. The realization acts as a cudgel. It breaks the thrall of Beau’s blood.

Reid sends me a furtive look, but I pretend not to see it as he says, “He couldn’t get away from the Tower. He sends his regrets.”

Despite my best intentions, my eyes flash to his. “No, he doesn’t.”

We stare at each other for a single, startled heartbeat.

“Célie, he—” Reid hesitates, clearly torn. Though he’d rather swallow his kitchen knife than have this conversation, Reid is still Reid, and he has never lied to me before. “Give him space,” he says at last. “He’ll come around eventually. He’s just . . . he’s having a hard time with all of this.”

The words—spoken so earnestly, so innocently—slip below the molten heat that simmers inside my chest, filling the yawning emptiness that I’ve felt since waking up as a vampire. Since waking up dead. He’s having a hard time with all of this.

“Is he?” I ask softly.

Kill them, Filippa says, softer still.

The table seems to draw a collective breath at my expression, and the cobwebs of Lou’s magic brush my skin. They cloak the raw edges of my anger, and I hate them—I hate them—and resist the urge to claw at my flesh, to peel away each bloody layer until I’m me again, until I’m Célie. Not someone who hallucinates about her dead sister. Not someone who inadvertently inches her chair closer to the human beside her, who calculates the

 exact seconds it would take to debilitate first Beau, then Coco and Reid. Lou sits directly across the table, so she’d take longest to reach. She’d be hardest to subdue too, but her blood—

My gums split open at the thought, and my fangs descend—saliva bursting, pooling, spreading until my gorge rises and I choke on it.

Oh God.

Flinging myself backward, I topple my chair, and white spots burst in my vision. Oh God oh God oh God. My chest heaves as I struggle to hold my breath, and they’re all staring at me now, wide-eyed with alarm. Both Reid and Coco have half risen from the table, and Beau sits absolutely still, like I’m a wild animal—a predator—and he dare not move for fear of drawing my attention. You’re halfway there, Célie.

Only Lou gazes calmly back at me. “You should probably eat now.”

In my periphery, Odessa and Mila appear in the hallway, silent and watching.

“I’m s-sorry.” I clutch the kitchen wall with one hand, covering my mouth with the other and hiding my teeth from the room. Fresh tears of humiliation burn beneath my lids. All I seem able to do these days is apologize, yet Jean Luc is having a hard time? “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean— I should—”

With the flick of her wrist, Lou straightens my chair and pushes my bowl to the edge of the table. With another, steam curls from the blood once more. Though she doesn’t appear frightened like the others, the twinkle in her turquoise eyes has gone out, and her face seems paler than usual. I am endangering her family, after all. Her home. The molten heat in my chest turns to ice.

“Eat, Célie,” she says.

I feel myself nod, taking a tentative step forward. Then another. The silence weighs heavy over the room as I resume my place at the table, careful to move slowly for Beau’s sake. He sits straighter than before, his fingers tight upon his spoon. I pick up my own without a word, dipping it beneath the crimson surface of my bowl and lifting it to my lips.

The blood tastes as foul as it smells.

I do not grimace, however, or give any other indication of my discomfort, even as my sister whispers, How long can you survive like this, ma belle? How long before your body takes control?

I ignore the hallucination, just like I ignore my churning stomach as deer blood enters my system. “I apologize,” I say again, calmer this time, lifting my chin and meeting each of my friends’ gazes. They smile tentatively back at me, and I’m already forgiven. Even Beau relaxes in his seat, and Odessa vanishes to her bedroom once more. Mila lingers for just another second—her eyes a bit too understanding—before she follows.

The silence remains a touch tense, however. Lou still looks vaguely sick.

“Was that— Did my mother come to the door this morning?” I ask Reid after another moment.

“Yes.” He pushes his empty bowl away. “She came from the Tower. She’s been, ah—harassing the huntsmen about your whereabouts.”

“Harassing Jean Luc, you mean.”

He casts me a wary glance. “She said the time has come for desperate measures.”

“What did he

tell her?”

“Nothing. He agreed not to disclose anything until you’re ready. For now, the kingdom assumes you’re still with Michal—though Jean hasn’t been particularly quiet on that front.” Reid hesitates. “He debriefed the Chasseurs on Les Éternels before we sailed to Requiem on All Hallows’ Eve, and they . . . well, they haven’t exactly been discreet since we returned. Rumors of vampires have swept the city—probably the entire kingdom by now.”

“The price of silver has soared,” Beau confirms. “I’m friendly with a local silversmith, and I think he’d like to marry you.”

I almost laugh at that. Almost. Instead I choke down another mouthful of blood. It tastes gamey and wrong, tainted, like rancid meat on a hot day. My stomach rolls. “I never expected Jean Luc to keep vampires’ existence a secret. Still, though, it’s very . . . kind of him to have kept mine.”

Reid gathers the empty bowls on the table to avoid looking at me. “I told you he doesn’t hate you, Célie.”

Another uncomfortable silence descends. His second lie.

Clutching my hands in my lap, I stare down at my knotted fingers—sleek and pale and elegant. Completely foreign. “Of course not.”

The first night I woke as a vampire, Jean Luc attended dinner. The first and only meal he took with me. When I walked into the kitchen, pale and strange, his eyes tightened. When I lifted the bowl of broth to my lips—broth, not blood, in a hopeless attempt to maintain normalcy—I spewed it violently across the table, my body unable to consume it. Lou and Reid produced a cup of blood without hesitation, but the look on Jean Luc’s face . . .

Though I refused the blood—knocking it to the floor in a fit of panic—Jean Luc still left.

He left, and he hasn’t come back.

As if remembering that night, my abdomen contracts painfully, and I clamp my jaws together, determined to keep the blood down this time. “My mother won’t—” But my hand flies to my mouth, abrupt, as my body starts to heave involuntarily. No. Through sheer force of will, I swallow and lay down my spoon. I will not lose my stomach tonight. I will not.

Beau pats a sympathetic hand against my back. “Your mother still thinks you’re gallivanting across the countryside with a handsome stranger. She cares very little about his vampirism, one way or the other. Truly, I think she’s angrier about your broken engagement than his taste for blood. You’re good and thoroughly ruined in the aristocracy now.”

With a violent shudder, I choke at his pronouncement, losing the battle before it even started. The hateful liquid burns all the way up until I expel it across the table in a desperate heave, just like every other night this week. Just like my sister predicted.

A second of silence follows. Beau’s hand stills on my back. Then—before I can do anything more than cringe away, horrified—my friends move in practiced unison. Lou waves her arm, and the bloody sick on her peonies vanishes instantly. Reid gathers my bowl almost as quickly, marching it out the front door, while

Beau pulls my hair aside and Coco hands me a cloth to wipe my face. “It’ll be all right, Célie,” she says earnestly. “We’ll figure this out.”

“This is nothing, really.” Though Lou smiles in reassurance, she looks even paler than before. And the peonies—they remain pink instead of white. I cannot focus on that, however, as another bout of sickness wracks my body, and Reid plunks a small wash pail in front of me.

It’s all so kind.

So humiliating.

“Perhaps, er—bear next time,” Beau says in a horribly light voice.

I nod without a word. Because this is my life now.

When my sister speaks again, I can almost feel her presence at my back, like she stands directly behind me. Like she has stood there all along. Her fingers seem to caress my hair, and for just an instant, Beau’s eyes flick to the strands, narrowing slightly as they rustle in the too-still air. You’re going to kill them, you know. You never really stood a chance.

And abruptly, it’s all too much—my sister’s voice, her touch, the overly sincere expressions of my dearest friends. “No.” I snarl the word, slamming my palms on the table and whirling to scream at my sister, to tell her I will not be killing anyone—

But she isn’t there. Of course she isn’t. No one is there, and the table cracks ominously beneath my hands as Beau lurches away with a startled cry, as Reid and Coco shoot to their feet in alarm. “Célie?” Lou rises slower than the others, frowning at the empty air behind my chair. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Beau shudders as he too inspects the space around me. “Is there another ghost here? That—that Mila woman?”

“Mila left with Odessa,” I say through my teeth.

“Someone else, then?”

“There is no one else.” The words land like knives between us—too sharp, even to my own ears—and he blinks, flinching away from them. Shame cracks open my chest in response, and instantly, I move to—I don’t know, console him. He keeps his distance, however. “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. The words seem to bleed from every part of me until I’m drowning in blood—mine, yes, but also theirs. My teeth ache at the scent of it, and my ears ring as Filippa’s laughter echoes in a disorienting wave through the room. “Something is happening to me—”

“What is happening to you?” Lou leans forward on the table, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “If no one is here, why did you shout? What is going on?”

I shake my head reflexively. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to—”

“What aren’t you telling us, Célie?”

“N-Nothing—”

“You’re lying.”

“No,

not—” My teeth descend at that moment, however, and Filippa’s laughter reaches a fever pitch. It deafens me, and I clench my hands against the building pressure in my head, still shaking, still trying and failing to convince myself this isn’t real. This isn’t real. None of this is real—

I hear the knife before I see it.

Spinning again, I catch the silver blade a split second before it pierces the back of my skull, and in the corridor beyond, something shifts in the darkness. Something . . . ripples. “The veil,” I breathe incredulously, and before my very eyes, its shorn edges mend themselves; Filippa’s laughter dies instantly. Silence descends, and with it, a sickening sense of relief. Unbidden, I glance down at my fingers, not noticing how they burn until Coco wrenches the knife away.

The very real knife.

I’m not imagining things this time. Though I don’t know what happened to Filippa on All Hallows’ Eve, this pain in my hand is real. That tear in the veil was real, which means the person who opened it must be real too . . . if they’re a person at all.

Meeting Lou’s incredulous gaze, I say, “I think my sister is haunting me.” ...