Chapter Twenty-Five Le Lien Éternel
Chapter Twenty-Five
Le Lien éternel
We take a different route back to the castle, avoiding the stream and instead picking our way through particularly heavy undergrowth. Nervousness pricks at my skin as I avoid Michal’s gaze, but with each step, I can feel his resolve hardening as the teardrops have done in our absence.
The entire forest now sparkles with ice.
They glitter from the fronds like tiny crystals, slick and sharp, and I’d rather stab each of them into my eyes than have this conversation. Exhaling a slow, wintry breath, I search for something to say that doesn’t involve my sister. Something to postpone this conversation just a little while longer. “So—er—why do you think all of this ”—I gesture helplessly to the knee-high ferns around us—“happened?” When his black eyes cut to mine incredulously, I add, “The ice, I mean. The tears are all, well—frozen now, but of course you can already see that.”
He shakes his head. “Célie—”
“The veil must be affecting the temperature. I saw a small hole earlier where a revenant must’ve torn through, and the spirit realm—it’s much colder than ours. It always seems to be snowing there, or perhaps it’s just ash—I’ve never been able to tell—but that would explain why the temperature is plummeting here too.” The words fall from my lips faster than strictly necessary, then faster still, until I titter with nervous laughter. It burns all the way up my throat. “Still pretty, though, isn’t it? All this ice. It makes me think of Yuletide gifts and snow-white scarves, of ice palaces and orange trees and—and—” I stumble a step at that, nearly slipping on a rock between ferns, but Michal’s hand snakes out to catch my elbow.
It sears my skin through the violet silk of my sleeve.
“Célie.” A muscle ticks in his jaw as he stares down at me, and for just a moment, something soft—almost vulnerable—shadows his features. I brace for the inevitable, my thoughts scattering wildly for something else, anything else, to postpone his next words. “Moje sunce. We need to discuss Filippa.”
Filippa.
My eyes flutter shut as her name drifts between us, as fragile as the snowflakes beginning to fall. Though I cannot feel their cold, I still feel their damp, and each kisses my face as a memory. Filippa lacing her fingers through mine as we race toward the river with mud on our boots and leaves in our hair. Laughing. Dancing.
Filippa bowing her dark head over a storybook, tracing each word on the page.
Filippa peeling an orange for me. Filippa crying. Filippa throwing a knife at my back. Filippa standing over Frederic’s broken body, clutching her stomach and turning away without a word.
My eyes snap open at the last, and the snowflakes catch in my lashes; they blur my vision until everything is white. That wretched lump rises in my throat again, but I swallow it back down.
Because my sister is a revenant now, and no amount of tears will change that. According to Mathilde, each revenant must die in order to mend the veil—to mend the natural order, the natural world . How can I condemn my own sister, however? How can I send her back to the grave she never deserved?
When Michal brushes the snow from my eyes—his touch gentle—inexplicable anger cracks open my chest. Because it isn’t fair. None of this has been fair, and I haven’t had a single choice in any of it. All at once, it becomes too much, too painful , and I recoil from his hand as if he slapped me. “No.”
Though a muscle feathers in his jaw, his fingers cling to mine, refusing to let me go. “You heard Mathilde, Célie. The veil isn’t going to heal itself.”
“Perhaps I don’t care.” I lift my chin to ensure he hears every single word. “I am not discussing this with you.”
“Why?” His voice hardens almost imperceptibly, but I still hear it. I still feel it. “I thought we were friends .”
“We are friends—”
“Do friends not communicate?” He shifts slightly closer as if unable to stop himself, and warmth suffuses my belly at that small movement. “Do friends not trust each other to help? To tell the truth?”
The truth. Even the words make me want to laugh, or perhaps scream. Because Michal and I have never told the truth—at least not all of it—and never to each other. Since we first met outside that graveyard, we’ve danced around whatever this is between us, ignoring it when possible and disguising it with games and questions when not. We have never been honest, yet now he wants to speak openly? How convenient when it involves my sister instead of him.
Instead of us .
“You want to communicate? You want to tell the truth? Fine.” Gripping his shirt, I rise to my tiptoes to speak directly against his lips. I don’t pause to examine the instinct, to question the ends or the means. “Tell me about blood sharing.”
His eyes narrow. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“It’s what you should’ve meant, though, right? I mean, everyone seems to have an opinion on the topic, but I still haven’t heard much about it from you .” Before he can speak, I plunge onward recklessly. Breathlessly. “Your eyes glowed like mine—you were able to see Mila and Guinevere without touching me—and I caught you during our race earlier, which you said has never happened. Is that what you meant by vampires changing when they feed from each other? They assume each other’s abilities?”
His grip turns slightly possessive. “Among other things.”
“What other things?”
When he hesitates, I step even closer, my chest grazing his stomach. I should care about this conversation. I should care about it very much, but all I can seem to think about is that small point of contact between us—the way his abdominal muscles clench at the brush of my breasts, the way his hands slide up my wrists to my elbows. “What other things, Michal?” I whisper.
At the sound of my voice, he curses under his breath, releasing me like I’ve burned him and stalking to the nearest tree; they grow farther apart here—vast and primeval—giving me plenty of time to chase after him. Which I do. Immediately. Snatching his arm, I say, “Just tell me—”
He whirls again at my touch, and any sane person would flee such a fierce gaze looming above them. I am not sane, apparently, as the sight of his intensity—such raw emotion from someone so controlled, so cold—only engulfs my body with fresh heat. “It’s called Le Lien éternel,” he says tightly. “What we’re doing—blood sharing—it forms the Eternal Bond, and we have to stop before it’s too late.” At my rapt expression, he exhales a harsh breath and says, “Please stop looking at me like that.”
“And if we don’t?”
And if I don’t?
Cursing again, he drags a hand through his hair, and I cannot help but stare at the disheveled strands, transfixed. Have I ever seen Michal disheveled? I’ve seen him broken and bleeding, yes—and in various states of undress, his clothing stained and shredded—but no, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so—so muddled, so flustered as he does now. The man has tied himself into veritable knots since leaving Mathilde’s cottage, perhaps earlier than even that, and inexplicable emotion engulfs me at the sight of it. Of him .
The reaction must show on my face because his own darkens; glancing through the clearing, he wraps those cold fingers around my arms before walking us into the shelter of the nearest tree. The icy bark abrades my back as he says in a low voice, “The longer two vampires feed from each other, the stronger the bond grows, until...” He hesitates then, his black eyes burning into mine.
“Until?” I ask, pressing my body flush against his.
“Until it becomes irrevocable.”
“Irrevocable?”
“You’ll need my blood to survive, and I’ll need yours.”
“Oh.” Oh. His words penetrate the haze of my thoughts too slowly, but when they do, they act as ice water on the heat in my belly—the flames hiss and twist, leaving me colder and slightly dimmer than before. I blink up at Michal as the stark reality he described settles over us. The truth.
An irrevocable bond. An eternal one.
For the first time since All Hallows’ Eve, the chasm of eternity yawns open before me, wide and endless. Eternal. I should’ve realized what that word means before now. I should’ve realized what it would look like as a vampire. And perhaps I did realize, but not—not consciously. I never envisioned the actual years, the world and its people constantly in flux, ever changing, evolving, while I remain the same.
And Michal—
I stare up at him, momentarily lost for words in the face of this great, nameless future.
Michal has already lived it. For hundreds of years, he has walked this earth, experiencing things of which I could never dream, engaging in adventures, meeting every sort of person and creature and monster. And loving them , says the nasty little voice in my head. I flinch away from the realization instinctively; because of course Michal has engaged in intimate relationships before now, before me —dozens of them, probably, even scores. The thought of those beautiful, faceless people leaves me even colder than before.
I’ve loved two people in my entire life, and both of those relationships ended in the blink of Michal’s eye.
Irrevocable.
The word still echoes between us in the stillness of the clearing. It takes on quite a different meaning when coupled with eternal life. Because who am I to make such a pivotal decision? I am not Michal, and instinctively, I know that I’m not one of his usual paramours either. I am still just Célie—only Célie—and I’ve been a vampire for less than a fortnight.
At my expression, he steps away stiffly. “You must regret ever meeting me.”
“I never said that.”
“It’s what you should’ve said though, right?” Searching my gaze, he repeats my previous words. “It’s what you should want?”
Though he phrases the last as a question, I cannot help but feel he doesn’t mean it as one. You shouldn’t want me, Célie , his eyes seem to say, and part of me still believes him. Part of me knows I should flee as far and as fast as I can from Michal Vasiliev, yet the other part steps closer.
“Are you going to tell me when this mystical bond forms?” I ask him. “Or has it happened already?” A sudden and unpleasant thought strikes. “Is that why I—?” Oh God. I gape at him as that heat claws higher, nearly strangling my words. “Is that why I’m feeling all these things about you? Because of this Eternal Bond?”
“We’ve fed from each other once,” Michal says with thinly veiled impatience. “I hate to break it to you, pet, but whatever you’re feeling about me is because of you, not the bond.”
“ Me? ” Though I move to step around him—away from him—my hands catch his surcoat, and I pull him closer instead. His fingers lace through mine. “All of this is happening because of you . You and your—your eyes, and your loyalty, and your stupid dimple.” His brows contract at that, but I plunge forward before he can speak. “When does it happen, Michal? When does this bond between us become permanent?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“ Tell me—”
“The stronger the emotions involved, the faster it happens, but no one can predict the exact moment.” He tears his gaze from mine with the air of someone trying to bring the situation back under his control. Apparently he cannot look at me to do that. Cannot touch me either. The thought fills me with a thrill of exhilaration, as does the realization that the bond hasn’t happened yet. If we stop drinking from each other, it never will. Nothing needs to change between us—or at least, not that . As if echoing my thoughts, he says, “I will not feed from you again.”
Instantly, the image of him feeding from Arielle—of him feeding from anyone else—rears in my mind like a snake preparing to strike, but I push it away. “Good. Agreed. Perhaps Arielle will let me feed from her too. She seemed to rather enjoy your attentions—”
“I intend to honor my word, Célie,” he says softly, lethally. “Our bargain still stands. You can feed from me until you learn to control it.”
“Oh no.” I jab a finger at his chest, and that sense of exhilaration heightens as he glares down at it. “Oh no, no, no. I’ll feed from whoever I wish, whenever I wish, and nothing you say can stop me.”
Michal’s eyes flash dangerously as he steps closer, his powerful body crowding mine against the tree once more. “Fine, Célie. As you wish.” Then, with cutting honesty, “I meant what I said before, however. What happened in the tunnels—it cannot happen again. Whether you choose to feed from me or someone else, I will not take another drop of your blood”—those dark eyes flick to my throat—“no matter how tempting you might be.”
I blink at him, startled. “Tempting?”
Though he does not clarify, heat still suffuses my body at the word, and we stare at each other beneath the limbs of the frozen yew tree, this moment between us stretching taut enough to snap. At last, I lift a shoulder as if indifferent, trying not to tremble beneath the weight of his gaze.
“Fine,” I say simply. “You cannot feed from me again.”
“Fine,” he echoes. “Never again.”
And then I kiss him.