Chapter Thirty-Two Romanticizing Nightmares
Chapter Thirty-Two
Romanticizing Nightmares
This time, I fall through the veil straight into Michal’s bed.
More specifically, I fall straight on top of Michal in his bed, which might’ve been pleasant under different circumstances. Under these circumstances, however, I crash against him like a bag of bricks, and he wakes with a snarl, flipping me over and pinning me against the mattress in an instant. His teeth bared. His eyes bright.
His body taut and heavy and very naked.
A terrified squeak escapes as I gaze up at him, wide-eyed, unable to move with his hand clenched around my throat. At the sight of me, however, he relaxes almost involuntarily, his face close enough for me to see the precise second his mind catches up to his body. “Célie?” Instantly, his hand falls away, and he shifts backward with an incredulous expression that quickly sharpens to wariness. “What is it? What happened?”
He glances up before I can answer, and I follow his gaze to the torn veil near the grotto’s ceiling, through which Death’s laughter still echoes. Michal’s black eyes narrow to shards of obsidian.
“Was that... Death?” he asks softly.
“Yes.” I scramble upward to explain myself, to explain everything in an unintelligible rush of panic: “And he’s—Michal, Death is trying to bring down the veil. All of it. The whole thing. He wants to bring it down, and he—he threatened my mother if I refused to help him. He threatened the blood witches too. And I think I might’ve told him too much, but I’m not sure because I don’t know how Frederic and Filippa tore through the veil in the grotto. I don’t know how to re-create it either, which means—”
“Célie.” Jaw clenched, Michal pushes back to his knees and shakes his head. “Before we talk about anything, I need you to move across the room.” He jerks his chin toward the staircase. “Over there .”
I blink at him, startled. “What? Why?”
“Because,” he says in a strained voice, “I am naked, and you quite literally just fell into my bed. If you want to have any sort of rational conversation, I need you to move out of it—quickly.” His hand creeps to the hem of my nightgown. “Unless you’d prefer to use my mouth for something less civilized than talking.”
My cheeks flame with instant heat—partly from embarrassment, but mostly from the visceral image of his tongue between my thighs. Oh God. Leaping from the bed, I dart across the room while tugging my nightgown back into place, and I don’t risk another glance until I’ve reached the cold safety of the stairs. His lips have curved into a smirk.
“Start again,” he says. “From the beginning this time.”
From the beginning.
Right.
With a deep breath, I begin to pace, trying and failing to collect my thoughts. Panic creeps higher up my throat. This situation has spiraled wildly out of control, and every second we spend here is a second wasted. We need to act . “My mother—”
“—is safe at the moment.” When I open my mouth to argue, still flushed and disoriented, Michal says curtly, “Death needs to keep his leverage, and you cooperated tonight. What message would it send if he kills her now? How likely would you be to cooperate again?”
Another shiver sweeps through me, and I force myself to sit on the bottom step. To feel the stone beneath my hands. “He seemed so angry. Volatile.”
“Let’s hope he stays that way.” At my confused look, he adds, “An angry Death means we still have the upper hand.” Cursing under his breath, Michal stares at his headboard without truly seeing it, and the weight of my words seems to settle over him. “The veil . I should’ve known.” Then, louder— “Tell me the rest. Tell me all of it.”
With a deep breath, I nod and attempt to do as he says. To slow down. To start at the beginning. And as I concentrate on the chill of the steps, their timeworn smoothness, the words come a little easier as I recount everything that happened tonight. Michal’s expression remains inscrutable through it all, except when my voice hitches at Death threatening my mother. Here, his lip curls slightly, but he doesn’t interrupt; he doesn’t speak at all until after I’ve stumbled through the rest, and a fresh bolt of anxiety shoots through me as I remember Death’s parting words. “The village! Death said—Michal, he told the revenants to burn it to the ground.” I vault to my feet. “I need to go back. We need to—to try to save their homes somehow. The blood witches—”
“—can rebuild,” he says firmly. “There is nothing more we can do. Because of Coco, they managed to evade Death—an incredible feat, if he’s as volatile as you say. And it makes sense. He isn’t accustomed to experiencing human emotions. Anger, pride, greed—they’ll be running rampant through his new body. I assume they’ll have turned him into an arrogant bastard.”
“They have,” I confirm, though I still feel uneasy. “Death knows Mila has been spying on them too. She could be in danger. We need to warn her right away—”
“And we will.” Across the room, his night-dark eyes glint with intensity, with conviction . “We’ll send word to everyone—Louise, Cosette, Beauregard, even Jean Luc, who will in turn spread word to their people. Likewise, every creature in Requiem will know how to dispatch Death’s revenants after tonight. Odessa will see to that.”
Though my body remains tense, my mind recognizes the truth in his words. The revenants, at least, can be addressed; their deaths will mend the holes they’ve created. Still... You will no longer need to fear my embrace, will no longer need to grieve your departed loved ones. Death’s voice drifts like a specter in my thoughts. We have a much greater problem than the revenants now, but—as we have no immediate solution—I ignore it for the moment, focusing instead on Michal. The tightness in my shoulders eases slightly.
“You aren’t alone in this, Célie,” he continues. “Death tried to frighten you tonight. He tried to isolate you, and he will continue to do so. No matter how he makes you feel, however, you must remember that you have the control. You have the advantage. You have—”
“You,” I say without thinking.
He blinks as if startled, and for several seconds, his body goes completely still. I cannot read his face. Though his response is not unexpected, it still brings a lump to my throat. For once, I wish he’d simply let go, let live, let me see those emotions he tries to keep buried—for his own sake as well as my own. Because the vampire before me is only one fraction of the whole; before this, Michal was a young man who loved his family so deeply that he made a deal with Death, sacrificing everything for them. He—did me a favor once. I’ve regretted it every day since.
I cannot help but think, however—if push came to shove—he would damn the consequences and choose the same all over again. To save Mila.
To save me.
He inclines his head. “For as long as you want me, Célie.” My breath catches at that, and I know he hears it because he closes his eyes—just for a second, as if the sound of it pains him somehow. And I want to ask why; I want to know , but his eyes have already snapped open. “Did he hurt you?”
Though I shake my head, my eyes flit unbidden to my hand, and he doesn’t miss that either. His expression darkens.
“Come here,” he says.
My feet respond instinctively; despite the quiet menace in his voice, I close the distance between us without hesitation, and I perch on the edge of the bed, turning to face him with a murmured, “I promise I’m fine—”
He takes my hand before I can finish, however, his touch exceedingly gentle as he turns my palm upward to examine the cut from Death’s silver knife. I curl my fingers to hide it. “It really doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.” Still I watch, transfixed, as his pupils dilate, as his fingers sweep up my forearm before hesitating on the soft, delicate skin of my inner elbow. I should be riddled with Death’s fingerprints by now, but I’m not.
Because of Michal.
He still seems to sense exactly where the marks should be, however, because his eyes glint with cold and lethal promise when they finally meet mine. “I intend to be there next time Death pays a visit. He will never touch you again.”
Gooseflesh erupts down my arms at the change in his tone, and with it, the more immediate situation reasserts itself—namely, his looming presence, his sinister expression, and his gloriously and inescapably naked body. Awareness returns with a wave of heat. It burns up my cheeks and ears, and I swallow hard, fixing my gaze upon his face and refusing to look below his neck. My stomach still tightens, however. It still flutters with anticipation. Because I am an idiot , and I should’ve—I don’t know—demanded he dress himself at the onset of this discussion, or fled across the room and held it at a much safer distance. Like across the kingdom , I think with another inexplicable shiver.
If I had, perhaps I wouldn’t now be realizing how Michal resembles an ancient pagan god, every inch of his body chiseled from stone. Perhaps I wouldn’t be noticing how the candlelight reflects upon his chest, his arms, his torso, throwing each contour in sharp relief. Or how his presence here seems so much larger than anywhere else—potent, almost overpowering—despite him kneeling before me on silk sheets.
His eyes slowly heat as the silence stretches between us. As he gently—so gently—brushes a thumb across my knuckles. “Take my blood, Célie. Heal yourself.”
Oh God.
Flustered, I clamber away from him with a stammered, “I—I really am terribly sorry about dropping in on you like this. R-Really sorry. Terribly sorry. This is—” I wave an agitated hand toward his body, staring resolutely across the cavern. At least the revenants within the maelstrom have gone—burned, probably, if the lingering scent of smoke in the air is any indication. “This isn’t—I mean, my hand doesn’t even hurt, and—and I should probably check back in on my mother. Yes.” Nodding like a lunatic, I cringe at how horribly light my voice sounds in the cavernous room. How hearty . “Like you said, she’s probably fine—and I’m fine too—but I did leave her alone in a castle full of vampires—”
Michal’s arm snakes out to catch my waist before I can slide from the bed and melt through the floor.
“Nice try,” he says in a low, even voice, “but Pasha and Ivan are stationed outside her door. Why are you running from me?”
“I am not running . I—I simply—” I cast about for the right words, finding none in the wake of the delicious weight of his arm around me. It feels... heavy. Strong. Almost sick with heat now, I close my eyes and clench my limbs to keep them from trembling. This isn’t the time. This isn’t the place. There are still so many—so many things we need to discuss, and my hand can wait. It needs to wait, or I fear I’ll stay in this bed forever. “I didn’t mean to intrude. That’s all I meant. I never planned to come here—”
“Why not?” Michal asks dryly. “You can visit Death but not me?”
My eyes flick open as defensiveness sparks, and I cling to it like a life raft, even as my body inches back against his chest. “I didn’t visit Death. He stole me from my bed, but—”
Michal’s arm tightens near imperceptibly. “Your bed?”
“Not like that . He—I—” But the words tangle on my tongue as his blood roars through my ears, and I cannot think around this overwhelming need to press against him, everywhere . A thread of trepidation still holds me back, however. It knots in my belly, inexplicable and impossible to ignore—because this bed is not a tree in the forest.
There is no revenant poised to attack.
Michal and I are alone now, truly alone, and he is naked. If things progress much further, they might progress all the way, and—I shouldn’t want that, should I? Do not give him anything you cannot take back , my mother once warned about Reid. At the ripe age of fifteen, I’d just told her I loved him, and for some reason, the confession had alarmed her. I understand her fear a little better now.
Michal is not Reid, however. Michal is so much... more.
For as long as you want me, Célie.
He seems to sense my rising panic. Without a word, his arm falls away from me, and he shifts back again, ignoring my small noise of protest. “You’re frightened,” he says simply.
When he moves to wrap the sheet around his waist, I seize his arm on instinct and admit the truth: “Not of you . I just—I’ve never seen a man naked before.”
Our gazes catch and hold as the words evoke another time, another place, another Michal, and the memory of Les Abysses descends between us. It isn’t a dirty word, you know , he told me that night.
What word?
Virgin.
To my relief, he doesn’t look disappointed now either. Though he remains quiet for a long moment, something sharpens in his gaze as we study each other in the dim light of the grotto. It resembles longing and, strangely enough, feels just as vulnerable as my confession. “So look,” he says at last.
His pupils dilate as fresh heat blooms in my cheeks, but still he does not move as my hand slides from his arm to his palm. Resolve hardens in my chest. Because I—I want to look at him. Even though I shouldn’t, I want to look at him very badly, and now—now I can.
With a deep breath, I inch closer, taking in the hard lines of his shoulders, the sweeping slope of his chest. His abdomen. The taut muscles there contract slightly beneath my stare, and only with great difficulty do I tear my gaze away to study the V between his hips instead. An almost painful ache radiates from my belly at the sight. And I want to touch him. I need to touch him, yet lower still—
My mouth dries.
Though I haven’t seen a naked man before, I never imagined one could look like this. “You’re—” My voice comes out higher than usual, however—much too high—so I clear my throat and try again. “You look—you’re beautiful, Michal,” I finally manage. “One of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met.”
The vulnerability in his eyes seems to splinter at the compliment, and he pulls his hand away with a sharp and self-deprecating laugh. It punctures the dreamlike quality of the moment. It brings us abruptly back to reality. “What did I tell you about romanticizing nightmares?” he asks.
Startled, I frown up at him, worried I’ve said the wrong thing, the worst thing. But—no. My frown deepens. I don’t think I have. “Is that really how you think of yourself?”
“You should too.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” I say a touch sharply, “and you shouldn’t either.”
Before I can press the issue further, however, a familiar meow erupts from the floor. An aggrieved one. Leaning over the bedside, I come face-to-face with a fat orange tabby, who cannot reach the edge of Michal’s sheet despite his best attempts. We blink at each other for a beat of silence. Then—
“Toulouse?” Momentarily distracted, I bend to scoop him into my arms, and a saucer of milk near a small writing desk in the corner catches my eye. I recognize neither from my last time in the grotto. “What are you doing here?”
He meows again, and his brothers and sisters scramble from beneath the bed in answer, all of them, crying and attempting to claw their way up the bedcovers to reach us. I peer down at them, bewildered. “What—?”
Shaking his head, Michal exhales a harsh breath in answer before rising to his feet. Though I want to stop him—to finish our conversation—he vanishes behind the black curtain in the next second, and when he returns, he wears loose-fitting pants and a wooden expression. Tension still lingers in his shoulders, in his eyes, as he extends a linen bandage. A peace offering. When I reach out to take it, he catches my wrist instead, winding the fabric around my wounded hand with deft, gentle movements. “You cannot stay in your room anymore,” he says in a low voice, knotting the fabric and brushing a kiss against my fingers. “Promise me. Not while Death thinks he can come and go as he pleases.”
“But my mother—”
“—is safe from Death until the status quo changes, but if you’re worried, Pasha and Ivan will remain with her at all times. She’ll be safe with them.” He bends to scratch Toulouse’s head. The movement strikes me as oddly instinctive and—gentle. It also brings his face much closer to mine, and I study his fringe of dark lashes, the sweep of his silver hair. Such a striking combination. An unusual one. For the first time, I wonder whether his hair has always been this color, or if it somehow changed after becoming a vampire. I wonder if he ever owned a cat. Silly questions, perhaps, but there are so many things I don’t know about him.
Did you know their father was a drunkard?
“Why are the kittens here?” I blurt out.
He doesn’t hesitate in answering, now scratching Toulouse beneath his chin. “Because they make your mother uncomfortable.”
And something in the ease of his answer undoes me.
Leaning forward without warning, I kiss him.
I kiss him because he is selfless and kind, and somewhere along the way, he learned to hide the best parts of himself. I kiss him because he cares about my mother, cares about kittens, cares about me despite the danger we pose, despite his world falling apart around him. It would’ve been so much easier to walk away. It would’ve been expected—celebrated, even—if he’d killed me and my friends on All Hallows’ Eve. He would’ve retained his crown. He would’ve ruled forever.
Instead he sighs softer now—almost a groan—and responds in turn, kissing my jaw, my throat, before detaching Toulouse from my lap and setting him upon the floor. When he returns, his palms slide up my legs, and he parts my knees slowly, stepping into the space between them. I slide my hips to the edge of the bed in response, right against his, and wrap my feet around his calves. “Don’t go with him again,” he says against my lips. “Not without telling someone. Promise me.”
And I want to agree. I want to kiss him until neither of us can breathe, until I no longer blush scarlet every time I see him. I want to know what his skin feels like. I want to explore this overwhelming connection between us, and more than that, I want to understand it. I want to understand him .
Instead I say nothing, quietly hating myself because I can’t promise it won’t happen again—I can’t promise anything when it comes to Death, who seems to hold everyone in the palm of his hand. My sister, my mother, even me , and also—
The truth I tried to forget crashes down on my head.
Dimitri.
I forgot to tell Michal about Dimitri.
If Death is to be believed, he owns Dimitri too—made some sort of deal with him—and I have a sneaking suspicion I know what it was. Worse still, we forgave him after his betrayal on All Hallows’ Eve; we believed him, and that makes us the fools. Even his name curdles my stomach now. Indeed, I stiffen just as Michal’s hands move to my hips, as his gaze descends to where our bodies touch.
“Michal.”
At the sudden tension in my body, his eyes flick back to mine, the heat in them cooling slightly at whatever he sees. A furrow appears between his brows. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
His voice is tight again, strained, and I don’t want to tell him. God , I don’t want to tell him—to ruin this moment—but as he lifts a hand to my cheek, searching my face, I realize this isn’t about me. This is about him. Dimitri is his cousin, and he deserves to know what Death told me today.
Before I can say the words aloud, however, Michal speaks with such quiet intensity that I want to kiss him all over again. “We don’t need to do anything you don’t want to do, Célie. If you’re uncomfortable—”
“I’m not,” I say hastily, squeezing my legs tighter when he moves to step away. My arms snake around his neck for good measure, and I cling to him. “I’m not uncomfortable, and I—I don’t want to stop”—he tilts his head at my jumbled explanation—“but I need to talk to you about—about Dimitri.”
Michal blinks, clearly startled by mention of his cousin. “Dimitri,” he repeats flatly. “You want to talk about... Dimitri.”
I nod warily. “And Death.”
“Ah.” Comprehension flickers in the depths of Michal’s eyes, and now he stiffens, his hands falling from my hips altogether. He pulls away with a curse, and reluctantly, I release him, feeling sick again as he stalks to the writing desk, pulls open the drawer, and withdraws a bottle of absinthe. He plunks it onto the desktop. “What has he done?” he finally asks.
Still I feel the need to—protect Michal, somehow, even when I know it isn’t possible. “I don’t know if it’s true—”
“It probably is.”
“Death said all sorts of horrible things—”
“Out with it, Célie.”
“They made a deal,” I say abruptly. “I don’t know what Death agreed to give Dimitri in return, but Dimitri told him about All Hallows’ Eve. He told him about the masquerade, about Frederic’s ritual, about you and about me, even about Odessa and the fake insurrection.” When Michal says nothing, I slide from the bed, careful to avoid Toulouse and his siblings as I approach him. “Like I said, Dimitri might not have been involved. Death could’ve been lying.” A careful pause. “After all, he seemed to know... other things, as well. Things Dimitri couldn’t have told him.”
Michal withdraws two small glasses from his desk, pouring a small measure of absinthe into each. He doesn’t look at me. His fingers clench white around the bottle. “Such as?” he asks calmly.
I resist the urge to place a hand upon his back. “He—he spoke of your parents.”
“What of them?”
“Um, well—” My throat closes around the words.
“My father’s addiction? My mother’s heresy?” He slides a sidelong glance in my direction for confirmation, his eyes brittle and overly bright. “Dimitri knew of both.”
“He also spoke of Mila.” When I swallow hard, Michal tracks the movement reflexively before turning back to the absinthe. He stares down at it with palpable hatred, as if even the sight of it revolts him. And suddenly, I wonder at the presence of that bottle in his bedroom. I wonder why he keeps it here at all. “He spoke of how you turned her into a vampire. How you turned into a vampire.”
Without a word, he extends one of the glasses to me, but I shake my head, remembering my last experience with the horrendous stuff—how I vomited all over his pristine boots. My vampiric body would likely reject it even faster. I have no idea how Michal can keep it down. “I’d rather die again than drink that,” I say frankly.
“Fair enough.” He downs each drink in one swallow—his face impassive despite the burn of alcohol—before returning the glasses to the desk and saying, “I’m sure you have questions.”
“You don’t owe me any answers, Michal.” I draw to a halt at his side, turning to lean against the desktop. “I seem to remember owing you quite a few, though. I hope you’ll be kind when the time comes.”
A ghost of a smile touches his lips, and a deeper sort of warmth infuses my chest at the sight of it—because he hasn’t shut me out yet. Because he isn’t pushing me away. Instead he shakes his head and turns too, crossing his legs and mirroring my stance. “No more games, Célie. What do you want to know?”
We stare at each other for a long moment before I say tentatively, “Death said you found him, just like everyone else does.” I hesitate. “How did you... do it?”
His expression hardens when he realizes my meaning. “Next question.”
I nod quickly, somewhat relieved he refused to answer. Someday, maybe, he’ll want to tell me, and if that day comes, I will do my best to listen. “How did you first transition?” I ask instead. “How did you become a vampire?”
“What color light did you see when you died?”
“It was sort of—golden.”
He leans behind us to grab the bottle of absinthe, forgoing the glasses and drinking straight from the source before saying, “Mine was black. I walked into it, and when I woke, I slaughtered my neighbor’s entire family. His daughter, Vesna, and I”—here he shakes his head bitterly, unable to keep the deprecation from his voice—“we were childhood sweethearts. I thought I would marry her someday. By the time I realized what was happening, she was dead in my arms with her parents and brother lying across the room.”
“Oh, Michal.”
He tips the bottle of absinthe in acknowledgment before taking another drink. “And I still turned my sister after that. I watched as she turned Odessa, as Odessa turned Dimitri, as the three of them slaughtered anyone who had ever spurned them, and when our parents disavowed us, I happily joined them in leaving a trail of bodies through the countryside. Whispers began to follow us, and villagers began to mark their doors with crosses—at the urging of my father, I think.” He shakes his head and takes another drink. The gesture feels almost belligerent now, yet still Michal doesn’t react to the alcohol. “Apparently, he cleaned himself up after we left, never touched the bottle again. I wouldn’t know. He died before I ever came home.”
“How—” I swallow hard and try again, staring at the bottle in his own hand. “How old are you?”
“I don’t know,” he says plainly. “People tracked time differently then—by month, by year, by the equinox each autumn and solstice each spring. Physically, I couldn’t have been much older than you when I transitioned to vampire.”
“Oh.” Eyeing his bare chest incredulously, I privately disagree. “You must’ve, er... aged faster back then.”
To my surprise, he grins—that sharp, mocking half grin I’ve come to love. “I’ve always been strong, Célie. Even as a human.”
Noted. My own chest twists a little as his grin fades once more, and we gradually lapse into silence. I still have dozens of questions to ask, of course—possibly hundreds—but I sense Michal has reached his limit this evening. He grips the absinthe with both hands now, his knuckles clenching white around the label, and stares down at his fingers without truly seeing them. Though the silence stretches between us, I cannot bring myself to move, to leave him alone with his thoughts.
In my worst moments, my thoughts trapped me just as completely as any coffin.
Just as I reach for him, however, he asks in a devastatingly quiet voice, “Would you have hesitated with Filippa?”
It’s the single most vulnerable thing I’ve heard him say, and in response, my hand shifts midair; slowly, it reaches to take the bottle from him instead. His fingers slip from the glass without resistance. Placing it behind us with a dull thunk , I step in front of him and wait for him to look at me. When he does, I step closer, wrapping my arms around his waist and resting my cheek against his chest. Right where his heart should beat. “You’re a good man, Michal.”
Though his body remains tense, he still brushes a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m not a man anymore, Célie, and if you’ve listened to anything I’ve said tonight, you know I’ve never been good.”
I lean back to study him through narrowed eyes. “Do you think I am good?”
“How can you even ask me that?” He sounds incredulous now, almost angry. “Célie, you’re—” But his voice breaks off, and he looks away swiftly, clearing his throat. “Yes. I think you’re good.”
“Then listen to me. No, listen , Michal.” Reaching up, I catch his face between my palms and force him to look at me. His eyes glint like shards of broken glass in the low light, bright and sharp and painful. “You accuse me of romanticizing nightmares, but I disagree. I’ve always been able to tell the difference.” He exhales harshly, moving to turn his face away, but I stretch up on my toes to keep him still. “The world has never consisted of angels and demons. It consists of people, and people make choices. The Archbishop, Morgane, even my own father—almost every time, they make the wrong one. I know I do, and so do you.”
When I release him this time, he doesn’t turn away. He simply stares at me. He stares at me, and he waits to hear my condemnation. I can feel his body bracing for the impact, can see the self-disgust resolving in his gaze. And I empathize; for the longest time, I needed someone to tell me the truth—to just tell me that I’m weak, that I’m worthless, that I’ll never be good enough, so I could accept it myself and move on.
I could never accept what wasn’t true, however. And neither can Michal.
Still, Michal has hated himself in private for hundreds and hundreds of years; convincing him otherwise will be a difficult task. Difficult, but not impossible. Perhaps if he hears my words tonight, he’ll listen to them later. Perhaps someday he’ll even believe them.
“There was nothing wrong about trying to save your sister,” I tell him fiercely. “You did your best for the people you love, and it was a brave and admirable decision—more than most of us ever choose to do. I can only hope to someday do the same.” Rising to my toes once more, I press a kiss to his cheek. “Come on. Let’s go talk to Dimitri.”