Chapter Thirty-Three The West Tower
Chapter Thirty-Three
The West Tower
We find him in the West Tower around dusk—a tower Odessa has claimed as her personal suite. Enormous and completely open, the room resembles a giant obelisk with stacked balconies running along its circumference, each overflowing with several lifetimes’ worth of discarded hobbies: baskets of wool and knitting needles, a pipe organ, jars of propagated plants, paint pots and canvas frames, a palmistry hand, even two slowly revolving models of the solar system.
Abruptly, the scope of Odessa’s life hits me like a fist to the face. Because she has lived several lifetimes, and buried each one in this room. The place is equal parts graveyard, classroom, and laboratory of a fickle scientist.
And it is marvelous .
After following Michal across the threshold, I peer up at a bizarre statue near the door, its face painted into an eternally chilling smile of white and gold. “What is that?” I ask in morbid fascination. “Some sort of guardian?”
Michal spares it an uninterested glance. “She calls it an automaton.”
“And an automaton is...?”
“A failed experiment.” He steps over a spangled shoebox filled with brass cogs and gears. “Mila and Dimitri often snuck in here to rearrange Odessa’s things. It drove her mad . Contrary to this general air of chaos, she claims a method to her madness, so she built Potvor to dissuade them from touching anything else. He exploded before she could finish him—”
“—and thus served his purpose,” Dimitri says from across the room, “as we thought she’d rigged the place with explosives.” He stands atop a giant chessboard painted onto the very floor, hands on his hips as he considers the life-sized pieces around him. “Des!” He raps his knuckles on the horse’s saddle before craning his neck to shout behind him. “I think your queen can take this knight!”
Odessa pokes her head over the railing of the third-floor balcony. She holds a map in one hand and a protractor in the other; large spectacles sit on the bridge of her nose. “You will not move a single piece! I forbid it. This game is currently in play, and it is Panteleimon’s turn, not mine.”
Dimitri shakes his head in exasperation before moving the queen anyway. “Panteleimon is a peacock,” he mutters.
When said peacock sweeps past him a moment later—wearing a collar of brilliant gold—we all watch, transfixed, as he nudges his rook forward to take the queen. Dimitri curses. Odessa sighs.
“You are an idiot,” she says before vanishing once more.
“Yes, you are.” Michal steps forward then, breaking the moment with his regal bearing and cold stare—so at odds with the man he allowed me to see below. The mask slipped back into place the instant we left the safety of the grotto. “We need to talk,” he says to his cousin now.
Dimitri grimaces. “Sounds dull.”
Michal’s lip curls just as Odessa reappears on a stone staircase tucked into the back of the tower. “Whatever it is can wait.” Sans spectacles now, she glides toward us in a sweeping robe of turquoise silk, pulling me into an uncharacteristically fierce embrace. “ There you are, Célie. I was just about to come find you. It was all Michal’s idea—as I’m sure you already know—but I need to make it perfectly clear I never wanted to make such a spectacle of tearing out his heart. I’ve always advocated for doing it in private,” she adds sweetly.
“Though I didn’t hear a complaint either,” Michal says.
She ignores him, pulling back to look at me. Despite their repartee, her dark eyes shine with uncertainty as she waits for my reaction. She clearly expects me to be angry about the role she played in the insurrection, to be hurt by her part in the subterfuge. And perhaps I am. Instead of warning me to stay in my room, she could’ve explained what was going to happen; she could’ve included me. Instead she forced me to watch Michal die—forced me to watch her kill him, and feel every ounce of pain associated with that betrayal. And yet...
I cannot help but remember Michal’s words.
No one judges you for it, Célie, but you’ve made your distaste for Requiem known.
Perhaps I’m not the only one who has been hurt.
This island might be strange and cruel at times—just like its inhabitants—but it isn’t only strange and cruel. Clearly, Odessa has built a full and gratifying life here with her family; this very room is a testament to both.
Returning her embrace, I squeeze her tightly, and I try to convey the depth of my own relief that she did not murder her cousin. And perhaps an apology. “I understand,” I say quietly. Then— “I’m also quite glad my friend isn’t a power-hungry madwoman.”
“Oh, she’s still that.” Hands in his pockets, Dimitri strolls forward with a grin as Odessa releases me hastily, turning away and blinking hard. My heart pangs at the unexpected display of emotion—or was it because I called her friend? I should’ve sought her out sooner. Though she’d never admit it, Odessa feels just as deeply as anyone, and the strain and uncertainty of the last few days must’ve weighed heavily on her.
Before I can join her on the plush settee across the chessboard, however, Dimitri steps in front of Michal, blocking my path. “I love that furrowed brow of yours as much as the next person, cousin, but shall we smooth it out before it becomes permanent? I assume you charged up here to reprimand me for something. By all means, let’s get down to—”
Michal seizes his collar abruptly, jerking him closer and leaning down to scent his throat. “I knew it,” he says over Dimitri’s protests, shoving him away again. With a curse, Dimitri careens backward into a mannequin riddled with pins.
“What are you—? Stop, stop !” Wide-eyed at the abrupt shift in atmosphere, Odessa moves in a blur to catch them both, but she releases her brother when he hisses and bares his teeth, whirling to face Michal incredulously.
“Have you gone mad ?”
Michal steps in front of me, and Dimitri mirrors the movement, bringing the two entirely too close for a calm, well-reasoned conversation. Though I’d known this would happen, my stomach still plunges with regret as I remember Dimitri’s admission in the grotto: As hard as it might be for you to believe, Michal and I were like brothers once. Looking at them now, such a thing does feel quite hard to believe.
“I warned you what would happen,” Michal says softly. “I warned you what I would do if you betrayed us again.”
“What is happening?” Bewildered, Odessa straightens the mannequin while—against my better judgment—I force my way between Michal and Dimitri, determined to prevent any bloodshed. Though Dimitri has proven himself to be a snake, Michal might someday regret killing him. I think.
Neither one of them acknowledges me, however. Neither one of them steps back.
“Go ahead, cousin.” Michal arches a coolly mocking brow, his chest tensing against my palm. “Tell your dear sister all about your deal with Death. He told Célie a little, but I’d like to hear more.”
“Michal,” I warn.
Because Odessa has gone completely still at his words—all except her eyes. They narrow, darting between the two of them as she clutches the mannequin. “What is he talking about, Dima? What deal with Death?”
Dimitri’s expression hardens.
“I wanted to tell you,” he says fervently. “I was going to tell you—” But he breaks off as Odessa’s face twists, as she recoils from the confession like it’s a slap. He seems to realize his mistake in the same instant. Lip curling, he takes another step toward Michal, his body bracing, pressing flush against my side. “You shouldn’t have come here like this. It was badly done.”
“As opposed to what you’ve done?” Michal asks.
“Oh, this is ridiculous—” Though I lift another hand to push them apart, Odessa beats me to it, seizing Dimitri’s arm and wrenching him around with a truly terrifying snarl. Her dark eyes blaze like twin pillars of fire.
“Unless someone provides an explanation in the next two seconds, I will single-handedly disembowel each one of—”
“We found the source of his mystery cure,” Michal says flatly. “I assume you noticed the subtle change in his scent?” When Odessa nods, he finally yields a step, and I let my hand fall from his chest before withdrawing to the settee on heavy feet. None of this feels like a victory. “I noticed it too, but I convinced myself the scent was mine—or rather, hers .”
He tips his head to me, and I nudge Panteleimon aside to sit beside him, pretending the others aren’t watching my every move. Pretending my presence—my scent —hasn’t allowed Dimitri to mask his subterfuge. I still feel dirty, however. Tainted.
“And so I resolved to let Dima keep his privacy,” Michal continues. “Whatever his method, it couldn’t be worse than butchering the masses and collecting their trophies—”
“They were never trophies,” Dimitri says through clenched teeth.
“—but I was wrong. It is worse, and it endangers more than the inhabitants of this island.” Directly to Odessa now, Michal says, “Dimitri has been drinking Death’s blood.”
A beat of silence follows the ominous pronouncement, broken only by a splintering crack of wood.
Odessa has snapped the mannequin in two.
Instinctively, I rise again to help, but I stop short as Dimitri forces a bitter smile, rolling his eyes and stalking to the nearest chess piece. “Such dramatics .” He leans against the enormous rook without looking at any of us, and I want to shake him for feigning indifference—for refusing to accept responsibility, for pushing us deeper into an already precarious situation. “Thank you for your concern, Michal, but I assure you, I have the situation well in hand. No one needs to treat me any differently, or scold me, or fear me—”
“No one fears you, Dimitri,” I say quietly. “We fear for you.”
“Funnily enough, I can’t recall asking for that either.”
“This isn’t a game,” Michal snaps. “You have placed yourself in Death’s debt, and sooner or later, he will come to collect. Are you prepared to pay that price? Are you prepared for us to pay it? Already, he has threatened Célie—”
“He has?” Dimitri’s eyes narrow, and his face snaps toward mine for an explanation. He almost looks concerned. “What happened? What did he say?”
“Does it matter?” I ask him.
“Of course it matters.” Scoffing, he shakes his head in disbelief before meeting each of our gazes. “You’re all acting like I’ve committed some unforgivable sin by obtaining this cure when in reality, the true sins came before it—and I’d still be committing them if not for Death. The grimoire proved useless. His blood saved me. You said it yourself, Michal: I am finally Dima again—finally me —and in return, Death asked for nothing except the occasional interview. And on that note, I’ve divulged no secrets, telling him only what he could’ve discovered on his own.”
Odessa and Michal don’t seem to believe him, however. At her skeptical expression, at his disgusted one, Dimitri heaves a harsh laugh, and his shoulders slump against the chess piece. “But it doesn’t matter what I say, does it? It never will. Neither of you have ever understood my condition. After all these years, you still don’t understand—Mila is the only one who even tried.”
He glares between them, but the heat in his gaze feels more like despair than true anger. Like hopelessness.
“And why would you?” he snarls. “Odessa Petrov has never met a question she cannot answer. Michal Vasiliev has never once lost control.” When he cranes his neck to look at me, I brace myself for the worst, yet it doesn’t come. “Do you know what it is to be the bane of your loved ones’ existence? The black mark? The stain? Do you know how it feels to consistently and irrevocably disappoint everyone around you?”
My heart gives a peculiar twist at that. Perhaps because the answer is yes , of course I do; of course everyone does, or perhaps because the truth of his words goes much deeper than that. Though none of us have suffered Dimitri’s sickness, we have shared his desperation, and we’ve all turned to Death for a solution—me, Filippa, even Michal. Of course Dimitri would turn to him too. And of course Death would take advantage by using Dimitri to sow discord.
This is what he wants , I realize, staring back into Dimitri’s catlike eyes. They look so much like his sister’s—like Mila’s too. A leaden sensation descends in my chest at the thought that this might be it; after all these years, this might be the moment their family fractures irreparably.
“Do not bring Célie into this,” Michal says darkly. “You will not take advantage of her as you’ve done us.”
“Take advantage ?” Dimitri’s eyes bulge. “You cannot be serious—”
“How have you even been meeting Death?” Odessa abandons the mannequin to stalk forward, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Hopping from the settee, Panteleimon spreads his tail feathers and clicks his beak rather menacingly as he trails behind her. “I would’ve noticed—”
“You’ve been a bit busy, Des, and I can’t say I blame you—” At the first vicious peck of Panteleimon’s beak, however, Dimitri leaps backward with a curse, glaring down at the punctured leather of his boot. “Call off the cavalry, will you? Death finds me. All right? He finds me, and after I answer a couple of questions—nothing nefarious—I drink his blood. With it in my system, the bloodlust fades—vanishes, even. I haven’t killed anyone since All Hallows’ Eve.” He seizes his sister’s hands. “After what I did that night, I never would’ve returned without being sure I had it under complete control.”
Michal’s jaw looks likely to snap. “As if you’ve ever been in complete control—”
As surreptitiously as possible, I bend to adjust the hem of my nightgown, grasping the veil near the floor and tearing upward as I straighten. I don’t know why I do it, except—well, if this is the moment, Mila should be here too. And I pray she is. I pray she’s been here all along, watching this terrible scene unfold, perhaps searching for a hole to slip through—
“They’re making a real mess of things, aren’t they?”
Sitting next to me—or rather, drifting several inches above the settee cushion—Mila folds her legs beneath her and watches Michal and Dimitri with a strangely distant expression. After another moment, she says, “The revenants followed Death’s word to the letter. The blood witches’ village is gone—burned to ash—and half the forest with it. When the fire reached Domaine-les-Roses, the constabulary alerted a local contingent of Chasseurs, but I left before they arrived.” She was there , I realize with a start, watching the whole time. The thought brings a sliver of comfort, of relief that she stayed out of sight.
“The flames burned me.” She holds out a hand without looking at me, revealing the opaque wound sprawling across her palm. “I... felt it,” she says simply. “It hurt.”
My brows flatten at that—at this incontrovertible proof that the veil between realms is in danger. Though I want to question her further, to warn her she cannot continue to spy, I keep quiet instead, unwilling to alert the others to her presence just yet—not while Michal and Dimitri continue their bitter argument, and not while she seems so very... far away. Is it the pain of the burn affecting her, or has something else happened since last we spoke? Perhaps in his rage, Death threatened her too.
I take her hand, squeezing it in silent question. Are you all right?
A small smile touches her lips, and when she speaks again, she sounds even farther away than before, uncanny and unfamiliar. “It’s strange... they’ve been angry for so many years that I can scarcely remember them otherwise, yet they didn’t start that way. It consumed their identities without them even noticing—until they could no longer see themselves, let alone the other person, through the hurt.” The words stick in her throat, as if even now, she cannot bear to loosen them. I suspect they aren’t about Dimitri anymore. Tearing her gaze away from her brother, she says quietly, “I just wish it could’ve been different. I wish I’d known . It feels so much sillier on this side of things—to have wasted so much time. Indulgent, even.”
She turns to me, and for the first time since meeting her—since watching her waltz past my bedroom door—she truly resembles a ghost. An imprint. A shadow of her former self. “Why do we always treat them the worst? The ones we love most?”
And I cannot remain silent any longer.
“Because we can,” I murmur. “Because it’s safe.”
She shakes her head sadly. “No, it isn’t.”
Across the room, Michal and Dimitri stop arguing at the sound of my voice, and both turn toward us in unison. Odessa follows suit. Though a trace of silver light still flickers in Michal’s narrowed gaze, he seems unable to see his sister now. Too little of my blood remains in his system, and I—I don’t know how to feel about that. It hardly matters now, anyway, with Mila pulling her hand from mine. “You need to help them, Célie. Please.”
“It isn’t really my—”
“It is your place. It is. Michal isn’t the only one who loves you.” Squeezing my fingers, she nods to Odessa and Dimitri, who also seem to have put the pieces of our conversation together; they search the air around the settee for any sign of Mila. “You’ve been part of this family since the moment you stepped foot on Requiem. Do not waste it like I did.”
I rise to my feet with her. “You wasted nothing, Mila. Your hurt mattered too.”
“Perhaps”—she dips her chin in acknowledgment—“but he mattered more.”
“Célie?” Michal approaches warily and extends a hand. “Is Mila here? Does she want to speak?”
I do not take it, however; at the slight shake of Mila’s head, I sweep past his outstretched arm and wrap my own around his waist, folding him into a tight embrace. “This is from her,” I murmur against his chest as she fades from view. He returns the pressure after several tense seconds, after which I pull back slightly. “And this is from me.” Rising up to my toes, I press my lips against his, and I pour every ounce of my regret into that kiss.
Why do we always treat them the worst? The ones we love most?
Michal has come to expect the worst from people.
We all have.