Chapter Thirty-Seven Stardust
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Stardust
The next thirty seconds pass in a blur.
The instant our feet touch the forest floor, the revenants nearest us lunge—three of them—but Michal, Odessa, and Dimitri strike first. With brutal efficiency, they tear the revenants’ heads from their bodies, their arms and legs too, before casting the pieces in all directions. There are too many, however, and my sister is right there —
D’Artagnan roars again, charging out of sight with Guinevere astride.
“Go,” Michal snarls at his cousins, jerking his chin toward the other revenants. “Scatter them.”
And I understand immediately. Scatter the pieces. We have no time to properly dispatch the revenants now, only to debilitate them, but all of this is secondary. It doesn’t matter; all that matters is my sister, who still stands precariously close to the edge of the world—because it is the edge of the world. The ground in front of her continues to collapse, crumbling into the black abyss and leaving half of Mathilde’s cottage teetering at its edge.
“Filippa,” our mother breathes.
Too late, I realize my mistake, and a rush of understanding punctures my chest—I never told my mother about Filippa. I never told her that her eldest daughter survived the grave.
With wide eyes, she rushes forward to pull Filippa to safety, but I thrust out an arm to block her path just as the ground lurches to an abrupt standstill. Michal tenses beside us when an unmistakable curse rises from the cottage. And that voice —
My stomach clenches with dread.
Resolve hardens in Michal’s gaze as he too recognizes Death, and—before I can say anything, do anything—he charges toward the cottage and vaults across the chasm, landing catlike upon the last remaining doorstep. He kicks the door open swiftly, and panic claws up my throat as he disappears through the debris. Because— no . No, no, no . There is only one reason Michal would confront Death on his own.
Or we could simply kill him.
But I told him—I told him it wouldn’t work, and now—now he’s going to—
My heart plummets to the forest floor.
Before I can move, however, my mother seizes my arm as Filippa turns at last, and a legion of revenants follow. They descend from the trees on silent feet, their faces eerie and empty—those who have faces at all. The flesh has rotted from at least a dozen, and their bones flash pale and bright in the moonlight. Oh God. It is my sister’s cruel smile, however, that shoots a bolt of ice down my spine.
“Hello, Célie,” she says, tilting her head curiously between us. “Maman.”
Eyes round with horror, our mother stares at Filippa like she would a ghost, lingering on her no longer familiar features: the thick row of stitches, the mismatched brows and irises. The bloodless skin and the long black hair that shines so incongruously against the rest of her. Still smiling, Filippa extends her arms beneath my mother’s gaze as if relishing her shock. Her fear. “How long has it been since the funeral? More than a year, yes?” If possible, her smile stretches wider. It pulls her stitches too tight. “Have you missed me?”
Death curses again, and the cottage—it shudders, the chimney caving in on itself. Though I strain for any sound of Michal’s footsteps, I cannot hear him, and that silence echoes in my head as the toll of a funeral march. I twist out of my mother’s grip, but Filippa blocks my path as smoothly as any vampire. “If you enter, little sister,” she says simply, “you will not come back out again.”
As if to prove her point, wood splinters deep within the cottage, and an entire wall disintegrates. Michal is still in there, however; Michal still needs help. Stepping toe to toe with my sister, I snarl, “ Move , Filippa. I do not want to fight you.”
Her smile hardens as the revenants shift with restless excitement. “My darling little sister, always in precisely the wrong place at the wrong time.” She twirls her silver cross idly between her fingers as a sliver of moonlight pierces the clouds overhead. It plays strangely upon her face, casting her hewn features in sharp relief, deepening the hollows beneath her eyes and elongating the shadows of her cheeks. When our mother takes an involuntary step backward, satisfaction glows like hot coals in Filippa’s gaze. “You are running out of chances, ma belle, and I am running out of patience.”
I have little time for theatrics, however, and my sister hisses as I shove past her, catching my elbow and sinking her fingers deep into my flesh. “Do it again,” she says. “I dare you.”
Slowly, I look down at the blood trickling from my arm.
“Filippa, Célie .” Our mother pushes between us as my teeth extend, but her hands still tremble as she lifts one to each of us in supplication. Her lips pale. Her heartbeat deafening. “Enough of this, both of you. Please, I—I forbid you to fight one another. Not after I just—not after we just...” Her fingers stretch outward to cup Filippa’s cheek, and her wide eyes rove every inch of Filippa’s new face. “You’re here,” she breathes.
Filippa’s face twists in disgust—her stitches stretching, pulling —as she forces our mother’s hand to her chest instead, forces to feel her icy skin, her dead heart. “Well? What do you think of my skin now, Maman? Do you rejoice, knowing your daughters will remain forever young? Or do you weep because they’ve been touched by the Devil?”
Our mother blinks at the pure venom in her voice, and at last, she seems to see beyond her daughter to the woman beneath—to the depravity, to the rage , to the wounds that cut so much deeper than we ever noticed.
Filippa doesn’t stop there, however. No. She moves our mother’s hand to her dead womb instead, saying, “I will succeed where you failed. My daughter will never question my love, my affection, and I will never force her to watch as I submit to my circumstances, as I succumb to them rather than teaching her how to think, how to speak, how to stand .”
Our mother recoils in shock—in horror—staring at Filippa’s belly.
“Tell me,” Filippa says, her voice softening dangerously, “what did you do when you discovered Pére’s infidelity? When he squandered your dowry to pay for his whore and to cover his debts—when he squandered our dowry next? Did you ever want to strike at him? Did you ever even consider it?”
Though our mother tries to pull her hand away, Filippa will not allow it. And Filippa is so much stronger than her now. “You—you ask the impossible, daughter,” she says feebly. “You always have. If I had left your father, I never would’ve seen you again—”
“Do not pretend your cowardice had anything to do with us. Do not pretend you cared to see your children at all. You were weak , Maman, and I am nothing like you.”
Maman rocks backward with an anguished sound, and I tear Filippa’s hand away from her wrist. “You’ve crossed a line,” I tell her, but truthfully, she crossed it ages ago. Though our mother has never been perfect, she doesn’t deserve this cruelty. “Now get out of our way before I cross one too.”
“No, Célie, no.” Tears spilling freely down her cheeks, our mother shakes her head and clutches my arm as another wall of the cottage subsides. My stomach lurches. Michal. “This is not your sister’s fault, and it is not yours either. It is mine, all mine, and I am so”—she wipes at her face, trying to square her shoulders, to straighten beneath Filippa’s withering glare—“so terribly sorry for the pain I’ve caused you both. Your sister is right, darling,” she says to me. “I have been a coward. Worse than a coward. I have been blessed with two extraordinary children, and I have never been the mother they needed. The mother they deserved. I have—failed them at each turn.”
At that, Filippa blinks, and Maman seizes her advantage, lifting a tentative hand to her cheek once more. “But how could you think I would ever weep?” Her eyes sweep across her daughter’s face, but no disgust stirs within them. With a start, I realize it never did. “How could this be the work of the Devil when I prayed for it? For you ? God gave my daughters back to me, Filippa.” She tears her gaze away to look at me now, and Filippa blinks again. She swallows hard, staring at our mother’s profile with that same searing heat, this time as if committing it to memory. “He gave you both back to me, and I will not waste my second chance.”
And though my sister does not acknowledge the declaration, perhaps cannot, she does look slightly— affected by it. As the words wash over her, her expression seems to shift, a subtle softening around the mouth and eyes. When she realizes I’m watching her, however, it hardens all over again, and I wonder if I imagined the whole thing.
“And neither will I.” She steps backward, between two revenants—so similar to them, yet so different. “Whether you like it or not, Célie, the veil is coming down, and if you stand in my way again, I will drive this silver cross through your heart.”
Though our mother gasps, I’ve had enough. I seize the necklace at her throat—wrap my hand directly around the cross—and wrench her closer as red-hot pain blisters my palm. “Wake up, Filippa. Your unborn daughter isn’t the only person you’ve ever loved.”
“And what of the man you love?” Another small, cruel smile plays across her lips. “Even if he survives Death, he’ll never survive you .”
I rip the necklace from her throat, dropping it at my feet.
“Get out of my way,” I tell my sister quietly.
“No,” she says.
And the stakes—they’ve become too high, too precious. Neither of us can stop. The lines have been drawn, and when Death laughs a moment later—a high, cruel laugh, followed by Michal’s roar of pain—I know which side I am on. Reacting instinctively, I move too quickly for Filippa to follow, too quickly for the revenants too, and I dive across the abyss into the cottage.
Smoke smothers my senses as I crouch in the kitchen, holding my breath and lifting an arm to shield my face against the heat. My eyes burn. My hem catches on the edge of a broken floorboard, but I tear the fabric away and leap over a pit where the hearth has exploded. Mathilde’s cauldron lies cracked on its side, her mantel half torn from the wall and her animal skulls crushed, scattered down the hall.
Burning. All of it burning.
Worse still, the planks underfoot seem to be—shifting, folding , the walls too. Deep cracks fracture the ceiling as it compresses inward like an accordion. Magic , I realize in horror. Mathilde’s house is magic, and right now, it appears to be eating itself. Even as I think it, her cast-iron bathtub barrels toward me—I duck swiftly—crashing down the hall to the sitting room, which seems to be the mouth of the spell. It sucks everything inside, and I follow with a lethal sense of purpose, bursting across the threshold to find—
Michal.
My chest seizes as the bathtub collides with his back, and his grasp on Death’s neck falters as the impact topples them both to the floor, which splinters beneath them.
Terror grips my heart.
Where half of the cottage fell away, the abyss yawns black, ancient, insidious, and the scents of roses and candle smoke—no, brimstone —rise from its infinite depths. They curl upward as Michal falls through the floorboards, and the bathtub falls with him—on top of him, pinning his hips and legs and rendering him immobile. Trapped. Only his upper body remains visible through the smoke. His face, his chest, his arms . The latter strain toward the heavy leg of the settee for leverage as the house continues to collapse around us. To burn .
We need to get out of here.
Whatever Michal planned to do, he cannot do it with shattered legs. When I lunge toward him, however—desperate to help, to escape—Mathilde’s carafe cracks against my skull. Boiling café spills over my hair; it scalds my skin, melts my flesh , but I whirl just in time to catch the cart before it barrels into me too, shuddering with righteous indignation.
Death heaves himself upright with a bitter curse. “This fucking house—”
He kicks aside Michal’s hand as flaming sugar cubes pelt his head, and I want to charge at him too, to tear him limb from limb like one of his precious revenants. The situation has grown too volatile, however; the entire cottage threatens to plunge straight into whatever hell waits at the bottom of that chasm. It also seems to be— fighting us, somehow, if the carafe and cart and sugar cubes are any indication. Protecting Mathilde. Death’s presence might’ve unleashed this chasm, but clearly, her house still obeys its master, and it does not want us here.
Swinging the cart with all my might, I hurl it at the back of Death’s knees.
It collides with a sickening crack , and Death falls again. We have no time to celebrate, however, as Michal is still trapped. Though he twists to hoist the bathtub above him—his arms straining with effort—his legs lie too still beneath it. Broken. Shattered.
Useless.
What are we going to do?
The black abyss edges my vision, until the world around us feels the same. Dark. Everything is so dark, too dark, and—and we’re trapped. The cottage quakes violently; it groans in an attempt to remain upright as I glance at Death, whose nose drips blood onto the settee. His hand curls slowly around its leg, and he snaps the wood with barely concealed rage. “Well, well, well , if it isn’t my meddling little wife. That was quite the cheap shot, wasn’t it? Not very submissive of you. Not very nice .”
Panic threatens to suffocate me, sharp claws squeezing my lungs, puncturing my chest, but when Michal’s gaze meets mine—fierce and hot—I rush forward, forcing myself to remain in the moment. Just like he taught me
Pick something, and describe it to me.
Ash stains Michal’s cheek— gray like a stormy night sky —as I grip the side of the bathtub— ivory clouds instead of gray —and together, we pitch the cast iron into the chasm. He tries to rise, his jaw set and his face white, but those legs cannot hold him. He collapses almost instantly.
When I wrap my arms around his waist to lift him, he grimaces and shakes his head. “The cottage won’t hold for much longer. We need to run —”
“I must confess”—Death stalks toward us with a hard smile—“I am growing rather tired of these antics.” Lifting the settee leg in his hand, he examines its sharp tip with interest, and my blood runs cold at the sight.
A stake .
An ominous silence descends as he presses the tip against his finger, drawing blood, and an evil smile splits his face. Oh God. My arms tighten around Michal. This is not a fight I can win without him, and he can hardly stand. Instinctively, my eyes dart around for another means of escape, finding none. We really are trapped.
Death knows it.
He strikes with the speed of an adder, swooping low, but I anticipate the movement, lashing out to knock the stake aside before diving sideways, around him. He will not kill me. I will not let him. He catches my wrist with his free hand, however. He snaps the bone like a twig in his fingers. Though stars burst across my vision and sharp, debilitating pain radiates up my arm, I stifle my scream because that pain is nothing, nothing , to the fist of terror that seizes my heart as Death flings my hand aside, as he brings the stake hurtling down.
Down.
Not toward me, but toward—
Michal turns at the last second, and it plunges into his side instead of his heart.
And now I am screaming; I am screaming, and Michal is curling inward, his entire body shuddering, clenching, as Death bares his teeth in a furious smile. “ Right there between the ribs. Uncomfortable, isn’t it? Inconvenient.” His eyes flash when Michal clamps his teeth, refusing to make a sound even as Death pushes the wood deeper, as he twists it with brutal force. “Though perhaps not uncomfortable enough. Let’s see what we can do about that, shall we?”
The front door hurtles past us, the cauldron, the skulls, the mantel .
In the next second, the roof goes too—it tears from the cottage with a thunderous boom , and the rooms around us tumble with it, faster now. Even Mathilde’s furniture cannot fight forever, vanishing into the abyss.
“Stop it! Please, we need to leave —” Tears stream down my face as I claw at Death’s hand, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He doesn’t seem to care . Instead he rips another leg from the settee when it flies past, and my eyes widen in horror. No. No, no, no —
I throw myself over Michal’s chest as Death stabs the second stake toward him, but Death shifts with the movement. Even in my periphery, the trajectory of his strike feels wrong, strange—and directed at me. At me , finally, and not Michal, but the realization comes too late; it paralyzes my senses, and I cannot react fast enough, cannot do anything but watch as the stake hurtles down—
Michal’s hand appears from nowhere to block the strike. Death doesn’t hesitate, however—grinning wildly now—driving the tip through Michal’s palm instead. Forcing it straight through the other side. And I do not think; I simply lunge.
I tear at the tendons in Death’s wrist, snarling and kicking and tackling him to the floor, but he seizes my hair with ease. He wrenches me off him—off my very feet —and my scalp nearly separates from my head as he snarls, “A couple of heroes. How touching.” Then, still grinning maniacally: “Shall I show you what I do to heroes, my love? Shall I show you what awaits them in the end?”
Before I can answer, he seizes Michal’s broken ankle, and he drags the two of us outside.
Though I cannot see my mother, I hear her startled cry as he hurls us across the chasm, and we land in a crumpled heap beside an unconscious Odessa and Dimitri. I stifle a groan. Filippa has bound them with silver chains, and the skin of their ankles and wrists smoke slightly, blistered and raw. A cross-shaped burn shines bright upon Dimitri’s cheek. It matches the necklace in Filippa’s clasped hands.
It also makes no sense . Dimitri served Death along with Filippa, unless—my eyes flit to Odessa, to the gash at her throat still bleeding freely—unless he fought to protect his sister. Unless he too drew his line in the sand. Dragging Michal into my lap, I wrench the stake from his ribs, his hand, fighting hysteria as he groans, his eyes fluttering. We will not die here . Michal will heal. He has to heal—
“It never needed to come to this.” Death bites each word, pacing in agitation as the last of Mathilde’s cottage slides into the abyss and the entire forest falls still. “We never needed to descend to such hostilities. Have I not been perfectly pleasant?” He gestures wildly to the revenants, to Filippa, as if expecting each one to nod in fierce agreement, but our audience remains eerily silent. They do not revere him. They simply watch him, hollow-eyed, and await his next command.
Except Filippa. She stands beside my trembling mother and watches me .
Death pays none of us any attention, however. He throws his arms wide, his strides lengthening as his agitation cracks open into full-blown rage. “Have I not asked nicely? Have I not painted a persuasive enough portrait? Everyone benefits when the veil comes down— everyone —yet somehow I am the villain in this wretched story. And how can I be otherwise when the heroes are so insufferable? When they refuse to see my vision ?” Without warning, he seizes the nearest revenant, and it does not move as he rends its head from its shoulders. My mother screams, and I use the distraction to tear up my sleeve, to slice open my hand on the edge of Dimitri’s chain. Though a phantom flash of silver appears near the chasm, I hastily duck my head, ignoring it, and bend low to whisper frantically in Michal’s ear.
“Drink.” I force my blood to his lips, and he groans, his eyes fluttering open. “Everything is going to be all right. Just drink, heal , and—”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Death kicks my hand aside with savage relish. “I’m not at all sure everything is going to be all right. I offered you a choice, after all, and you chose poorly. Now we must all suffer the consequences of your actions.” Snatching his foot, I sink my nails through his boot and try to yank him off-balance, to wrest him to the ground. Instead I wince as he seizes my throat. I mustn’t break, however; I need to distract —
“We will never—choose—you.” I buck in his grip, gasping as his fingers tighten. As they threaten to crush my windpipe. “You said it—yourself. True death is—balance, perspective, and—peace.” I scrabble at his wrist to draw his gaze, to draw all their gazes as that flash of silver solidifies, creeping closer. “The promise of life. Of meaning. It is not—our enemy. You are. We will never—serve you. We will never help you corrupt—this realm.”
Instead of snarling as I expected, instead of baring his teeth and choking the life from me, Death nods solemnly. “I believe you,” he says.
Then he throws me to the ground and snatches the abandoned stake from the grass. “This consequence is your own, mon mariée.”
There is too much to comprehend in this moment, and it’s as though seconds flicker and fall like stars across the night sky. Images flash before me. Death. The stake. Michal. But I cannot understand—will not understand—the implication of Death’s white-knuckled grasp, of Michal’s eyes widening, of the grass and mud beneath my nails as I clamber forward, faster, faster, as my throat burns and blood roars in my ears. No, no, no, no. No.
I need to reach them. Michal cannot die. Not him . Not ever—
“Enough.” The silver phantom streaks across the lawn, seizes Death’s wrist, and knocks the stake away. It lands beside me, rolling against my thigh as I finally reach Michal, and I pitch it as far as I can into the forest. It vanishes from view, and Mila smiles.
Mila.
She has not left us alone. She saved Michal, and now she—she—I frown, staring at the hand she holds surreptitiously behind her back. With the slightest movement, she rotates her index finger in a small circle before glancing back at me, and something in her eyes reminds me of another time. Another place.
Really, though, what do you expect when you repress your emotions? They have to go somewhere eventually, you know, and this realm is rather convenient.
She rotates her finger again, and suddenly, I understand. She wants me to tear through the veil. She wants us to escape through it, to give us a head start. A chance. I grab Michal’s hand, squeezing it once in reassurance. Because perhaps this really will be okay. We can free Odessa and Dimitri, battle the revenants, save my mother, and... and...
My heart constricts painfully in my chest as the thought withers. As it dies. With any luck at all.
When have I ever been lucky?
“You will leave them alone.” Mila speaks the words calmly, confidently, her hair billowing on the breeze as roses and brimstone thicken the air. She holds her head high, and she floats above Death, staring down at him like the monarch she would’ve been—like a queen, regal and unafraid. “Though you haven’t yet asked our opinion, those of us who exist between the realms of the living and the dead find you to be horribly, terribly”—she moves closer with each word until Death’s gaze narrows—“ inconceivably awful. Have you truly considered what this realm will look like without you? What any realm will look like without you?”
“The realms will have me—”
“No, they won’t.” She brushes a lock of his hair aside with obvious familiarity, tucking it behind his ear and trailing her fingers down his chin. The movement is strangely... sensual, and his gaze darkens in response. “They’re already losing you. Why else do you think everything is breaking—the veil, the witches, the world ?”
He caresses her hand on his face, a slow smile spreading across his lips, and I feel the change like lightning in my belly, terror striking me into action. I hook a swift finger in the veil near his feet. Concentrating on that first memory of Mila—on the laughing ghost who waltzed down my corridor—I begin to tear, but a hard boot crushes my hand.
“And that,” Death says, “was your final warning.”
Michal bolts upright. “Mila, run —”
For just an instant, I think she might escape, but that instant passes when Death plunges his hand straight through her chest to the place where her heart should be. But... her heart isn’t there; she is a ghost, of course she doesn’t have one. She grins at him, raising her brows in victory—and then he clenches his fist. His grip tightens on something glowing, brighter than the rest of her, hotter too, and she gasps in surprise.
“That’s interesting.” Death tilts his head, intrigued, as he examines his hand in her chest. “That’s very interesting.”
Michal rears his head. “Let her go —”
Death ignores him. “Dearest little Mila, my eternal damsel,” he purrs against her lips, and her life—or what remains of it—radiates between his fingers. “Will the third time be the charm? Surely you’ve realized by now that some memories, even imprints of memories, are best left forgotten.” He twists his hand, and she falls to her knees before Michal, who desperately tries to reach her. I lurch to my feet, bracing to rend Death limb from limb, but Mila does not flinch or weep. Instead resolution burns in her eyes.
There is no fear there. Only acceptance.
She looks at Michal, her gaze as endless as the seas and the skies and the heavens themselves. She looks, and she looks, like she’ll never stop looking. “I love you, brother. I’ve always loved you, and I’ll still love you after I’m gone.”
“ No— ”
“It’s time.”
Oh God. Not Mila. Not Mila. The girl who taught me to see the dark, the first one who dared me not to fear it. The ghost who held my hand and stayed. She always stayed.
She can’t leave now.
I scramble for the veil, clutching at vapors, forcing my emotions to the surface as I tear and tear. Perhaps I can rip her backward, or... or push her through it. Perhaps I can save her as she has always saved us. “I never should have blamed you, brother,” she whispers. Though tears stream down Michal’s cheeks, he leans forward to press a furious kiss upon her forehead. “Do ponovnog susreta.”
She smiles.
And Death fully clenches his fist before ripping the light from Mila’s chest. “How touching,” he says, and Mila’s existence implodes into stardust around us.