Chapter Forty-Nine Happily Ever After
As it turns out, Odessa cares very little about ousting Michal to the island—perhaps because she informed the populace that she single-handedly disposed of the revenants, healing the isle and saving their lives in the process. Or perhaps because Lou affixed a mustache to Michal’s lip, and the two proclaimed him properly disguised.
Or perhaps because Michal’s heart beats steadily in his chest, and the vampires who’ve gathered to watch our departure seem more puzzled than outraged. They watch us warily from the shadows of the dock as our strange entourage, including Jean Luc and Brigitte, descend from the carriages. Odessa’s sentries surround us, first to act as protection, and second to carry our luggage across the gangplank. They do not speak as they load trunk after trunk onto the ship—and even an enormous portrait of Mila, which Dimitri insisted on bringing.
“I’m not sure the mustache is working,” I murmur to Odessa, who follows my gaze to where Léandre and Violette linger in a nearby alley, their eyes narrowed upon Michal. Upon me . Unease skitters down my spine, but Odessa merely scoffs, unbothered, and commands them to come closer.
“Wait,” I hiss, incredulous. “We shouldn’t—”
“Léandre, Violette”—Odessa gestures to Michal, who pauses in his conversation with Dimitri—“meet Panteleimon, my seventh cousin, twice removed. An uncanny resemblance to our late king, is he not?” She looks them dead in the eye, daring either one to challenge her. After inhaling subtly, their noses wrinkle at our human scent, and their frowns deepen. “Greet him,” Odessa says pleasantly.
Michal regards them with cool indifference as they gape at her, torn between disbelief and confusion. “My queen...?” Léandre asks slowly.
“Yes.” She bites the word, still maintaining her smile. “Your queen has issued a direct command, and she does not like to be kept waiting. Now I suggest that you bow .”
Something in her expression sharpens at the last, and at once, Léandre and Violette mumble their apologies, dropping into a bow and a curtsy respectively. And—remembering their threats at the black soirée—I enjoy the sight of them prostrate. I enjoy it every bit as much as I should.
When Léandre finally rises, lip curling, Odessa orders him and Violette to carry Michal’s luggage to the ship. Jean Luc and Brigitte follow. Though the former nods—looking grudgingly impressed—his hand hasn’t left his Balisarda since we departed the castle. Still, however...
“That went surprisingly well,” I murmur to Odessa.
She lifts an elegant shoulder. “And why wouldn’t it? I am a better queen than Michal ever was.”
“Easy to do.” Dimitri chuckles as Michal rolls his eyes to the sky, peeling off his mustache and dropping it at our feet. “Though imagine how fabulous he would’ve looked in one of your gowns.” He lifts a hand to ruffle his sister’s hair, but she catches his wrist midair. Startled, he blinks before remembering she is still a vampire, and he is not. For just an instant, wistfulness flashes in his eyes—there and gone again before his sister notices—but I think I understand.
Dimitri’s and Odessa’s lives have been intwined since birth. Before it, even. Everything they have done, they have done together, but now... they cannot be together anymore. Their lives must separate; they must part, and everything is about to change.
He shakes his head ruefully. “Damn, Des. You’re quite a bit stronger than I remember.”
She releases his wrist to pat his cheek. “And I will happily break your arm if you ever touch my hair again.”
Behind them, Filippa snickers.
Dimitri pretends not to hear it, instead pulling his sister into a hug and resting his chin on her head. The gesture is intimate, even childlike, and I can almost picture the two as such—much younger, much smaller, with long and bright futures ahead of them. “You were born for this, Des,” he murmurs, squeezing her tighter. “If anyone can wrangle this island into order, it’s you, and I could not be prouder to call you my sister.”
“No.” She shakes her head abruptly, pushing him away with much greater care than usual. With gentleness. “ No , do not say another word. This is starting to sound suspiciously like farewell, but that cannot be the case when there will always be a ship in Cesarine to bring you back. And if there is not, I will send one; I will send a hundred boats if that is what you require.” Sniffing, she steps backward and turns away, but I still recall her at the grotto, clinging to Michal and screaming her brother’s name. His absence will pain her more than she’ll ever admit.
I catch her hand as she brushes past us to speak to a nearby sentry. I squeeze it, and she returns the pressure without a word. “Take care of him, Célie,” she murmurs. “For me. Please.”
“You know I will.”
She smiles at that—small and perhaps mournful—before giving her undivided attention to the sentry. I loop my arm through Dimitri’s next. “What about Margot? Will she be joining us in Cesarine?”
He heaves a dramatic sigh. “She wants to stay in Requiem.” At my confused look, he adds reluctantly, “I snuck out to the flower shop earlier, hoping to surprise her, but she—she didn’t know what to say. It isn’t that she doesn’t love me ”—he scoffs at the trite excuse—“but that her life is here , and my life... cannot be here anymore. She never admitted it, but I think she hoped I’d someday change her into a vampire.”
“I’m sorry, Dima.”
He slides his free hand into his pocket. “Don’t be. I probably would’ve killed her, and I—I think I’m excited about Cesarine.” Tilting his head in frank consideration, he says, “You know, perhaps it won’t smell so foul now that I’m human.”
“It still will,” Lou says.
She passes us now too, slinging a satchel of food over her shoulder. Though she moves to chomp into an apple on her way to the gangplank, Dimitri snatches it from her at the last second. He tosses it between his hands experimentally before taking an enormous bite. “Oh my god ,” he says with his mouth full, staring down at the apple in blissful wonder. “I think I’m most excited about the food .”
“A bore and a brute.” Hitching the basket of kittens higher on her hip, Filippa rolls her eyes as she follows after Lou. “How shocking.”
His eyes spark, and he abandons the rest of us to follow hot on her heels. “A bore ? Tell me, are you aware of what that word means? Out of the two of us, I can assure you, I am not the bore. You even walk like you have a stick up your—”
Madame Tremblay snaps her gaze to him.
“—corset,” he finishes humbly, catching her hand to help her onto the gangplank without missing a beat. Madame Tremblay nods in approval as Filippa tries to crush his fingers. “Excellent posture. Really, truly excellent.”
Filippa hisses something in return, too low for me to hear, and Dimitri laughs, releasing her hand and assisting Madame Tremblay next. “You mustn’t judge the state of the town house when we arrive. I did not know I’d be receiving guests—”
“Do not inconvenience yourself for our sake,” Dimitri says. “Michal and I are indebted to you, madame, and we promise to trespass upon your hospitality only until we procure our own lodgings.”
“And I am hardly a guest, Maman,” Filippa says over her shoulder. “I assume the nursery is right where I left it.”
Madame Tremblay hesitates on the gangplank, looking suddenly nervous. “I think... well, to be quite frank, I think the time has come to retire the nursery.” Then—as if realizing every eye in our party has turned to her—she clears her throat, hastening to look down her nose at us. “Perhaps, Filippa, you would rather claim your father’s room instead?”
Filippa blinks at her in perplexity. “What do you mean? I will not be sleeping with Pére—”
“Oh, of course you won’t.” Our mother waves a hand, interrupting in an unusually loud voice. A shrill one. “Because I—I have kicked the wastrel out. He is not welcome in our home any longer, though, of course, I will respect your decision to see him again if you so wish.” An uncertain pause. “I do apologize for not telling you sooner,” she adds, softer now, “but we had rather more important things with which to deal.”
Filippa’s eyes catch mine, and we stare at each other in shock. In awe . Before I can congratulate our mother, however, Filippa says, “Good riddance.”
And I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Beaming at them both—at Dimitri too—I bounce a little on my toes, unable to contain my excitement. It courses through me like a salve, healing the horrors of the last several hours, the last several weeks . Years . I wrap my arms around Michal, pulling him toward the gangplank. “This really will be a new start for all of us. A new adventure .”
“Ah, yes.” Dimitri shakes his head and leads my sister and mother onto the ship. “Three single women alone in the city. What mischief could possibly await?”
“Or not so single.” Michal pulls me aside before we step onto the gangplank, black eyes glittering with anticipation. He brushes my hair back, cradling my cheek in his palm, while his other hand slides around my waist. “All the pieces are falling into place,” he murmurs, “but is this what you want? To return to Cesarine? To walk under that orange tree and sit at that nursery window?”
I breathe a soft laugh. A rueful one.
“If you’d asked me those questions a year ago, I would’ve said no.” I turn my cheek into his hand, and if any tension remained in my body, it leaves me now. Is this what you want? Such a simple question should not have such a complicated answer, yet it does. Once upon a time, I wanted to be a dutiful daughter, then a wife. I wanted to be a huntsman—no, a hunts woman , the first of her kind. I envied witches; I coveted magic; and I longed to live within the pages of a fairy tale—to be the heroine vanquishing evil, the princess falling in love. Their stories seemed so preferable to my own. Their stories seemed so important.
I was forgotten by my parents.
I was abandoned by my sister.
Even my first love left me—as did my second, in his own unique way.
No. Perhaps what I really craved from those fairy tales had little to do with saving the world—with proving my worth, with leaving a mark—and everything to do with what came after. The happily ever after. The hope .
Pressing a kiss to Michal’s palm, I murmur, “Death has a way of changing our perspective. Those things sounded so mundane, but now... now I do want to sit at that nursery window, and I want to sit at it with you . I want to walk under that orange tree together—want to kiss you with pulp on our lips—and I want to listen to our families bicker. I want to laugh with my mother. I want to braid my sister’s hair. I want to watch Dimitri taste a chocolate éclair, and I want to drag you to Chateau le Blanc, where we can dance around the mayflower pole every spring. I never appreciated any of it before, but now...”
Michal seems to be holding his breath. “But now?”
I stand on my toes to kiss him—just the breath of a touch—before whispering, “Now I want it all, Michal. I want you .” Still, I force myself to acknowledge the city around us, the island, even Odessa, who stands a discreet distance away while pretending not to eavesdrop. “Unless—unless you’d prefer to go back to how we were? Odessa could still turn you.” I draw back to look at him—to really look at him, and to ensure he looks at me too. To ensure he hears this next part. “She could turn me too.”
He blinks, frowning slightly. “You would do that?”
“I would do anything for you.”
At those words, however, a broad grin splits his face. As if unable to help it, he spins me toward the gangplank before drawing me back again, brushing my hair from my nape. He nips my skin playfully, his voice rough against my ear. “As much as I’ll miss biting you, Célie, there are an exceptional number of things we can do instead—things I’d much rather do, but things that’ll prove quite difficult while living with your mother and sister.”
“And Dimitri,” I add breathlessly, arching into him.
He kisses the spot he nipped, his tongue soothing the hurt, and I sink my teeth into my bottom lip to keep from gasping. God , I love him. I love him so much.
He chuckles under his breath. “I’d rather not hear my cousin’s name right now.”
“Fortunate, then, that my sister will kill him within the week.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He gazes past me toward the ship, where their raised voices already carry to us. Lou laughs loudly at whatever Filippa said. “I think there might be something there.”
I crane my neck to peer up at him through narrowed eyes. “And I stand by what I said—though if Filippa doesn’t kill him, my mother will kill them both. If we want any privacy at all, we’ll need to find our own place soon—” The words slip out before I can stop them, but I cannot take them back either. My blush deepens. “I mean, if—if you want —”
“Mademoiselle Tremblay,” Michal says with feigned outrage, spinning my hips around and pinning me against his hard body. Heat spikes through me, just as sharp and needy as before—better, even, because now we are free. “Are you... proposing to me?”
I lift my chin and scowl at him. “I am proposing you stop telling me about those exceptional number of things and start showing me instead, preferably somewhere far, far away from listening ears.”
“Why?” He cocks a brow, his hands sliding around my back and hooking my corset strings. He pulls them tight. “Are you going to moan, pet? Are you going to scream?”
Leaning into his lips, I exhale softly. “Maybe I will.”
From somewhere behind us, Odessa sighs loudly. “I feel compelled to point out this is not that place.” At the sound of her exasperated voice, I spring away from him, flushed from my head to my toes. Though I grin sheepishly, Michal grins without remorse—wide and unabashed and beautiful. He snakes an arm around my waist as Odessa prods him in the back. “Get off my isle, cousin.” To me, she adds, “I shall see you again at Yule, but—public displays of affection notwithstanding—you’re both welcome here anytime. My home will always be open to you.”
Home.
Warmth spreads through my chest at the word, like the first rays of dawn after a long night.
“Thank you, Odessa.” I place a kiss upon her cheek, infusing every ounce of my incandescent happiness into that kiss. Every ounce of my eternal gratitude. “For everything. I wouldn’t have survived Requiem without you.”
“Yes, you would’ve.” Smiling, she inclines her chin toward the ship. “Now go forth. Your family is waiting for you.”
I take Michal’s hand, and together, we stride across the gangplank to the ship. Waves lap upon the keel, and the wind picks up in anticipation as we join that family; it tousles our hair and caresses our cheeks. Though the island remains shrouded in shadow, I can almost see the sunlight on the horizon, waiting for us. Life is waiting for us.
And I am not alone.