We chat with author Shelby Mahurin about The Shadow Bride, which is the thrilling conclusion of the duology set in the world of the Serpent & Dove series where a vampire and the woman who tried to kill him prove that true love can conquer anything, even Death. PLUS we have an excerpt to share with you at the end of the interview!
Hi, Shelby! Welcome back! It’s been about five years since we last spoke. How have you been and what have you been up to?
Hiiiiii! I’ve been great, and I hope you have been too. 🖤 It’s hard to believe I’ve written three books since we last spoke, yet here I am, staring down at the most recent of them on my desk. What a wild ride it’s been.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’ve always loved to read. It’s a passion I inherited from my mother, who, in a single month, reads probably triple the number of books I read all year—mostly romance, with some paranormal and romantasy sprinkled in too. When I was in first grade, she read my first fantasy book to me, and I took to it with such fervor that my school librarian wrote home a few years later; she said I needed to slow down, or else I’d run out of books to read. I didn’t slow down, of course, and I didn’t run out of books either. It drove my friends crazy when I pulled them out during every free minute of class. In hindsight, I don’t blame them at all. I was totally a teacher’s pet all through my school career. 🥲
Even so, I still remember my mom’s extensive Nora Roberts collection. She kept those books locked away in her office, and though she forbade me from peeking at them “until I was older,” I snuck in there at every opportunity from about seventh grade and onward. We can laugh about it now, but I’m pretty sure she wanted to tear her hair out at the time.
I didn’t start writing stories until college—we’ll skip right over the cringey poetry I wrote in middle school—but I didn’t carve out the necessary time to finish any of them until many years later. I’d just had my second child when I sat down to write Serpent & Dove, and writing that book became as much about reclaiming my identity outside motherhood as it did about the words themselves. But that’s a story for another time!
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon, or maybe The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
- The one that made you want to become an author: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carsine Levine—I still adore this book and have tried in vain to force it upon my two oldest children, who really don’t know what they’re missing.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: If we’re sticking to the theme of foundational childhood reads, I’ve never been able to forget The Arkadians by Lloyd Alexander. I cracked this one open again a few years back, and my god, it informed so much of Serpent & Dove without me even realizing. A corrupt and patriarchal kingdom, witchy women associated with snakes (there’s literally an oracle called the pythoness), talking animals, etc…
The Shadow Bride is the follow up to The Scarlet Veil and it’s out March 25th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Darker, angstier, slow-burn romance?
What can readers expect in the duology’s conclusion?
Expanding on my previous answer, The Shadow Bride is like the emo little sister of The Scarlet Veil. It starts only a couple of weeks after the end of The Scarlet Veil—with Célie adapting, or rather, not adapting, to life as a newborn vampire and navigating new terrain in her relationships with friends and family. Though we’ve heard about her mother and sister throughout the Serpent & Dove trilogy and The Scarlet Veil, they both walk onto the page for the first time in The Shadow Bride, as does a new and diabolical villain. With him comes even greater problems—including a torn veil and undead creatures called revenants—but the greatest danger of all, at least to Célie, is Michal.
He refused to let her go at the end of The Scarlet Veil, and Célie has no idea what to do about it. No idea what to feel about it, except that her new immortal body definitely feels something. Their slow-burn, not-quite-enemies-but-definitely-not-friends relationship is at the heart of this book, and it was truly a privilege to write. I absolutely adore them. To me, they share this rare dynamic where they truly accept all versions of the other—the good, the bad, and the ugly. And in Michal’s case, he not only accepts Célie at her worst, but also reveres her. If you love reading a hero who’s just absolutely infatuated with the heroine, I think you’ll appreciate Michal’s and Célie’s arc in The Shadow Bride.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring further?
Now this is an intriguing question—because yes, and I’ve been foaming at the mouth to talk about it! Specifically, there’s a romance in The Shadow Bride that I didn’t plan or expect, yet when these two characters stepped on the page together, their chemistry had me squealing and kicking my feet. The end of the book stretched a lot longer after I realized there was something between them. I just couldn’t help sprinkling their banter throughout the last act, hinting at their future in the epilogue. I have no plans to write another spin-off in this universe, but if I ever did, it would be about them.
Did you face any challenges with the installment? How did you overcome them?
Five books into my career, the greatest challenge I faced with The Shadow Bride remains the same as with every book since Serpent & Dove. Time. For many reasons, it takes longer than I’d like to draft a book, and deadlines—though a necessary evil—invoke a fight or flight response from my creativity. Usually flight. At this point, no matter how much I prepare or plan, it’s become part of my process to hit a wall about halfway through the manuscript, usually followed by a mental breakdown, and tearfully request an extension. My team has always been very gracious with me, but of course this means my books haven’t published on the standard timeline. Case in point: The Scarlet Veil published in 2023, and The Shadow Bride isn’t publishing until 2025. That’s a long time to expect readers to wait between books, especially teen readers aging out of my demographic. If you’re one of those readers, I’m truly sorry. Hopefully The Shadow Bride will be worth the wait.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on a proposal for my adult debut! It’s a very exciting and very terrifying time, but I’m having so much fun getting to know these new characters and their world—which might actually be familiar to some of you? I can’t say much else as the project hasn’t actually sold, but I’m crossing every limb to speak more about it later this year. As with all my books, romance is the heart of the story, though the tropes this time around are a little different—it’s a second chance romance, though I’d more accurately call it friends to lovers to enemies to lovers. Lots of history and hard feelings and angst between these two!
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
This might be cheating as I’ve already picked up this book, but I was lucky enough to read an early copy of Bitten by Jordan Gray last year; it became an instant favorite, and it hits shelves on September 30, 2025. If you love classic paranormal YA—think Hush, Hush or Twilight but with a modern voice—you’re going to adore this book. It follows Vanessa after werewolves brutally murder her best friend, biting her in the process and whisking her away to their glittering fey court where she transforms into a monster. Though she swears to find and kill the werewolves who slaughtered her friend, she also can’t help but fall for their charming yet irreverent prince, Sinclair, and perhaps—but definitely not—his surly bodyguard, Calix. It’s got everything I love in a book: werewolves and forbidden romance and knife-sharp tension, whimsical worldbuilding and balls and just enough grit. Female rage from a just-like-other-girls heroine doing her best amidst tragic circumstances. Please do yourself a favor and put Bitten on your TBR!
Chapter Nine
Petite Menteuse
His blood surges into my mouth, thicker and faster than expected. Hotter. It streams down his throat and shoulder, across my chest, until it paints both of us scarlet. I don’t stop, however. I can’t stop. Though tears pour down my cheeks, though he thrashes against me in shock and horror, spluttering incoherently, I merely thread my arms beneath his shoulders and drag him lower, closer. Easing my access. “C-Célie—” He seizes my waist and attempts to pry me away. “Célie, stop—”
I hardly feel his efforts. His hands could be a gentle caress. Indeed, as his blood fills my body, it becomes startling easy to hold him. To keep him with me forever. Mine. The thought rises like a snarl—and perhaps I do snarl, my teeth sinking deeper—because Jean Luc scrabbles at my nape now, my hair and nightgown, desperate to find purchase. And his fear—I can sense it, scent it, sharper than blood magic and just as potent, even inebriating. It floods the entire alley until I might drown in it, and my jaw clamps instinctively in response. My tongue works frantically. Wasting it. I am wasting his lifeblood, but I cannot control the flow, cannot do anything except bear him to the street and trap him between my knees, pinning his useless hands to the cobblestones. Because I need more of it.
I need more.
Before I can properly adjust my bite, however, my ribs erupt in agony.
“Let him go!” Brigitte’s calloused hands replace Jean Luc’s, and she screams, tearing at my arms before sliding his silver Balisarda through my ribs once more. Twice. Three brutal strokes. Though I choke, snarling and twisting away from her—delirious with pain, burning—my hands refuse to relinquish him. My teeth remain in his throat, even as his movements grow slower. Weaker. Brigitte lifts his Balisarda to strike again, her eyes crazed with fear. The scent only goads me further. “Get away from him! I said get”— she grits her teeth with effort, still swinging wildly—“away!” She hacks at my arms now, merciless in her assault. “Help! Help!”
In a sickening circle of life, however, Jean Luc’s blood heals my wounds as soon as they open, and Brigitte’s sobs soon join my own. “Help!” Her shrieks split the dawn like an axe. “Someone please help us! Please!” In one last, desperate bid to free him, she swings the Balisarda high, higher, before embedding it in my neck.
Pain unlike anything I’ve ever felt rends my body in two. Because this time, she leaves the blade half-buried in my flesh, and I feel every inch of it as I turn, slowly, to face her.
Lethal purpose pounds through my chest as I wrench the Bal- isarda away, as I toss it to the ground and rise to my feet. Though the wound doesn’t heal instantly, vanishing like the others, the skin still knits itself back together. It leaves an angry puckered line.
Too late, she realizes her mistake. Her eyes widen when my lip curls. Her breath catches when my vision sharpens, bleeding red, and—after a split-second deliberation—she darts up the alley in an obvious attempt to lure me away from Jean Luc. And I will oblige her. Oh, yes. I will give her exactly what she wants, and I will relish watching that bright, cold light leave her eyes as she dies to protect him. Blood roars in my ears. Though her gaze darts frantically for a means of escape, there is none.
If she runs, I will catch her, and already my knees bend in anticipation, my entire body trembling, tightening, because I hope she does—I hope she runs.
As if in slow motion, she turns to do just that. And I attack.
It takes less than a second for arms of iron to wrap around my chest, pinning my own to my sides. His scent engulfs me next— rich, decadent—and heat coils tight within my belly in response. Michal. And now I am the one thrashing in vain, seething and snarling against him, helpless to move until he frees me. I should’ve known he wouldn’t leave. I should’ve known he’d interfere—
“Hello again, pet.” His voice drips with apathy, and he shakes his head, heedless of my efforts to snap his shin with my heels. “We really must stop meeting like this.”
“Let me go,” I snarl.
“As much as I’d enjoy watching you eat your fiancé, I don’t care much for the mess it’ll leave behind.”
“I hate you—”
“I know you do, Célie.”
I shudder convulsively at my name on his lips. And I hate my reaction—I do. I hate him. With a vicious curse, I writhe and twist, driving my elbows into his ribs. Attempting to create space, to loosen his grip. My skin tingles intolerably where he touches me, and—and he cannot be here. I told him to leave. Though Jean Luc presses a hand to his throat to stanch the bleeding, the scent of his blood still entwines with the delicious scent of the vampire behind me, the scent of fear. My head spins with it all—each scent more potent than the last—until I am mindless in his arms, delirious. Until all I can hear is the sluggish beat of Jean Luc’s heart and the rapid beat of Brigitte’s.
Until all I can see is scarlet upon the cobblestones, down my front. It coats Michal’s leather sleeves now too.
It makes them slick.
“Y-You’re him,” Brigitte stammers, her face white as she stares at us. “Captain Toussaint told us about you. He said you’re the one who stole her away, who turned her—”
“I suggest”—Michal jerks his chin toward the Tower as she searches frantically for the Balisarda—“you take the good captain and leave, telling no one what transpired here. Vampires have no quarrel with huntsmen.” I can almost hear his eyes flash as he adds, “Yet.”
“Oh, I don’t think so, leech.” In lieu of a Balisarda, Brigitte hurls the word like a weapon. “The Chasseurs will have heard me. They’ll be here any moment, and you and that succubus will get what you deserve—”
“Don’t be foolish, Brigitte.” His teeth grind as my nails claw at his forearms, shredding leather and linen and skin. Drawing fresh blood. His blood. The scent of it breaks over me like a wave. It further lubricates his sleeves. “As we speak, my cousin is waiting outside to compel your precious brethren to return to their rooms. It turns out no one heard your screams after all.”
Brigitte trembles all over now, yet with a shout of triumph, she swoops low and snatches Jean Luc’s Balisarda from the shadows near the steps. “Then I’ll kill you myself,” she says. “I’ll drive this dagger straight through your cold, dead heart.”
My gaze snaps upward at that. Unbidden, a low and guttural sound tears from my throat—a sound I’ve never made before—and I twist again to face her, slipping beneath the slick fabric of Michal’s sleeves. For a single, glorious second, nothing stands between me and Brigitte. I start toward her too swiftly for my mind to follow, to make sense of the sudden fury licking up my spine.
Before I can tear out her throat, however—before I can feast— Michal appears between us. When I snarl again, attempting to dart around him, he sidesteps, and I crash into his chest, too slow to counter him. Brigitte seizes the opportunity to lunge at his back with the Balisarda, but he swats it aside with rapidly thinning patience. When it skids—useless—behind me, Brigitte regains her senses and retreats to Jean Luc’s side.
I glower at her from behind Michal, hissing softly.
She drops to her knees in response, looping her arms under Jean’s shoulders and attempting to drag him backward. Away from me.
A mistake.
It’s like someone else has taken control of my body. All I can see is her hateful face, her hands on Jean Luc, and none of this makes sense. He doesn’t belong to me—I know that—yet the scent of his blood, the scent of Michal, nearly cleaves my body in two with wanting. My spine actually bows with hunger, with pain, and I lunge, baring my teeth, snapping at them—
Michal’s arms wrap around me once more, and he lifts me from my feet as still I strain forward, sobbing now. Vaguely, I realize he speaks low and fast at my ear, but I hear only one word. “Célie,” he breathes. Over and over and over again, he says my name. Just my name. Célie. As if he knows I’ve gone somewhere he cannot follow, and he won’t stop until he drags me back. “You don’t want to kill them. Not truly.”
“You don’t know what I want,” I snarl.
“Oh, but I do.” He still refuses to let me go, holding me tight and fast against him. “Your senses have heightened. Everything feels sharper, brighter, better as a vampire, but the pain feels more intense too. Your teeth are aching. Your head throbs. The scent of his blood has become a heartbeat in your chest, and you can’t hear anything except that frantic drum. You want to rend her limb from limb for touching him because he belongs to you.”
I shake my head vehemently. A liar. A liar, a liar, a liar.
Just like that, I wriggle through his arms—completely out of control—but as before, he appears in front of me. This time, how- ever, he forces me against the alley wall with a hard forearm against my chest. His slippery surcoat has vanished, leaving behind only a shredded black shirt. His collar fell open during our tussle; his cravat lies crumpled and forgotten upon the street. If possible, his disarray makes him feel all the more menacing—wilder, some- how, and darker, like a primeval god looming over me.
“Enough, Célie,” he says with unnerving calm. “Unless you want to bury your fiancé and his new friend, you need to stop pre- tending to be human. Whether you like it or not, you’re a vampire now, and vampires are a predatory species—the predatory species.” His black eyes bore into mine, insistent and immovable, and I know—I know—that his patience has reached its end. “We cannot survive on morality.”
