I’d brought her body back to the surface to be buried in her family crypt. I would have buried her on the grounds of my palace, but the poor girl had worked so tirelessly to free herself of me and my realm.
She would prefer the company of maggots and grave robbers over my own anyway.
The maggots I could deal with. It was the grave robbers that I’d have to occasionally exterminate like the vermin they were.
Grave robbers were the lowliest of beasts. I’d punished such filth countless times before. Between their pathetic sobs and pleas for me to spare them, they always regurgitated the same old shit. That stealing from the dead was no crime, for the dead had no use for worldly possessions.
But it wasn’t the dead from whom they stole.
It wasme.
As the Lord of Bones, I was the master of the dead. The keeper of graves, I owned every part of the deceased, until they passed from my realm into the next.IfI allowed them to pass at all.
I couldn’t protect every grave. Nor did I care to. But I would rise from my throne to guard any corpse that had so much as a trace of Catherine's bloodline.
I owed her that much.
Most humans, as stupid as they were, had sense enough not to fuck with the Petherick family mausoleum. There’d been rumors that the god of death stole Catherine away to the underworld. That her father, a rich lord at the time, paid me off in exchange for eternal life.
Unlike most rumors, all those had been true. I did grant Catherine’s father eternal life. What I hadn’t promised him was that I wouldn’t bury him anyway. Now he lay in a box somewhere, I didn’t even remember where, far beneath the surface where no one would hear him scream.
Regardless, her family talked. Rumors eventually turned to superstition. Most mortals stayed away. But humans were curious, greedy vermin. There was always one every half century or so who dared to get too close, dared to disturb the Petherick’s elaborate resting place.
The last man who dared break into Catherine’s tomb now comprised a lovely chandelier that hung over my dining room table. At least, what was left of him.
When I felt that tingle in my horns, I knew the magical wards I’d placed inside the crypt had been breached once again. An intruder.A thief.
What piece of furniture would I make out of this poor bastard? A wine rack, perhaps.
This was the first time I’d been to the surface in over a century. I’d almost forgotten what it was like. The scent of greenery. The caress of fresh air against my bones, and the gentle breeze through my eye sockets.
There was no time to enjoy it though. It felt wrong to revel in the moonlight when I came here for an execution.
Normally I didn’t deal death. I’d wait for its natural course. Not this day, not with this scum. If they’d so much as breathed on Catherine’s crypt, I’d cut out their hearts and suffer their blood like mediocre wine.
They would pay for disturbing what was mine.
I portaled into the mausoleum invisibly, my cloak’s hem blowing up years of dust in a swirling cloud around my boots. The place grew colder with my presence—cold enough for anything with a heartbeat to catch its death.
When the temperature dropped, I expected them to run, but these thieves were persistent. They shivered, their breath hanging in puffs before them as they moved through Catherine’s family crypt, stuffing their bag full of relics and trinkets. Some of them were magical in nature, as I’d laid them to rest with Catherine. These humans wouldn’t be leaving with them.
I started forward, and froze in my tracks when I got a better look at them.
One of them was female.
Intrigue hooked in my gut. In all my years, this was the first time I’d ever crossed paths with a female grave robber. Most human women had better instincts than that.
Her skin was vampire pale, as if she lived in my realm rather than this one, and she was so tiny. She’d be so easy to break if I wasn’t careful. The clothing she wore made her look even smaller.God’s Below. What was she wearing?
Her form was wrapped in a dark jacket, the front zipper low enough to reveal a V-necked shirt and ample cleavage. Her skirt was sinfully short, exposing much of her stocking-wrapped thighs. The stockings themselves didn’t seem to have much point. They certainly weren’t for preserving modesty, with their net-like pattern that somehow seemed more brazen than if she was bare-legged.
I should have found her appearance disgraceful. Instead, it only stirred a dark part of me—a part I thought had died long ago—to life.
I found the male infinitely less interesting.
Was he her mate? Did he force her here? Not by the excitement sparkling in her eyes as she stuffed her bag full of treasures.
Would I punish her in the same way as I had all the men before her? I could, but…no. That would be a waste. This one was too pretty to be made into furniture. And her scent. By the Gods beneath. It was far too pleasing to make her into anything so mundane as a wine rack. Her aroma of cloves and bitter cherries had my mind going wild with possibilities for her punishment.
