Chapter
One
A WORD OF CAUTION
This is a dark fantasy romance, containing situations that might make some readers uncomfortable. You can visit www.livzander.com for details, or reach out to me directly! [email protected]
Chapter
Two
Elara
We wrap the dead with our hands steady and our mouths shut while the afternoon sun hangs bloody over the palace graveyard, casting long, distorted shadows that stretch toward the open maw in the earth.
Mother and I lift the king from his bier. Not a gilded thing, not a carved coffin fit for songs; just a plank of wood laid acrosstwo trestles, because even royalty runs out of ceremony when rot has eaten the world’s appetite for pretending.
Kael is lighter than his height and stature suggest, hollowed out by years of carrying a curse. Mother’s arms still tremble, harder when she looks at me, then up at the golden spikes fused to my skull.
“Legs,” I say, just to cut the silence. My voice sounds like gravel, mostly unused since I crowned myself dead in the throne room yesterday, since Death vanished in a whirl of shadows and rage.
“I’ve got them,” Mother whispers, voice cracking.
A shroud covers Kael’s face, clean linen pulled tight enough that the shape of his nose makes a small ridge, the hint of his mouth a soft dip in cloth. It feels wrong that I can’t see him. Wrong that I’m relieved I can’t see the slash across his throat.
I adjust my grip under his shoulders, his body cooling rapidly in the autumn air. Stiffness clings to his joints, that rigor that gravediggers know intimately, the body’s final stubborn refusal to bend.
We lift him onto the lowering straps. Practiced. Efficient.
Mother reaches into the woven willow basket at her feet. Dried marigolds. Bright, orange, cheerful, offensive little things. She takes a handful and arranges them around the shrouded head. Another handful, larger this time, she lines up across his neck.
Mother watches her wrinkly hands work and slowly shakes her head. “To hide the blood that crusts in the fibers.”
The petals settle, masking the angry red grin I carved into his throat. A mercy for the observers. A lie for myself. If you cover the slash with marigold, maybe it’s just a garden, not murder.
Maybe.
Something knots between my ribs, tightening with each breath, gaze going to those sunken hollows where Kael’s blueeyes would be. Daron is best with the eyes. He would have been gentle with them, carefully sliding the spoons under the lids. Instead, my brother lies in his bed in the west wing, rattling and gurgling, too weak to attend a king’s funeral.
A restless shuffle draws my eyes up from the grave. A handful of people stand in a semicircle. Two priests in white robes that look too clean to be holy. A scattering of courtiers gather behind them, looking like they’re watching a play they don’t understand.
Neither do I.
Miss Hampshire stands apart from them, her hands clasped tight over her starched apron. She keeps glancing at the crown on my head, the gold biting into my scalp with the patient insistence that it belongs there now. It doesn’t slide when I lean, doesn’t shift when I swallow. It sits fused to my skull, part metal, part bone, a pulsing thing that only moves when I lift it with my own hands.
“This is improper,” one of the priests mutters, his face like risen dough, his eyes darting nervously to a palace guard stationed nearby. “A king’s funeral rites ought not to be carried out by a…a newqueen.”
The last word comes out like he scraped it off the bottom of his shoe—thick with contempt, edged with disgust for women who dare touch things reserved for men.
“A queen just the same,” I say, my voice flat. “The dead don’t care which hands lower them, so long as they land soft. And nobody drops them softer than a gravedigger. All that shoveling numbs the arms. No choice for us but to handle the body with care.”
He bristles, his pious indignation fading behind narrowed eyes. “This is a disgrace.”
Mother exhales, slowly and funneled. “Elara,” she whispers, voice thin as a hair. “What…have you done?”
I straighten, wiping my hands on the black mourning silk Miss Hampshire found me in a forgotten wardrobe. It’s a habit. A reflex. “I did what I thought I had to.”
“That is not an answer.”
