Hex the Blackthorne Boys (Rest in Peace #1)

1. The End

The End

Rumor Malefic

Buried alive, you stupid witch.

Not again.

Buried alive, you stupid witch.

With an annoyed inhale that sucked soil into my nostrils, I pushed my palms through the packed earth. Brisk morning air, that only autumn in Willowspire Provence could produce, greeted me and chilled the moist dirt that clung to the perspiration on my skin.

Buried alive, you stupid witch.

“Yeah, I gathered,” I replied to the male voice that echoed in my ears.

Every few months, for as long as I could remember, this was my plight, one curse of many.

Though, being six feet under the cold wet earth was high on the list of least favorite of my plagues—this one was humiliating.

Trudging down the bleak and eerily silent graveyard in the early morning hours wearing another ruined nightgown.

A murder of crows erupted into the air, laughing in mockery at my disheveled state. Morning hours as numerous as the corvid would haunt my waking thoughts as I attempted to sort out why this kept happening to me. That deep, taunting voice always declared the same thing—pulling me from my grave.

Buried alive, you stupid witch.

Dawn in Willowspire awaited me with cold cobblestones covered in red maple leaves.

Despite the kindling of rage inside my chest, I peered over my shoulder, ignoring my blank headstone and dirt pile, past the rows of hundreds of graves and up at the castle that haunted me. “Fuck you, Blackthorne Boys.”