Poison and Rot, Part One (Forevermore #2)

PROLOGUE

WINTER

Two years before the present day

Ithink my mind is bleeding. The whispers, once soft and quiet, seem much louder than usual as my eyes search the names etched across the cold, weathered gravestones.

Are they trying to tell me something? The bones that were once alive and breathing buried deep within the damp earth, or is it death?

The ominous shadow dressed in all black that watches me from across the graveyard.

He’s always there. His sinister gaze, like a molten brand pressed against my frozen flesh that burns every inch of me, leaving scars only my mind can feel.

I do my best to appear unbothered when he’s near.

I figure that if my time were up, he and I would be acquainted already.

Yet, he just stands there. Nestled within gnarled trees, never once daring to take a single step toward me.

As if the forest holds him at bay while the wind whispers promises of danger.

At the very least, I wish he’d take away this relentless, pounding ache in my skull gnawing at my temples like a parasite.

The late fall breeze whips at my face, the crisp, cool air sending goosebumps across my skin and I shiver, wishing I had thought to bring my cardigan.

The cemetery is blanketed in an array of oranges and afternoon golds and yellows, pouring through the thick cover of tall trees.

A season finale before snow starts to fall, making visiting the dead in secret rather challenging.

My footprints are impossible to hide in the fresh snow, preserving every step like a mark of certain death.

Because that is what it’d be if they ever caught me out here.

I clear away the overgrown grass and branches that have fallen from the surrounding trees and reach into my basket for an apple. I shine the red fruit on my white cotton dress, a little stained and grimy from a day spent doing chores, and place it gently on the headstone for my new friend to eat.

“Don’t eat it all at once. If I’m back tomorrow, I’ll bring you another,” I whisper, then stand, brushing away the dirt and jagged stones indented into my skin.

They seem ravenous recently. The dead. Leaving not even an apple core behind.

With no one else tending to their graves, I suppose hunger is inevitable.

The ache in my skull intensifies, clawing deeper behind my eyes, while the voices grow louder, filling every corner of my mind with noise.

I can never make sense of them. They’re nothing more than fractured whispers that follow me whenever I leave the cottage.

As if something or someone out there is warning me of how reckless I’ve been.

And they’d be right. Gripping my basket tightly, I tiptoe across the pebbled paths between each grave lined perfectly in rows.

Fallen twigs and autumn leaves crunch beneath my feet, and I kneel before one of the unkempt graves to my right.

The sharp little rocks and broken tree branches bite into my knees as I tug away the tall, slender reeds of golden grass that conceal the name of whoever is buried here.

My chest tightens, and a wave of sadness floods me as I examine the headstone.

Not because whoever is buried here has passed.

If there is a God, He or She already knows that out of the two of us, they’re in a much better place than I am.

I’m saddened by the unmistakable loneliness that followed them once they were lowered beneath the ground.

Nobody visits them.

There are no flowers, holy ornaments, or personal touches decorating the plot.

Not a single sign to suggest that the person buried here ever mattered to anyone at all.

They are forgotten. Abandoned. Remnants of a moment in time whose body has been reduced to nothing more than soil and a date carved in stone.

I trail a cold fingertip along the cracked, gray monument.

The ghost of a name now faded and unreadable from years of neglect and bad weather.

A nobody. We have that in common. I, too, was sent here to be forgotten.

The daughter of Enzo Delacour. Notorious Parrain of the Delacour crime family.

The wallflower.

The prize.

The killer.

The only difference between my friends and me is that I still have blood rushing through my veins and skin on my skeleton.

And although I am still technically alive, I am as good as they are in this place.

Lifeless. I glance up at the angel of darkness, his eyes still glued to me.

Waiting. I want to walk over to him and demand to know why he’s taking so long.

Why can’t he just hurry up and put an end to all of it?

Why let me linger in this torment? But I don’t.

Not because I’m afraid, but because I know my luck.

Disrupting the natural sequence of my miserable life would probably anger him, and he’ll likely force me to live like this until I’m an old woman.

Brittle and broken, still under his annoying, watchful gaze.

I’m not an idiot. Enough time has passed for me to know that I’ll never leave this place.

At least, not until I’m a box of bones like my friends here.

That is, if they even give me a burial. I won’t get my hopes up.

Hope is a cruel, dangerous thing, and I've paid the price more than once.

When my father told me I was moving to Paris to attend college a year ago, I felt like the world had opened up just for me.

After all, the city of love was where he and my mother met, and their love story had always been my favorite.

Though it was nothing more than a story.

Memories in the form of bedtime tales he’d revisit each night when he’d tuck me into bed when I was a child.

And no matter how beautiful they were, they always ended in tragedy.

Because in their story, I was the villain.

I took my mother’s life the day that I came into this world, and my father’s new bride never failed to pour salt into the wound my mother hadn’t even known she’d left behind.

From day one, his bride’s fake claws sank so deeply into my father’s mind that every word, every thought, began and ended with her.

I foolishly believed that moving to Paris would give me much needed distance from the house I used to call home, their marriage having poisoned every corner of it, and that, in some small way, it might let me feel some connection to my mother.

The real queen of my father’s heart. But I was wrong.

This is not Paris. This is not the city of love.

No. This is a place of nightmares. Somewhere between Hell and prison. Purgatory.

And I’ve been sent here to die.