CHAPTER FOUR
RAVEN
Three years before the present day
The earth fights beneath my fingers, cold and stubborn, but I welcome it.
I don’t need a machine for what I do. I need this.
I want the ache in my bones, the burn in my arms, the pulse in my veins that tells me I’m alive, and that the bodies that lie here are dead because of me.
Every life I take is mine. Every soul I steal belongs to me.
And if I don’t bury them myself, the kill doesn’t feel finished.
Someone else could do it. Shove the dirt back in the hole, cover the body, and call it a job done.
But they wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t feel what I feel.
The weight of death in my hands. The silence that settles when I take what was theirs.
It’s only fair. I stole their hopes. Their dreams. The future they thought was theirs.
And in return, I can at least give them finality.
Even if the bastards lying beneath my shovel were depraved, soulless fucking monsters who deserved far, far worse.
It doesn’t matter; their demise. The world is a much better place without them in it.
And I’m glad to be the one to do it. I am the hand that ends things.
It’s what I was made to do. And I will do it until death finally claims me.
The bitter autumn screams through the graveyard, its leaves whipping against my heavy coat like nature itself knows of the things I’ve done.
What I keep doing. Like the dirt remembers the blood I’ve spilled.
I don’t flinch. Let the world hate me. I’ve survived far worse than its judgment.
I’ve been doing this since I was a boy. Killing.
It’s what I was trained to do. And my job only gets harder with each year that passes.
Not the killing part. That part is easy.
It’s everything else involved that gives me a headache.
The truth that gnaws at my mind and drills into my skull because I still haven’t found her.
Seraphine.
I’ve searched high and low for Royal scum.
And one by one, I’ve taken them out. Giving them the fucking fate they all deserve.
All except one. Because she is still missing.
Leaving nothing to mark her path, nothing to guide me to her.
No friends. No family. Nothing. She is a hunt I can’t finish.
The one score that remains unsettled, and it irks me to no fucking end.
Ezekiel and I have even wondered if she’s already dead.
Maybe she is. Maybe the answer is just that easy.
But my gut tells me differently. She’s out there somewhere.
I feel it. And when I find her, she’ll regret ever thinking she could hide from me.
The shovel sinks into the earth with a dull, satisfying thud. Wet soil folds over itself as I drag another load of dirt from the pile, the metal blade scraping against soil as I toss it into the open grave. I’m pulling up another shovelful when something carries through the wind.
A voice.
Quiet. Melodic. Cutting through the monotony of my work, almost swallowed by the rustle of leaves.
My hands freeze, the shovel biting into the ground as recognition claws its way through the fog of routine.
The corner of my mouth tilts upward. The whisper drifts through the headstones, soft and patient, like she’s speaking to someone standing right in front of her instead of six feet under the dirt.
A ritual she’s performed for the last couple of years whenever she wanders into my home. Talking to the dead.
I try to keep shoveling, yet my attention shifts, straining to follow the sound as it moves slowly across the graveyard.
She’s making her rounds again. Cleaning the stones, murmuring names, and leaving those damn apples behind like offerings to souls who will never taste them, tokens for bones who have long forgotten the warmth of life.
Strange girl.
Most people walk through here petrified as hell, like they’re trespassing.
And they are. This is private property. Mine.
Every stone, every shadow answers to me, but she…
she walks through it as if it belongs to her.
Like the bodies beneath the earth have claimed her as theirs.
The metal blade sinks into the dirt again, and I can’t help myself from glancing past the row of crooked headstones.
Her white dress brushes her knees, stained with the same soil she tends with such care.
Black hair spills down her back and shoulders like a ribbon of onyx ink.
The weak afternoon light nearly glows right through her, illuminating skin as delicate and brittle as glass.
My little ghost.
Still haunting my graveyard.
Oblivious to the shadowed presence that watches from the trees.
I lean slightly on the shovel, letting the handle rest against my shoulder while I watch her drift between the stones.
I haven’t quite figured her out. She just wanders in and out like a curious apparition, whispering words to bones I can’t quite hear from here.
Feeding apples to the dead, and every time she leaves, I take them.
At first, it was curiosity. Anyone else would have grown bored by now, but not me.
I can’t stop. Watching her. There’s something about her that I find intriguing.
Maybe it’s her freedom. The way she traipses about the place, completely unaware that she’s standing in the middle of a predator’s territory.
Moving stone to stone like a pale little wraith guarding her kingdom of bones.
I should’ve run her off the first time she showed up.
Should’ve stepped out from behind the trees and demanded that she stay the hell away from this place.
But I didn’t. Haven’t. I just watched. Studied.
Because there’s something unnatural about a girl who keeps the dead as pets.
I furrow at that thought, because I guess in some way, I do too.
I can’t decide if that makes her dangerous or interesting.
My fingers tighten on the shovel handle as she bends near one of the graves, picking at weeds and brushing away the dirt carved into the stone.
A quiet huff of amusement escapes me. Fascinatingly beautiful.
Still, I watch, completely aware of the cold pull of obsession I can neither fight nor flee.
I step closer, sticking to the shadows of the trees, careful not to startle her.
Like I’m approaching a little creature, delicate and unaware.
Every crack of a branch underfoot goes unnoticed, swallowed by the howling wind blowing through the forest. My boots sink into the damp earth and I glance up again, but she’s…
gone. My brows dip in confusion, and my eyes sweep the rows of graves, searching, searching, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Odd.
I turn, thinking I should probably head back, but when I do, there she is.
Standing right in front of me. An empty basket cradled in her arms, her gaze locked on mine.
No fear. No trembling. Only…annoyance? Her long black hair falls over her shoulders in thick, messy waves, dark as midnight.
Her eyes, a blue starlit sky, bright and slightly accusatory, pin me where I stand, my calculated calm faltering.
“Finally. I have waited long enough, don’t you think?” she snaps, catching all my damn attention. My mouth opens, then closes. “Tell me, angel of darkness, why haven’t you killed me yet?” I stumble back slightly, the shovel nearly slipping from my grasp.
“I…” I stammer like an idiot, but no words form.
She tilts her head, daring, vexed, like a tiny bee scolding a raging storm.
The forest seems to shrink around us, my carefully constructed predator’s mask wavering the tiniest fraction under the weight of her audacity.
This… This is something I’ve never encountered before.
The edge of my lip curls into a sly smile, and her thick lashes tremble, grazing the curve of her pretty face.
Her throat bobs, and my eyes are drawn to the movement.
She raises her chin in silent defiance, unnerving me in ways I’m not used to.
I step closer, then closer, until she’s standing but a breath away. My instincts tighten.
The hunter.
The observer.
I throw the shovel to the ground, and her body flinches, though she doesn’t drop her gaze.
I wonder what she’d look like. Dying. If I wrapped my hands around her throat and squeezed until her lungs surrendered her last, feeble breath to me.
Would she fight? Beg? Plead? Or would she meet me with the same level of defiance she’s carrying right now?
I imagine the subtle tremor in her pulse.
Every fragile, broken gasp, a secret that only I would know.
Every tiny, futile movement she makes would be mine to command.
I imagine the taste of her. What it would be like for my teeth to carve crimson marks across her skin, drawing out a shiver that belongs only to me.
The thought etches into my mind, dark and intoxicating, but I don’t move.
I don’t act. Instead, I reach out, letting the backs of my fingers slowly trace the line of her cheek, flushed a deep shade of pink.
My thumb finds her bottom lip, tugging it down gently, just enough to draw her attention to me.
Her eyes flare, but not in fear. Everyone else would have crumpled by now, begging me to show them mercy.
Yet, she remains perfectly still, hidden behind a mask of her own.
Indifference. She’s just daring me to break it, and that pulls at something inside me.
The thrill of control, the lure of power, it’s nothing compared to this feeling.
She isn’t fooling anyone, though. I can see through her lie.
She’s fragile, almost delicate, buried beneath the weight of her long, wild, ebony hair.
I move around her, circling her much shorter frame like smoke at the edge of a fire, drinking her in.
She should be afraid. She should shrink.
Run. But she does none of those things. I pause behind her, leaning in close enough that the heat of me brushes against her body, making her shiver—the first sign of vulnerability she’s given me.
My fingers slip through the thick weight of her hair, easing the strands from her shoulder as though uncovering something rare.
An act of possession disguised as curiosity.
Beneath it, her skin carries a unique scent of damp earth, crushed wildflowers, and warmth.
Like she’d been dancing around in the woods long before I found her.
I lean in closer, brushing the bridge of my nose along the curve where her neck meets her shoulder, drawing in her scent as if it might steady the restless hunger building in my chest. She shifts, barely, but I feel it.
The smallest change in the tension of her body, the faint rise of breath in her lungs.
Every subtle movement only pulls the coil of obsession inside me tighter, winding it until it’s a humming, living, breathing thing beneath my skin.
Heat gathers low in my body, my dick hardening, throbbing, and straining against the denim fabric of my jeans, and I know she feels it.
My body presses in behind her, the space between us nonexistent, and I’m half expecting her to make a run for it.
Maybe this will frighten her. I hope it does.
Enough to send her fleeing back to whatever quiet corner of the world she crawled from, far from the reach of a man like me.
Still, she stands there. Because she belongs to this cemetery, belongs to me.
The same way the night is claimed by the moon.
Drawn into my world like all lost things eventually are.
“Why do you come here?” I murmur, my voice low in the hush surroundings.
“Someone has to remember them,” she says softly, her answer settling between us, simple and enigmatic.
I understand every word.
Her innocence strikes me. She mourns lives she never knew, unaware that half of them were probably hellspawn. I wonder what truths she carries in her mind, delicate illusions that have twisted her heart into kindness. What sort of man she imagines me to be, and which pieces terrify her the most.
“Here lies nothing but evil,” I finally say, and she turns around to face me, her body still pressed against mine, her basket on the ground forgotten, her gaze burning into me. If I had half a soul, she’d burn that, too.
“True darkness never dies,” she says, her gaze flicking between mine. “It lingers,” she continues, quiet and certain, “like a sickness, buried inside the living.”
“You speak as though you’ve seen death yourself,” I murmur, the edge in my voice betraying curiosity I don’t usually allow. She tilts her head, a faint quirk of amusement playing at her lips.
“It takes the sadness of life to truly appreciate the beauty of death.” Her words settle over me, stepping closer without thinking, completely drawn to the small, impossible grace with which she carries herself.
“And you… You find this beautiful?” I whisper, my eyes dropping to her full, pink lips.
“Yes,” she breathes, her gaze trailing downward, glancing at my mouth before she pulls back, gliding past me with ease, unbothered by the trance threatening to pull us under.
She circles me, untouchable, before reaching down to retrieve her basket.
Silence stretches between us. My fingers twitch at my sides, itching to reach for her, to close the space that she so effortlessly commands.
“You don’t fear me?” I finally say, my voice rougher than I had meant it to be. She glances at me over her shoulder, a faint smile brushing her lips as she walks.
“Should I?”
Should she?
“Fear usually follows me. Few rarely stand without shivering when they cross my path.” It’s not that I’m smug, I just haven’t met anyone quite like her before. Most people know who I am around here.
“I do not fear my death. But when you’re ready, I’ll be waiting.” She continues moving, slipping further into the thicket of trees that frames my graveyard. I want to run to her. To stop her. To learn who she is. To know the ghost that haunts my home.
Haunts me.
But I don’t. Because my life, molded by death and discipline, wasn’t made for a woman like her.
Fragile, yet not. Broken, yet assured. And by the time I realize I’ve been standing out here way too long, I turn, stepping deeper into the trees, leaving the place where she stood moments ago, and into my house, alone.
I’m not convinced she was ever there, because the silence surrounding me has been fractured beyond repair.
Still, her shadow will follow me into tomorrow.
When the hunt resumes to take down the evil of this earth, the sickness… buried inside the living.