Switching Graves (Ravenshurst University Duet #1)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Father falls into his seat at the head of the table as my mother buzzes around his back, quickly sliding a plate before him and filling his glass with ale. He hasn’t eaten dinner with us in nearly a week, too caught up in whatever problems Nocturne Valley is facing to step foot out of his study and complete basic tasks. Things like changing out of his stained trousers or brushing his teeth have become secondary to his work. When he’s not holed up in there, he’s at Mayor Payne’s house—a vile, round-faced man who resembles a hog more than a human.

Ever since we’ve begun rebuilding the road to Infinity Heights, the large city a few miles west of us, we’ve had to fire half our wait staff. It’s left the responsibility of preparing and serving meals to Mother and my older sisters, among other things.

She says she doesn’t mind. That things will get better and life will return to normal soon. We’re all making sacrifices for the town and the future Father sees in it. A new, paved road to Infinity Heights means clear access to things such as livestock and leather and steel—items that are quickly dwindling here. Even before the flood that washed away our previous road, it was a difficult trek between towns.

I’m not sure that I believe her. Each time I go into Nocturne Valley, I’m met with angry scowls and cold shoulders. Our nanny, Alice, said that everyone is just trying to find a way to eat and they aren’t angry at me, they’re angry at the world. I think they’re mostly angry at my name. Soon after, she forbade all eight of us kids to leave the property without her by our side.

My older siblings have struggled to adjust. We take our school lessons in the library now, since Mother pulled us from the schoolhouse after my older brothers got into too many fights with the other kids for what they say about our father. Things became dangerous when inexperienced children began using their gifts against us. John had a blistered burn across his cheek for weeks from an irritated pyrokinetic Primaris who claimed his father went back to drinking because of us.

It’s our sister Emma who challenges the new rules the most. She still sneaks off to meet with her friends in the town’s cemetery nearly every night, though none of us rat on her for it. John says we’re all we’ve got anymore, and it wouldn’t be right to turn on each other when the world has already done a good job at it already.

“How are things coming with the road plans?” Mother dares to ask Father once she’s seated again.

The rest of us wait for him to take his first bite before we start eating again.

He shakes his head back and forth, those ethereal eyes rimmed red, hair in disarray. The violet hue of his irises teeters on the edge of crimson. Mother says that’s how she knows he’s tired or angry.

They're a telltale trait of the Aeternum bloodline. They’ve always either given off the impression of importance, or terrified people into submission. Most fear those who can see what has yet to come. The masters of time. At the very least, it makes them uncomfortable enough to feign respect.

Unfortunately, children aren’t as impressed by it, and instead use it as a way to single us out. As luck would have it, I’m the only child out of eight who was cursed with the same pigment. My siblings have favored our mother’s side and inherited Luminara gifts, manipulating lights and shadows.

Far more useful, if you ask me.

I wonder if he’s slept at all in the past few weeks. I overheard Mother telling Alice that he hadn’t come to bed in days, opting to sleep in his office instead.

“There just isn’t enough to go around,” he grumbles in a defeated tone.

“You’ll find a way. You always do,” Mother assures him confidently, resting her slender palm on his bulging arm.

Sighing, he keeps his gaze trained on his plate. “I’m not sure there’s much more time for me to do so, my dear. We’ve started to look into other options.”

“Like what?” she asks.

“Offloading the town onto a buyer. We figure that will help us afford to build a passable road and keep everyone happy.”

Mother slams her hand onto the table. “And what about you? That doesn’t sound like a situation you would be happy with—giving up your dream. What about everything we’ve already invested?”

“This is bigger than me.”

Scowling, she pulls her hand away before he can pull it into his grasp. “I’m sure this was that self-righteous Mayor Payne, wasn’t it? Why can’t he be bothered with finding the money?”

“Please don’t?—”

“Perhaps we can send a team out to ask Infinity Heights for help,” my brother, James, interrupts their argument to suggest hopefully.

“It’s a brutal hike through the mountains,” Father dismisses. “No one will want to take the risk.”

“Then, we’ll do it. Me, Henry, and John are more than capable.” He glances around the table at the others for confirmation, smiling when they nod their agreements.

Each of them is only a year apart, with James being the eldest at seventeen years old. They act more like a unit than three individual people, especially since Father has been too occupied with town business to lead the family. I wish I had a brother closer in age, but instead I’m stuck between two older sisters and two younger ones. At just twelve years old, I seem to fall into the category of ‘ too young ’ for anything they do and ‘ too mature ’ for the silly games my sisters still play.

“Absolutely not,” Mother interjects, pointing her fork at James. “Let your father handle the road, and you can focus on your studies. We’ve got plenty Terrakinetics from Primaris to handle moving the earth.”

“My studies can wait,” James argues back. “You’ve said it yourself: We need to be making sacrifices if we want Nocturne Valley to become the town that you and Father envisioned when you settled here. We’re old enough to be taking on more responsibility and bringing pride back into the Landry name.”

“These people want action from us, Father,” John adds. “They want a way to feed their families again.”

As Father opens his mouth to speak, Mother throws her napkin onto the table. “And we’re giving them that,” she argues, raising her voice to that squeaky, high-pitched level that usually has us all running to our rooms. “We’re taking food from our own pantry to feed their children—from our own mouths, for god’s sake. Your father spends more time down there than he does with his family. I won’t hand my sons over to them as well.”

“Audrey, we can’t stop them,” Father soothes softly from her other side, draping his hand across her shoulder when he sees the tears gathering in her eyes. “Even those from Primaris are weakened from months of malnutrition.”

“Just like you, we love this town. We want to see it thrive and the people who took a chance on us to be happy again,” James tries again.

“They’ve been nothing but vile,” Mother sobs, covering her face with her hands. “Nothing we do or sacrifice will prove that we aren’t the monsters we ran away from back home,” her muffled voice cries.

Henry lifts his chin. “They need somewhere to place blame. We can take it. That’s what leaders do.”

“You aren’t wrong . . . ” Father muses, raising his brow.

Mother’s head jerks up again. “You’re truly allowing this?” she spits angrily to Father.

“I won’t stop my sons from taking pride and ownership over what we’ve built and using their gifts—the gifts we fought to protect—to help those who need it..”

“This is ludicrous,” Mother scoffs, sliding back her chair and stomping out of the dining room. Emma repeats the same motion, following closely on Mother’s heels.

Father releases another long, defeated sigh, shoveling a bite of food into his mouth as James dares to speak.

“She should realize this is our only choice. No one else wants to step up and actually do something to make a difference. If we don’t act now, all of us will starve to death.”

“And what makes you so confident in your knowledge about where Nocturne Valley stands? We still have some life left,” Father challenges.

“We hear the whisperings, Father. We see people begging on the streets and looting. We can sense the power of the town weakening. It’s getting worse by the day,” Henry explains, his face grave.

My sisters and I sit in silence, unsure if we should be present for this conversation, but unwilling to leave if Father is willing to let us stay for once.

Pushing his plate away, Father rests his elbows on the table and drops his head into his palms. His forearms are so large, they completely hide his face from our view as he scrapes his fingers against his scalp. No one dares speak as we watch him contemplate what to do next.

I don’t want to lose my brothers if something were to happen in those woods, but they’re right. It’s been nearly a year of rationing while we attempt to rebuild a road that appears to be irrevocably broken. No one has volunteered to take the hike, even when it was suggested by Father or Mayor Payne in one of the many town meetings about it. The Primarises aren’t just weakened, they’re unwilling to help.

After a few moments that pass like hours, Father raises his head and meets James’s gaze. “We will start preparing a route and hiking pack for each of you in the morning.”

My eyes ping back and forth between my three brothers, who are all biting back smiles at their victory. A rock of dread settles in the pit of my stomach as Father keeps his face stern.

“Let me speak to your mother before you start prattling on about it in front of her. She worries about you, as any mother would. But she also cares about this town. She’ll understand that it’s up to the Landrys to lead us back into glory.”

The three of them mumble, “Yes, Father,” at the same time, and he nods, pushing away from the table much more delicately than Mother had done. Just before he turns to leave, his eyes land on me and my sisters.

“Do not speak of what you’ve heard at this table to anyone outside of our family,” he commands, and the four of us silently nod.

L ater that night, James, Henry, and John sit in James’s room across the hall with the door closed, quietly planning out their grand journey. My older sisters, Emma and Marie, huddle together in Marie’s room next door to mine while my youngest sisters, Catherine and Mae, sleep soundly in their shared nursery at the end of the hall. In my own room, I unhook the latch on my window and crawl through the small opening, settling on the steep roof with my notebook. I’ve done it enough before that hoisting myself over the windowsill is second nature.

There’s a new moon tonight, draping the cloudless sky in inky darkness that blends with the black ocean waters to my left so well, it’s hard to tell where the two meet. While I consider the conversation that happened during dinner, I peer out at the night sky, noting how dark Nocturne Valley appears in the short distance separating us.

Is all of this worth the trouble it has brought my parents?

Did they know they would meet this many obstacles when they decided to build our home on this land? Would they have made the same choices if they knew how much resistance they would receive from the people they were being generous to?

Is any of this better than the hate and oppression they met before?

Scribbling my thoughts down, I lose track of time. The soft glow reflecting on the grass below me from the lanterns in the kitchen dies out, bedroom doors eventually shutting one by one as everyone in our home retires for the night.

As I gather my notebook and pen to follow suit, I notice subtle movements against the iron gates surrounding our front property—the same gates that separate our estate from Nocturne Valley. Squinting my eyes to peer further into the shadows, I’m startled as three figures race across the lawn toward our side entrance. Following immediately after, another five zoom past. This continues again and again, more people racing by each time, completely unaware that they’re being watched from above.

I panic, stumbling across the roof toward my window to warn the others. But my socked feet can’t find any traction against the slick material, and I end up slipping and sliding in the opposite direction, nearly falling over the edge.

Within minutes, I hear my family’s shouts as the intruders make their way through our home. Lights flash and objects crash around as powers that have coexisted for centuries are wielded against one another.

Panicking, my sweaty hands offer me no help as I scratch and scrape my way back toward my window. I peek inside at the same time a man rips the blanket off my bed across the room with a knife in his hand. Ducking back down, I flatten myself against the shingles again when Emma’s terrified scream steals through the night from the open window beside me. Slapping my hand across my mouth, I muffle the sob that reverberates through my entire body as I listen to the distinct and horrific sound of my sister getting slaughtered a few feet away.

I have to do something. I have to stop this.

They cannot just come attack my home like this.

But how?

And where is Father?

A drop of blood splatters onto my hand from my nostril as I focus my energy on pausing time, the way my father taught me to do. I envision every millisecond ticking on a clock, then reach a mental fist out to stifle it.

Chancing a look back toward the ground, I watch in terror as I realize I’m too weak, and there’s too many of them to control their timelines. I'm overwhelmed and outnumbered. More and more people come barreling through our gates. Some are leaving through the front door, their arms full of random things I recognize from Father’s study and the parlor. It takes everything in me to scoot myself over toward the shadowed corner of the roof to ensure I remain unseen.

I have no idea how long the brutal attack goes on. It feels like hours, yet I could swear I was just eating dinner with my family mere minutes ago. Once the screaming dies down and the house goes eerily silent, I pull myself back toward the window and look inside. My room appears to have been torn apart and ravaged. My bed has been turned on its side and my walls have been stripped of the little knick-knacks I’ve been gifted from my parents over the years. Somehow, in the chaos of all the screams and the blood pounding in my ears, I didn’t even hear them destroy my precious space.

“We’ve got all seven kids,” a muffled male voice announces from the hallway.

“Are there seven or eight?” another asks, this one a little closer.

“I thought they said seven,” the first responds.

Heavy foot falls approach, and I’m only just able to get myself out of sight before a tall figure darkens my doorway.

“Where is this one?”

I close my eyes and imagine myself inside his head, the way Father taught me to do. I realize this is Roddney Strikes, a butcher in town from the Aetheris bloodline. He doesn’t have any mental shields to break through, so it takes almost no effort to weave inside his thoughts and place one among the many horrible, vile rumblings I can hear.

There’s a pause, and then a second shadow appears. Roddney repeats the words I just planted into his mind. “A few were together in different rooms. Could have been one of those.”

“Fuck it. If he has a problem, he can come over here and handle it himself. I doubt they’ll make it very far if they’re still alive, anyway. Let’s go collect our due before it’s all gone.”

Rodney nods his agreement and they each step away from my room, their footsteps disappearing back down the hall.

I sit on the roof for hours, my body frozen in the same position until every bone aches and each muscle stiffens. The rising sun illuminated the sky and my gaze follows everyone who leaves my home with handfuls of my parent’s belongings, tallying them up in my head. I recognize so many friends and neighbors I grew up with. People my parents trusted and cared for. Parents of children we played with our entire lives.

They betrayed us in the most lethal way possible. I commit each one to memory, tattooing their names across my brain so I’ll never forget who to seek for revenge.