Page 47 of How to Woo the Undead

In the last few years, they’d not run into anyone like that. Most people ignored them or made it clear they wanted nothing to do with a traveling lich and his creations. Sebastian was looking for a home. He wasn’t looking to destroy villages. He wasn’t trying to raze kingdoms to the ground. Hejustwanted a new home.

“Thank you…”

The tiny, scratchy voice brought Austin out of his thoughts. He turned around to a woman covered in soot. Her hair was shaved off her head, a giant mark burned into her scalp. The same sun emblem—likely the metal decoration left at the top of the pyre was used to brand her.

Austin glanced at the steaming pile of victims, then back at the last survivor of the village. “What happened?”

She choked on tears that welled in her eyes. “Their order was roaming the countryside. They threw their divine gold about and paid everyone heavily to look the other way while they drank all our wine and ate all our food for the winter. Until they started getting too rowdy. They hurt one of the elders of our village.”

“And they burned the town for that?” Austin murmured.They started it!Austin couldn’t help the lick of fury that rushed up his spine.

“No, they burned this town because of who we are…we were protected by a tiny forest god. An Old Fae who lived here along the coast; he was a sweet old man. He liked to sit on the cliffs and whistle to the sea. He kept the crops bountiful in the summer and helped keep our rations in the winter in exchange for little trinkets. He loved buttons. Collected chickens to keep in his yard and sat by the elders’ side as they passed on, eating their pain and last few dreams. Old man Bruada was a grandfather figure to us…then he came to help the elder who was hurt, and the clerics grew enraged.” The branded woman raised a singular finger to the middle of the pyre. The stake cracked and turned to ash, showing an anguished face at its core. The man was clearly bound in silver chains that were now melted to his very bones. They crumpled as an evening sea breeze trickled through the town. “They built the pyre around him and poured alcohol over him to make sure he burned.”

The branded woman hiccupped as she cried hard. Austin turned back to her, kneeling down in front of her. Her shaking hands cupped her face. He didn’t want to upset her more by offering her a hug. But he couldn’t imagine how to comfort her. Austin didn’t know what to do for her…except give her closure. There was no way to bring her village back. No mercy in making things from their burnt bones. No, he couldn’t help her there.

But Austin still had one strong arm and a lich’s soulstone in his pocket.

“My maker needs bodies to restore his own. Where did the cleric’s go?” Austin asked.

The woman’s eyes widened. Big brown saucers that studied him for a long moment, then she dropped her hands to her sides. “I can show you.”

“It won’t be pretty. This will not be soothing,” he added as he climbed to his feet.

“I do not need to be soothed,” she snarled between busted lips and a set of chipped teeth. “I want to watch themburn…in all the ways you and your maker can offer.”

“Then lead the way.”

Bang!Bang!Bang!Austinawoke to something biting his forearm. He yelped, “OW!”

Flinging Snuffles across the bed, he nursed the spot the bunny tried to rip off him with a scowl. “Not nice, Snuffles. If you were hungry, you could have just asked!”

Austin harumphed, swinging his legs out of the bed.I haven’t thought about that woman? About that village? About those clerics in a long time.But, then again, it’d been a long time since anything reminded him of them. He rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. Rising to his feet, he moved like he would in his room.But he wasn’t in his room. He was in Hyacinth’s. And when he turned to the bed sharply, panic coursing through his veins again, he found the bed empty, save for one bunny thumping his back legs angrily.

That’s when Lord Aravis Blightwood started shouting from downstairs.

Chapter Twenty-Three:

Hyacinth

“Sabine?Sabineisthatyou? What are you doing out here this late?” Hyacinth knew she was in a dream the moment the woman spoke her ghost’s name. Yet it was Hyacinth’s eyes that opened and turned in the dark of night. Barefoot on the sidewalk, she could feel the scrape of stone across her skin. It ran a shiver up her spine. It created an ache she couldn’t soothe thanks to the wings. They were fresh, the scarring around them so sensitive that with every twitch of her nightgown, the scabs opened. The white cotton wrapped around her was dotted with little dots of blood from where it bled through the bandages. Her nightgown was the kind that went from her neck to her ankles, to keep her fingers from scratching open her wounds in her sleep.

Not that this helps.

Hyacinth stared at a woman who stepped out of a dimly lit building. She was downtown, she knew that by the smell of it. A knowledge she shouldn’t have but did. The buildings downtown were more rustic, the road more cobblestone than solid asphalt. Streetlamps hummed with magic over her head, their crystals dim. Stars glittered over her head, but the moon was hidden behind clouds.

“Sabine! Oh, my dragons, I thought something happened!” The woman rushed up to her without question, throwing her armsaround Hyacinth. The dead fae hissed in pain, ripping out of the stranger’s arms. The woman with her hair up in a cute ponytail with a cat on her sweater eyed Hyacinth. “Sabine? What’s wrong…what…what are you wearing?”

Hyacinth took a step back. Tentative. Suspicious. Her body lurched awkwardly as she was still unsure how to use her parts. Yet, her eyes stuck on the woman in a cat sweater.

“Sabine, you’re scaring me. We didn’t see you at gardening club this week. And then when Kathy went to check on you, your house looked roughed up. Then…then…Sabine?”

Hyacinth tried to open her mouth, but it wasn’t her tongue that moved. It wasn’t her teeth that gnashed. It wasn’t her. Hyacinth wanted to run back home to the manor. Sabine was the one who lunged forward. The ghost possessing her body pinned the concerned woman into the bushes next to some little shop and ripped her heart out. Grisel and blood under her fingernails, she held up the organ and walked with it back home.

Back to her tree.

Back tohim.

Only, she stood in her yard, howling in despair as she found it gone.No!Sabine shrieked into the night. The sound echoed off the trees and sending the birds roosting into the moonless sky. The tree was gone. His roots were ripped up, leaving a hole in the earth she tended to so delicately. All the soil where she buried their bodies was tilled. All the graves were turned up, leaving nothing but a crater where her heart used to be…just like the woman in the bushes.