[THIS STORY WILL BE TAKEN DOWN ON SEPTEMBER 30, 2024]
This is a collection of bonus scenes I've written over the years. Some are part of later books in the series. Some short stories are simply 'What If' scenarios. Some moments are scenes that happe...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Beneath an overcast sky thick with morbid clouds, I stood beside my father. Heartache soaked the air and I swallowed it down with every inhale. The bereaved family's misery seeped into my chest, leaching warmth and filling it with sorrow.
My father and I were gathered with others outside the Crowthers' mausoleum. The ancient stone building was weathered and cracked with age. Ivy crawled up its sides and had crept over the carving of an enormous, savage wyrm that was coiled around the mausoleum as if it were guarding the Crowthers' ancestors inside of it.
While the living family members stood in silent vigil behind a glossy black casket that held the body of their beloved wife and mother, we sang a melancholy lament that spiraled through gloomy shadows. We were here to sing our farewell to Tabitha Crowther, the matriarch of Lower House Crowther.
She'd died tragically in a car accident last week.
Her body, minus a finger, would be placed in the family's mausoleum. The flesh from her removed finger would be burned away until the bone was left. The bone would be ground down and added to the Crowthers' ancestors' dust in an urn of power, that all of the Houses had sitting on their mantles.
Summer was turning to autumn. Thin strands of chilly wind stirred the green-gold leafy canopy high above, lifting the ends of my loose hair and sliding my skirt around my shins. It slunk between my ankles, nippy and bracing, to ruffle grassy blades like the surface of the sea.
It was a shameful thought and it was selfish of me to be enjoying the moment in such wretched circumstances. But it was the first time I was allowed to wear high heels. Not too high, modest in their height, but they screamed adulthood. I was eleven years old, wearing an elegant dress and heels, and it was the first time I felt grown up.
As the words of the lament tripped mindlessly from my lips, I glanced about, noting my peers and the elders in attendance. The funeral grounds, deep within the gnarled forest surrounding the Crowthers' estate, was large enough to host a great deal many more than those here. It was an observation even my father had noticed when we'd arrived, how many Heads and Houses that had chosen not to attend.
Tabitha had married Varen Crowther and risen to matriarch. However, she'd been a servant prior to her rise in rank after marrying the Head of Lower House Crowther. And it would seem many families from our dark world had refused to attend the funeral of a servant who had risen to a position she never should have achieved. Indeed, even my Ballet Mistress had muttered to me this morning as she slapped my wrists for poor poise, that our gods were punishing the Crowthers for being too bold and breaking with the tradition and bloodline of the Upper Houses, by ending Tabitha's life so early.
As I'd stood there trying not to cry and berating myself for disappointing her once again, with my wrist burning from the sting, the red welt puckering my flesh, I wondered if perhaps she was wrong. I knew deep down that she was right, there were rules and expectations for us all within the upper ranks, but a small part of me wished otherwise. A tinier part of me wished that one day, perhaps I could have what Varen and Tabitha once had. A choice.
