Buried Vows

Prologue

Martyred. Exchanged. Condemned. Killed. Slaughtered.

The words churn in my mind, each one clawing for dominance as I try to grasp how I ended up here—killed, not for glory or vengeance, but sacrificed for a "Prince" I've never seen, never even heard of. My thoughts crash against each other like waves of broken glass, cutting through the haze of confusion that surrounds me.

How did it come to this?

All I remember is being out with friends for my Nineteenth birthday. The details are blurry, but it was supposed to be a normal night. Then, everything shifted—men appeared, their faces masked, their hands rough as they dragged me away. No explanations. No mercy. I was hijacked, and yanked from my life by strangers I'd never seen.

The therapist said I should try to remember that night, to make sense of the trauma. How? How can you make sense of something so senseless? If I had listened to my mother, maybe none of this would have happened. She warned me—told me to stay away from my friends, called them bad influences. She was right, as usual. But I didn't listen, and now I'm paying the price.

And now? Now I'm dead. Not to the world I am in, but to the world I knew. Trapped in a place I don't understand. An afterlife, they say. A place where nothing makes sense. And while I rot here, My friends are still alive. Still breathing. Still going about their lives as if I never existed. Still partying!

I wonder if they even noticed I'm gone.

Yeah, I know that bad things happen, but never—not once—did I imagine this. If someone had told me my life would end like this, I would've laughed. I would've called them crazy. But here I am—buried alive with eight other women, all sacrifices for a prince I've never seen, a prince who's supposed to lead us into the afterlife.

This is my reality now.

And instead of sitting here, letting the bitterness consume me, I have to fight. I have to prove that I'm worth something, though I don't know what that something is. He has nine brides—nine sacrifices to guide him. What makes me different from the others? Why should I matter?

Nothing.

I'm just a child to them. The youngest. They tell me that every day. They look at me like I don't belong here like I don't have the right to exist in this twisted place. I was 19 when they took me. I haven't seen him—this so-called prince. I haven't even heard his voice. And yet, they tell us he's powerful. They tell us he's waiting.

I don't need to meet him to know one thing: I hate him.

I hate him for this. For dragging me into a life I never asked for. I hate him for forcing me into a death I didn't deserve. I was buried alive with the others, all of us dressed like grotesque brides. Gowns. Veils. Rings forged from rare metals and adorned with jewels—gold, emeralds, diamonds. They didn't care that I was barely an adult. They didn't care that my mother would die inside if she knew I was gone. They didn't care about my screams or my pleas.

This is my life now—no, my death? My new world?

And I hate him for making me hate myself.

People say experience changes you, that it shapes you into something else. Here, I've learned that's true. I've become someone I never imagined would exist within my personality.