I don’t want your money
I don’t want your crown
See I’ve come to burn your kingdom down
—Florence and the Machine
Six dead brothers held vigil at my bedside. Wake, they commanded. Wake and avenge us.
My pale body glowed in the gray light before dawn. There was no birdsong, no crackling fire on the hearth. The smoke from an extinguished candle flame rose as silent as a hawk circling in the sky. I did not have a heartbeat, my chest a perfect mimicry of the stillness. The cold hands folded over my chest a replica of winter lying in wait.
I thought of the queen in her castle. I would see its ancient, scarred walls if only I turned my head an inch to the left and gazed out the gaping arched window. But I could not turn my head. I was not alive.
How can I take vengeance against her? I asked my brothers.
My eldest brother, Ronan, stepped forward. Light from the window cut across his cheek, revealing skin much paler than it had ever been in life, devoid of flowing blood and the complexion it lent to the living. His hair was no longer crow-feather black, a gift from our mother to all of her children. Now it was the color of hemlock blossoms. His eyes glowed like embers, and when he turned his gaze just so, they gleamed like a jackal’s in the torchlight.
Yet in all other ways he was the same.
I met the eyes of each of my brothers in turn and found them to be filled with the same hellfire. Each changed, yet the same, boys I’d known all my life.
You are dead now and will be again before the day is done. We come with the sunrise and leave with the sunset. In the hours between we will serve you. But say you do not seek vengeance and we will leave you cold in your bed.
I did want vengeance.
But even without a beating heart, I knew no wish granted came without its price.
Would I pay that price?
For my father, hounded like a mule in the fields, and then whipped to death when the earth could yield no more grain. For my mother, who starved to death with a child at her breast, who scraped her meager portions onto the plates of her seven children. Vengeance for the infant who also starved without her.
And if not for the cruel, war-hungry queen on her alabaster throne, who was to blame for the loss of each brother? They were demons now but had been flesh and blood once.
Ronan and Lux had been slain in her war for more land. Jax, Christian, and Jaden had been imprisoned for false crimes, beaten, and then hanged. One year before my own death, almost to the day, Kaleb was slain before my eyes, his throat slit by her knights, dogs as cruel as she.
I watched the blood pour from his throat onto the earth while each took his turn with me. When they were finished, I was too weak and cold to carry his body home. I buried him beneath the tree’s black limbs and said my father’s ancient prayers, to a goddess nearly forgotten.
If our desperation, our starvation had not driven us to seek that tree, perhaps Kaleb would have lived. It was foolish to risk what little we had left on my father’s fairytales. Hope was a luxury, and I was no longer a careless child. Yet my father’s stories had always held power over me, and the story of the crone tree was no different.
A mere story really. Of an ancient tree, as old as the world itself, with roots that stretches all the way to hell. And within the tree dwelled the spirit of a goddess. A woman who controlled the underworld, granting or barring them passage. A woman who held sway with the darkness and the dead.
If a sacrifice is made to her, a wish is granted, my father had said.
A sacrifice was made. Kaleb buried in a nest of the crone tree’s roots. And here he stood at the foot of my bed as if I had not placed him in the dirt myself. His throat still bore the coarse line of the knight’s blade, puckered and gray in the early morning light.
You wanted vengeance, Ronan said. He clasped one of my hands in his and turned my chin with the other so that I could not dwell upon Kaleb’s scarred throat. Ronan’s fingers smelled of sulfur. So that too had changed.
We are your army. You need only accept us.
Over his shoulder, framed in the open window, stood the great castle, its barbed spires pink in the coming dawn.
I met Ronan’s eyes. I accept you.
Fire spread from his palm into mine, through his hand into my cupped cheek. I cried out, trying to pull away from the flames.
Do not fear the hunger, my brothers said. It is the only way to move through life.
Then the pain of living was upon me.
My muscles filled with a fire. A pulse stronger than any heart song coursed in my limbs.
I placed my bare feet on the gritty stone floor and saw the world anew. In life, I had despaired of this room: its drab appearance, the curtains darkened with dirt, and the tapestries fraying at their edges. It had been a great house when my father brought his new bride here long ago. It was no more.
I thought nothing of these things now flitting through my mind like mice in the kitchen. Little more than darting shadows in the corner of my eye.
Now I had only one desire. One need.
We must go to the castle, I said.
We went straight away. We donned no armor. I did not even stop to slip on the worn goatskin boots sitting by the door. I walked out into the morning, placing one bare foot after another onto the snow.
My hair, kept carefully braided in life, hung long and wild down my back. It blew in the breeze, as worthy a war banner as any we had.
We marched.
Minutes after dawn, we came upon her first knights. I could see by the look in their eyes, I was much changed. Perhaps I looked like my brothers now: pale-skinned with dark orbs burning. Yet I knew my hair had not paled. I could see the black locks blowing about my face in the current of a northern wind.
It wasn’t until Kaleb reached up and tore a squat man from his saddle, hissing into his face, that I recognized the soldier as the one who had killed him. Now his throat was ripped open by my brother’s own teeth. I found satisfaction in the wet, sucking sound the wound made as the man choked on his own blood. He coughed, his eyes fluttering, and then he moved no more. His heart pumped what was left of him out onto the snow.
Lux, Jax, and Jaden slayed the others as swiftly as a cat might snap a mouse’s neck. We mounted their horses. At first the beasts refused us, rearing high on their hindquarters. Until Ronan murmured soft words into their flicking ears, his hand on their necks.
Then they went still beneath us, not moving again until we kicked them forward. The gamey smell of their fur soothed me, though I had not ridden a horse since I was a very small child, when my parents could still afford to keep them.
We reached the outer walls an hour after sunrise.
Guards manned the gate that would allow us to pass through the stone wall into the castle. My brothers caught and killed each, while I remained on my mount, waiting. Horrid hunger churned in my guts. But I did not fight it. I embraced it. I knew it would see me through.
The gleeful way my brothers chased each man reminded me of happier times, of the pheasants that used to haunt the back fields behind our home. We would crouch low in the high honey-wheat for hours until we heard the soft cooing. Then we would leap up, hands curling into claws. The squawks and falling feathers made me squeal with delight.
Though this game, as with the pheasants, ended too soon.
“Send us all you have, my queen,” I called up to the archers on the high wall of the gate. “We are waiting.”
The arrows flew true. One tore through my right shoulder, but I felt no pain. No fear. Only that persistent hunger like a stone in the hollow of my throat.
We tolerated this until it seemed all arrows were spent. Then Lux stood apart from us and raised his arms up, palms out as if he intended to catch an arrow. When he was alive, he had caught rain like this, pulling me from my bed in the dead of night, out into the wildest storms. We would cup our hands and drink all that we could catch, before putting out buckets to collect the rest.
And as they filled, we would hold our arms out and spin and spin and spin.
We had each been happy once.
Until she took that from us also.
A great torrent of wind shot forth from Lux and sailed high over the wall. The archers were blown back, some tumbling like leaves to the water below.
No more arrows came.
By noon, she sent the priests. They stood in their thick robes, talismans clutched in their hands. They chanted words I did not understand, throwing their burning herbs at us. This had no effect. Her gods were not mine any longer.
Frustrated, Jax and Jaden at last climbed the stones. Like twin lizards they slithered up the rockface and reached the uppermost wall where the priests stood spouting their incantations. All four howled on the way down, their robes flapping like kites in a gale about them.
Jax and Jaden opened the gate, forcing the wooden bridge down with their own might.
More soldiers met us in the courtyard. My brothers dispatched them as easily as one chases a barn cat from its supper dish. Only Ronan stayed by my side as the blood colored the courtyard. A quick movement in my side vision drew my eye.
A woman in gold silks yanked a small boy back as if I’d burned her with my gaze alone. She was no older than I, yet her body was strong, full of life. Her child looked as enchanting as lilac blossoms after a spring rain. Neither had starved a day in their life. They’d never known hunger.
“Do you want them?” Ronan asked. “They were complicit to our suffering.”
I wanted to hold the child. I wanted to cut a lock of hair from her head and keep it. But I had not been a demon as long as my brother. And my hate had but one object.
I steered the horse away.
The courtyard gave way to the garden. Though I had never seen her with my own eyes, I knew the queen the moment she appeared. I dismounted, handing Ronan the reins.
Before I reached her, Christian killed all her guards with a flex of his fist. Her long, red silks splayed like blood around her in the snow.
“What do you want?” she asked. Her eyes were the color of a pond. She looked from me to Ronan as if unsure who to address. I do not think a man would have had the same dilemma. “Anything you desire in the whole world, it is mine to give.”
“I want your life,” I said.
My six brothers came to stand beside me, forming a semi-circle around the queen.
I stepped toward her, crushing snow beneath my bare feet. I took her in my arms as tenderly as one might take one’s beloved. I placed a hand on her cheek.
“Please,” she said. Crystalline tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. “I did not choose to be queen.”
Her lip quivered pitifully.
I twined my pale fingers up in her hair. Maybe I would have my golden lock after all.
“I will give you anything. Anything you want.”
“I want your heart.” I consumed her then. First her heart, then her soul.
Her heart was bitter. Her soul sweet cream. Full of her, I knew a satiation I’d never known in life. At last, I was whole.
My brothers stood waiting. We are avenged.
I licked blood from my fingers.
A bluebird flew through the great windows, swept a curtsey through the cathedral and landed on a candelabra gone cold. The queen, now as light as her silks, slipped from my grip to the snow.
We walked west from the castle without ceremony. The snow had already begun to glow orange with sunset before I saw the great tree, black and gnarled before us. My brothers stopped, knelt as if addressing a queen.
I did not.
A woman, her skin as black as the tree bark, stepped from the thick shadows cast by its branches. She had as many limbs as the tree itself.
You have your vengeance, she said, though her voice was unlike any voice I’d heard before. It was the voice of a cat or a crow. And she spoke directly into my mind. Are you satisfied?
“Yes,” I said, kneeling at last, knowing her for who she was, and the power she’d granted me.
“I am not satisfied. My enemies live.”
I looked up from the snow to see her standing before me, her breasts bare, chest heaving.
You have a clear mind and strong heart, Vendetta. Would you serve me?
I turned to my brothers to find they were my brothers no longer. Instead, above us in the great tree’s branches were six birds. A crow. A heron. A hawk. An owl. A blue jay. And a sparrow.
The heron had Ronan’s eyes.
I was alone now, in body and in choice. I understood that.
Sunset had bled into twilight, and now twilight gave itself over to the night. “I was to die before the day was done. You granted me only today.”
I will grant you an eternity. You will live until my vengeance is served, and all the world shall know your name until I am avenged. Will you serve me, Vendetta?
I thought of each brother I had loved and lost. A mother and father too, which is nothing to say of my own life and dignity.
Then I thought of the queen’s tears on my lips as I devoured her. The taste of her blood as I cleaned my nails with my teeth. That sweet cream soul…
No gift came without its price.
Yes, I said. I will walk the earth until you have enemies no longer.
And the dark goddess threw back her head and laughed, a deep riotous roar, as all six birds took flight into the sky.
You’ve just finished reading Welcome to Castle Cove, the first book in this interactive series. If you enjoyed your time in Castle Cove, you may be interested in the next installment.
Night Tide in Castle Cove: A Design Your Destiny Novel
Always wanted to prove you wouldn’t die in the horror film? Here’s your chance.
Castle Cove teens have a peculiar rite of passage. Each must swim 800 feet from Hunter’s Beach to Heart’s Rock, under the watchful gaze of a full moon. Sharks, jelly fish, and drowning are the least of their problems.
Sirens guard the cove, and they are as deadly as they are beautiful. If they catch you swimming in their territory, the price for sparing your life is very high indeed…
Each choice you make as you read this interactive novel will reveal Castle Cove’s secrets and dark history. You will find adventure, thrills, and romance within these pages—but beware. Monsters and mayhem lurk here, too.
Choose carefully…
Follow Kory’s Amazon page or sign up for her newsletter to be notified of its release.
Also by Kory M. Shrum
Dying for a Living series (Complete)
Dying for a Living
Dying by the Hour
Dying for Her: A Companion Novel
Dying Light
Worth Dying For
Dying Breath
Dying Day
Castle Cove: Design Your Destiny series (Ongoing)
Welcome to Castle Cove
Night Tide
Into the Wayward Woods
Lou Thorne Thrillers (Ongoing)
Shadows in the Water
Under the Bones
Danse Macabre
Standalone
Badass and the Beast: 10 “Tails” about Kickass Heroines and the Beasts That Love Them
Acknowledgments
It’s like magic! These books just keep happening. Let’s hope that continues for years to come. First of all, thank you to the fans for purchasing and reading this book. It was hands down the most technically complicated endeavor I’ve ever undertaken. I hope it was a fun read for you—as that was certainly what I was aiming for.
I relied on a lot of formatting help from the wonderful Angela Roquet, and proofers to catch things that were true in one storyline and not another. Any mistakes are totally my own.
As always thanks to my wife, Kim. Her notes when proofing my work are HILARIOUS and make the editing process a lot more fun. She’s got such a good eye and takes no prisoners. I’m very lucky to have her so close at hand.
Thank you to my Horsemen: Kathrine Pendl
eton, Angela Roquet, and Monica La Porta. They continue to be a lot of help as I work to master my writing each and every day.
Thank you to my pug Josephine, who spends most days nestled on my lap or on my legs while I write these books for you guys. She’s a great motivator for staying in the writing seat (uh, writing couch) and getting the work done.
Thank you to my street team who are always eager to jump in line for ARCs. You guys are great at last minute suggestions and finding overlooked typos. And I’m so lucky to have your support.
Thank you to Silviya Yordanova for a perfectly creepy cover.
Thank you to every person who took the time to say hello online. To everyone who took the time to write me a sweet, thoughtful email or send along a message. More than once, your kind words encouraged me to make the next story even better. You keep reading them and I’ll keep writing them.
Thank you.
About the Author
Kory M. Shrum is the award-winning and USA Today bestselling author of numerous novels, and some poetry.
She’s an active member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Horror Writers of America, and best of all, the Four Horsemen of the Bookocalypse, where she’s known as Conquest.
She can usually be found surrounded by books and blankets, with a pot of tea at hand. When not reading or packing a suitcase, she teaches writing to college students.
She lives in Michigan with her family.
She can be reached at her website and always loves hearing from fans.
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