Page 15 of Bride of Death

There are only two words on the white parchment, both penned in black blood.

One. Week.

“Fuck my life,” I mutter. “And fuck you, Hades.Fuck. You.”

Chapter 4

Sera

The scentof death on my pillow stirs me from sleep.

It’s a pungent stench, one that tells me what I’m going to see before I open my eyes—a dead fire lily.

The first time this happened, I screamed.

The second time, I screamed again.

The third time, I stayed up all night waiting for the culprit to show himself… and shrieked when I found the source of my torment laying the wilting flower on my pillow.

However, now I simply sigh and open my eyes to lock gazes with the bright orbs glowing at me from beneath a royal blue hood.

It’s a ghost.

A spirit.

A lost soul.

Er, I don’t know exactly. But he has a skull face with an upside-down heart hollowed out where his nose should be and blue flame-like eyes. He doesn’t seem to have a mouth, so he never speaks. But he does know how to write.

And he apparently thinks this hut belongs to him.

However, rather than try to force me to leave, he keeps bringing me gifts like a cat in the night.

There’s just one problem—all of his gifts are dead.

“Thank you, Pip,” I say with a yawn before stretching in the tiny twin bed.

My ghost creature twirls in happiness, pleased that I’ve thanked him. Or maybe he’s just happy that I’m talking to him. I’m not quite sure. He seems lonely. Which explains why he follows me around the second I come home and welcomes me every morning with his dead gifts.

Rolling off the stiff mattress, I’m careful not to bump Pip, and head toward the bathroom with the cloaked figure on my tail.

“We’ve talked about this,” I tell him as he tries to come with me through the threshold. “I like privacy in this room. I’ll see you again after my shower.”

Pip—the name I gave him after learning he had no identity—pouts.

“Ten minutes,” I promise him. Then I disappear to engage in my evening routine.

My hours in this kingdom are all out of sorts. There is no sun, only moons, and everything is cast in perpetual shades of night. It’s a stark difference from my world of sunshine, vibrant flowers, and lush greens.

I’ve tried nurturing some of the trees in the courtyard outside my home, but the skeletal branches are nothing like the wooded ones from back home.

Sometimes I miss my old life.

It’s asinine. I was basically residing in a dream for several years, imprisoned by a Goddess who called me her daughter.

And that was after surviving the infamous Monsters Night protocols of my old village.

My jaw clenches.This place might be littered with death, but at least I have choices here.