Page 11 of The Deathless One (The Gravesinger #1)

He’d been waiting for days. And he hated waiting. Lingering in the wreckage of the witches’ manor, skulking in shadows like he didn’t belong here. As if he hadn’t built the entire monolith for his own followers.

Instead, he was the god no one wanted, the unwelcome visitor forced to remain behind while he trusted an ancient witch to do his bidding.

Witches congregated with each other first and foremost. If he wanted to win Jessamine’s trust, he had to give her someone else to spin the web of lies that would lead to his resurrection.

Sybil was supposed to bring the other to his home.

She would walk into this manor with the gravesinger and convince the woman to raise him from the dead. It was a simple plan.

But he didn’t trust witches. Perhaps it had been too long since he’d had to trust anyone. The longer he remained alone in his dark realm, the more the silence was a stark reminder that they could not be trusted.

Even now, he stood in the very bowels of the manor, staring at a flat altar ten feet long that had seen more of his blood in the past millennia than any other place.

He couldn’t move his gaze from the blackened and stained stone, memories flashing through his mind.

Too many to count. All those times when he had died in pain, alone, and no one had cared.

Not even the witch who had claimed her bond with him was different from all the others. The witch who, all those years ago, had given him hope that someone might love him for the first time in all his ancient years. The witch who, after everything, had promised so much.

His heart hardened and his hands curled into fists. Not this time. He would not be soft again, for a witch would always choose herself.

Something stirred above his head—not the sound of footsteps yet, but the energy of witches approaching.

He stared up through the floor and willed himself to believe this was the moment things would change.

He would not allow anyone to wriggle their way into his good graces. He was darkness. He was the end.

And so, when he moved through the shadows into what used to be the drawing room, he only watched as the two women staggered into his home.

His little gravesinger held on to the other witch like a lifeline. Perhaps she was so weak that she could not walk on her own, but he suspected it was merely exhaustion. She had had a trying day, after all, considering he’d threatened to drown her.

Not that he could—yet. They needed a connection before he could touch her body instead of just her mind.

She didn’t worship him now, but eventually she would.

If not spiritual devotion, an emotional one would do, but he had lost all ability to cajole anyone into liking him.

Two hundred years of isolation would do that to a person.

She’d been terrified of him every time she saw him, and he had so enjoyed it. Seeing her dark eyes widen with fear and the tremble in her bottom lip when she’d thought it was the end.

But he’d equally enjoyed her rebellion. Something in him had coiled with glee at the triumph in her gaze when she’d thought she’d bested him. As though he hadn’t thought of every way she could try to trick him. The little thing clearly had never dealt with a god before.

They staggered past his shadowy corner, neither noticing the dark shape lingering behind a pillar.

Sybil was already tutting, her voice carrying through the rafters as she scolded the other woman. “You cannot be so weak, Alyssa. If he catches you like this, he’ll only take advantage.”

“I know that,” his gravesinger wheezed. “I just need a night. I just need a warm bed.”

“I don’t have one of those. The royal guards burned all of them the last time they were here.

” Sybil heaved her toward a pile of rags but was gentle as she laid the other woman down to rest. “They come in every now and then to make sure no witches have taken refuge here like the old days. Unfortunately, the last time they did so, they burned whatever they could find while they got drunk in what used to be a functioning parlor.”

“I’m sorry,” his gravesinger whispered. “I’m so sorry for that.”

Sybil patted her shoulder and eased her down on the rags. “It’s not your fault, dear.”

His mind fractured at the pitying words.

It was her fault, wasn’t it? From her memories, he knew that his little gravesinger was the princess.

She was one of the few who could have stopped the raids, and she was just as responsible for the destruction they caused as the powers that had ordered them in the first place.

As his little nightmare drifted off into sleep, he trailed the other witch through the manor.

Sybil ended up in a room full of rotting furniture and piles of dirt from which bright blue flowers grew in riotous blooms. She rummaged through the shambles of an old trunk, muttering under her breath until she turned around and almost ran right into him.

A low gasp echoed from her lips before she steadied herself. “What are you doing here?”

“I never left.”

“Oh.” Her breathing was ragged as she pulled herself together enough to ask, “Why did you stay?”

Because he didn’t trust her. He didn’t trust anyone. Especially a witch who would do dangerous things to keep him away from her life and under her thumb.

But he couldn’t say any of that. Not only because it made him seem weak, but because she would realize she had a lot more power than she thought.

He leaned a little closer to Sybil, the darkness in him expanding around them both until they stood in a black bubble of silence. “Alyssa is the name she gave you?”

“I—I was just gathering my things to see if she’s even the grave… gravesinger,” Sybil stammered.

“Oh, she is. You did a good job of finding her.” His eyes closed, his mind returning to that darkened lake until he could filter through the soul he still held captured inside of himself. There was more to her than what she’d told the witch.

“She shouldn’t be left alone,” Sybil replied. They were nervous words, bit out through chattering teeth. “I don’t entirely trust her.”

“No, you shouldn’t. She’s been lying.” There it was, he’d forgotten it for a few moments. The memory of her mother and her talking. “Jessamine.”

“Excuse me?”

“Her name is Jessamine, not Alyssa. She is not what she seems.” The magic vibrated around him with his anger, rolling through his form as he realized this princess had tried to control both of them. Him and his witch. “She is the princess who died.”

Sybil’s body was framed by a window behind her. The frame was covered in grime and ivy hung outside, leaving diamond shadows to play across her dark skin. Her eyes widened in shock, shadows forming underneath. “She’s the princess? The one that died?”

“Is that not what I just said?”

“That’s not possible. You said we were looking for a gravesinger, and that little shipwrecked soul is just another witch. I’ve seen your mark on her neck.”

He remained silent, staring down at her until she realized what it meant.

“She was dead?” Sybil whispered, her face somehow paling.

“You brought her back? Do you have any idea what that could have done to her? A soul isn’t meant to die multiple times.

You could have ripped her spirit apart, torn her into pieces of herself, and…

and… A gravesinger? Deathless One, if she is truly a gravesinger, then bringing her back was defying life itself. ”

Remaining silent, he allowed all the shadows to be sucked back into his body as he lifted a hand to his own throat.

That was all he had to do for Sybil to understand that the girl sleeping on a pile of rags was more his than any witch had ever been before.

He knew the dangers of bringing her back, but the mark on Jessamine’s neck was his mark.

He’d done what he had to do to be resurrected, and now he would take what he wanted from her.

“Right,” Sybil said as she staggered out of the room. “I’ll wake her.”

“Let her sleep.”

“What?” She spun. “You were the one who told me—”

“So you would not walk into this without knowing the truth.” And because he wanted to see what chaos he could sow.

This witch should know that she was dealing with a princess.

The bundle of mud and salt and tears that she had so carefully guided into her home was responsible for the life that Sybil had led.

“She is no innocent, and you should not grow attached.”

A frown creased Sybil’s face, and for the first time, she looked him in the eye without flinching. “What if you’re wrong?”

His witch disappeared down the hall, her arms laden with the tools it would take to confirm that Jessamine was the witch he sought. He already knew what the answer would be.

There was no way he was wrong. He would wait for her to summon him, because Sybil wouldn’t rush through it now.

His witch had a good reason to use Lady Jessamine now.

Let it simmer in Sybil’s mind. Soon enough, that witch would want more power, and this was the perfect way to get it.

A gravesinger in their pocket would give both him and his coven significantly more power.

So he would wait.

He watched from the shadows as Jessamine slept. Fitfully. She didn’t rest easily, and he wasn’t surprised to find that nightmares plagued her just as they plagued him. Eventually, though, she sat up from her rags and rubbed her eyes.

The first thing she did was seek out Sybil.

She stood and didn’t even try to look at the items scattered around her.

Piles of ancient curtains, bins filled with bones, even a pile of mushrooms in the corner that were notoriously used in spells, but Jessamine looked at nothing.

He had thought there would at least be a moment where she picked through a few of the things, trying to discern where she was. But she didn’t.

She wandered through the halls, calling out Sybil’s name until the other witch appeared from a doorway.