Page 1 of When Death Called Life Home (When Deities Awaken #1)

Chapter 1

It’s Not Always a Rabbit

ALORA

B utterflies fell around her like a curtain. The soft brush of delicate wings wiped colourful dust onto beige skin, tiny particles catching between short, light strands of hair. Dark lashes blinked over blue eyes as she watched the insects land for split seconds before bouncing off and away on another breeze, those soft eyes closing.

She tried to listen between the voices speaking around the table in front of her. Tried to find the silence and the song that always followed it. The lyrical music called to her. It pulled her away from the women in their uncomfortable dresses and useless gossip and too-sweet cakes. Lulled her into a daze where the butterflies spoke to her in lilted tones.

“Alora, did you wish to eat the last cupcake?” The sharp voice cut through her daze. It brought back the clear sky around her, and the circular table that three other ladies sat at. Each stared at her with raised eyebrows, each looking as though she had grown an extra head. Their pastel dresses matched that of the butterflies Alora could have sworn flew around her and landed on her limb, but fingers pressed to the spot she remembered one sitting.

She followed the dark-skinned arm up to curled hair framing a beautiful face. Rosalie’s warm chocolate eyes carried concern for the woman she looked at, concern for Alora.

Right, she’d asked me a question .

“No, thank you. I find them much too sweet today.” The voice didn’t sound like hers. Too distant, too pristine.

A choke came from across the table, freshly made lemonade – another thing that tasted too much like pure sugar – sprayed across the wooden table. It narrowly missed Alora, who didn’t move an inch like the others did.

“Too sweet? They’re cupcakes, how else are they supposed to taste?” An auburn-haired beauty, Emilia, questioned incredulously. The source who’d almost drowned them in lemonade. Curves rounded her body, the corset pinching in her waist to exaggerate her shape. Not that she needed it.

Alora offered a sheepish smile. It earned a tongue click and a head shake from the oldest – Josephine, but they didn’t say more on the matter. Instead, Emilia shifted the topic to another common one. Another one that Alora also didn’t care to be a part of.

Men.

The idea that they all needed to marry soon remained a constant conversation at each tea party they attended. Not one inch of her, though, wished to rely on a man for the rest of her life. Yet, Alora put on a smile and pretended to listen to their chatter. She acted as though all her interest lay in the next words they spoke, when in reality it had returned to the wildlife going about their day around them. Specifically, a white rabbit she’d spotted every single day for a week, no matter where she’d gone.

She knew she sometimes saw things that weren’t there, and had been told just as much, but she swore the same rabbit followed her movements every hour the sun touched her skin.

“Would you please excuse me?” Alora hummed as she stood. The chair scraped against the tiles below it as she pushed it back, stepping out from between it and the table. She gathered the skirts of her dress in her hands and ignored the protests that followed her. They may be able to sit and chat about nonsense for hours on end, but Alora could not. She didn’t care to appease the men inside the large mansion a distance away, not when they barely made the same effort with the women they courted.

That’s what these tea parties were always about. Each lady born within a family of wealth, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five years, received a letter from the Viscount and his wife. An invitation for the duration of spring through summer to find a lord who wished to court them. In other words, become a walking womb for their offspring.

The men would watch their tea party every now and again, likely making jokes or crude comments, deciding which lady he wished to pursue. Then, when they finally made their move, the ladies would act like they had no idea.

Ridiculous.

The Viscount took Alora in three years previous when she’d been found in his gardens with no memory to explain herself. His wife, the Viscountess, gave Alora a year before throwing her into the courting season. They did, however, allow her the courtesy of choosing who she married, but Alora was yet to find them. How could she choose who to marry when she didn’t even know her own past?

Alora made her way towards the bushes she’d seen the white rabbit by, slipping from her heels the moment she passed through them. The grass and soft ground cushioned her feet in nothing but warmth, but she frowned when she found no sign of the rabbit.

Only a minute ago it had been there. Now? Absolutely nothing. Not even a single blade of munched grass.

“Alora!” Rosalie called. A second later, a yelp followed it.

Alora turned just in time to see the woman’s heels get stuck and her feet leave them and squish deep into the earth. The frozen shock on her face gave Alora enough warning of the storm that rumbled beneath the surface. Rosalie lifted her gaze from her shoes to the other woman.

“Don’t you dare,” she warned.

“Careful of the ground,” Alora hummed, knowing full well it wasn’t helpful. “It’s a tad wet.”

Rosalie’s eyes narrowed. Alora’s own widened a fraction before she took off, no longer caring about keeping the bottom hem of her dress clean and instead focusing on the fact that her whole outfit was currently under threat.

“Alora!” No longer did worry weave its way into her name, but a hardness that spiked at the end.

“My apologies!” Alora called over her shoulder, a loud laugh following.

Wind whistled past her as she ran, hands opening and relishing in the way it caressed over and between her fingers. The squelch of mud between toes behind her increased Alora’s pace, a hand wrapping around a low-hanging branch as she ducked beneath it and used the momentum to throw herself to the right. A squeal echoed from behind her, and then a laugh followed it.

Alora glanced behind her to see Rosalie copy her own actions, child-like joy brightening every single feature on her face. She slowed partially, enough for the other woman’s gaze to lift and meet hers, and they both grinned. A feral, wide grin that Alora knew would result in nothing but trouble. Only the twitch of Rosalie’s lips falling alerted Alora to anything in front of her, spinning as she threw her hands up and slammed right into a tree.

There, that silence sang, blue birds swooping across her vision. She rubbed her head, already finding a lump forming on her forehead. The lightest touch and Rosalie stepped into view, visibly cringing.

“I tried to warn you.” No bite attacked Alora with the sentence. Her friend had indeed tried to warn her, but with both their attention on the freedom of simply running, neither caught it early enough. A far too common occurrence that they now came to expect whenever they ran through the gardens.

“It had to have moved at the last second,” Alora replied, offering an amused smile. Something Rosalie still found surprising from the look of absurdity in her expression.

“I believe you may have hit your head a tad too hard this time, Lady Alora.”

Alora raised a singular eyebrow, turning and leaning back against the large tree trunk. “Oh, I’m unsure of that, Lady Rosalie. Perhaps it may pay to take a closer look?”

She hooked her finger into the waistband of Rosalie’s skirt, pulling her closer with little effort. The air grew warm around them, tiny mist droplets peppering the leaves above their heads. Rosalie lifted a hand to brush over the rising bump on Alora’s forehead, the breeze of a touch sinking deep into her mind as Alora’s focus remained on dark lips moving near her own.

How Rosalie liked to torture her. Each second subconsciously counted, and each millimetre reduced until nothing but skin against skin remained. A whisper of pleasure amongst a scream of life. Alora’s grip on the skirt tightened, dragging Rosalie’s body the rest of the way until no more air separated them. Just a breath more and those lips would be hers to claim, hers to demonstrate why the men in that mansion could offer nothing but money, and with more time passing, they wouldn’t even have that.

“Alora,” Rosalie whispered painfully. Her hand dropped from Alora’s head and she stepped away, putting distance once more between them. “I cannot — we cannot do this. Do you not wish to settle with a fine man and raise a family?”

Alora pursed her lips, hands falling to rest against the top of her own skirts. “I do not wish to settle, Rosalie, and nor should you. I have yet to meet such a man who can hold any sort of interesting conversation. Or, rather, who wants to hold any sort of interesting conversation with a woman. ”

“That is what you wish to find?”

The question built Alora’s defences up. A wall around the part of herself only Rosalie was lucky enough to have seen since Alora showed up three years beforehand.

“You will not witness me settling for less,” she answered sharply. She’d learnt how to harness her tongue into any kind of weapon she needed for those years. Most of the time, a quick cut would work, but sometimes she required a heavier, more brutal swing.

Rosalie flinched, barely visible but Alora caught it with her steady gaze. “What was it this time?”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Alora muttered back.

Rosalie crossed her arms, motioning to the garden still abuzz with energy around them. “What were you chasing after this time?”

Oh. That.

If Rosalie didn’t already think her crazy for their runaway garden make-out sessions, she definitely would after hearing once again about the little white rabbit.

“A rabbit.” The words came out quieter than Alora would have liked. She cursed her mind for not instructing her mouth to speak louder.

Rosalie’s eyes narrowed, almost glaring. “Would it by any chance be a white rabbit? The same one you have mentioned nearly twenty times this past week?”

“I cannot be certain it is the same one, but it cannot be coincidental that I’ve witnessed multiple in a short period of time,” Alora defended. Even to her own ears she sounded crazy, and the increasing alarm buried in Rosalie’s gaze didn’t help.

“We are currently in a garden, Alora, rabbits often make their homes within gardens. This one is especially large and nice.”

“It’s not always a rabbit!” Alora exclaimed. Now, however, she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince; her friend, or herself. “My apologies for the outburst, I simply-.”

A scream cut her off, loud and travelling across each plant around her, the leaves curling into themselves and flowers closing as though the sun had disappeared from view. It whistled into her ear, bouncing against the walls of her mind and burrowing deeper until the songs of silence no longer made their home there. Until each and every one was replaced with an unbearable ringing.