Page 1 of Sticks and Stones and Broken Bones

Prologue

Raevyn

“This is for the greater good, child. Your sacrifice will ensure our power continues for generations to come.”

My grandmother was fucking crazy. I pulled at the restraints and screamed behind the ragged cloth stuffed in my mouth. Not that it was doing me much use. I was strapped to the altar, being leered at by my coven as they waited patiently for their next boost of power.

I was so stupid. They’d fed me lies for years and now, at the age of twenty-one, I was the perfect age to sacrifice to the Deathwatch. What a fucking joke. Well, the joke would be on them because I was going to come back and haunt them forever. Hopefully. I didn’t know if that was a thing though. I mean, what did I know? Clearly nothing since I was strapped to a fucking stone slab and about to die.

The sisters started chanting in our mother tongue and I could feel the hum in the air as the magic built.

I’d always loved watching the circles, seeing the sisters perform magic was both a blessing and a curse. I hadn’t been graced with my own magic, so I’d always sat on the sidelines. Guess being born a witch with no power was what made me perfect sacrifice material. My mother had always said that I was probably just a late bloomer, that it’d happen one day. Guess the coven disagreed because I was here, and my mother was stood next to me chanting away while tears fell down her face. I’d never felt more unwanted than I did right at this moment.

I wasn’t even sure if the Deathwatch Revenants existed. To me, they were a ghost story. A tale told to children to keep them in line. If you were naughty the Deathwatch would come for you. Didn’t do your chores, the Revenants would steal you in the night. It all sounded like a bunch of hocus pocus to me. Maybe that was why I didn’t have power. Our coven was dedicated to the Deathwatch Revenants, and we drew our power from them. We were supposed to be a family of powerful necromancers, but we hadn’t seen one in a few generations and that’s where I came in. I was the sacrifice they were offering in the hopes that my mother’s unborn child would be born a powerful necromancer. She was choosing my sibling over me because I was clearly expendable and worthless.

Well, fuck them. Fuck the coven. And fuck the Deathwatch.

“It’s time, child.” My grandmother’s weather beaten face hovered over me. Her wiry hair whipped around her in the breeze and the candle flames flickered in her eyes. With runes painted on her face in blood, she looked every bit the powerful matriarch that she was. She just wasn’t a powerful necromancer and that’s what they wanted more than anything. More than me.

She raised her arms over her head, her grip on the ceremonial dagger strong and sure. “Goodbye, Raevyn. May your soul find peace and your death bring us joy.”

I doubled my efforts and pulled at the restraints, but it was no use. I cast one last look at my mother and hoped she saw my plea, my hate, and my wrath.

They would all pay for this.

My grandmother slammed the knife straight into my chest, piercing my heart and ending my life. The pain didn’t last long and then I didn’t feel anything at all.

Chapter One

Rook

“Do you ever get tired of this?” Casimir asked while removing a demon’s head from its body.

I looked at him, puzzled. “Dismembering?”

“Maiming?” Nox added.

“Yes. The hunting and killing. We’ve been doing it for millennia. Don’t you want to do something different?” Casimir stabbed his blade into another low level demon trying to make its escape. Hades had sent us to infiltrate and destroy a sect who were looking to create an uprising. Days like today were supposed to be fun. I was having fun, pretty sure Nox was enjoying carving up demons if the sadistic grin on his pale face was anything to go by, but lately, Casimir had been doing a lot of this questioning thing. I found it unsettling. We only had one purpose and that was to hunt.

“We have no other purpose,” Korbin said, echoing my thoughts. He was stood to one side, his purely white eyes wide with curiosity. Technically the guy was blind, but that never stopped him from beating me at pin the dagger on the demon. Fucking mystical that one. And he was mine. All mine.

To be fair, we were all mystical. The four of us were as old as dirt. Hades had created us out of a necessity to keep order among the Gods. Although, I still believed he needed us to protect him because he pissed the wrong people off. But, whatever the reason, this was all we had ever known and all we could ever hope to know. We were powered by death and our magic came from the residual energy of a soul crossing over. But we couldn’t create our own power source. I couldn’t go on a killing spree and then use that to fuel my magic, nope. We were dependent on other people killing but we couldn’t outright influence humans either. Sometimes being a Revenant sucked balls.

Casimir wiped his blade on his cloak, cleaning off the black demon blood. “Maybe I’m just bored.”

“Hey. We should go on holiday,” Nox piped up from behind me. If anyone needed sunshine it was that guy. He was pale, dressed head to toe in black, with black hair and eyes that he liked to surround with a ring of thick black eyeliner. Not that he’d ever catch a tan. We weren’t alive and couldn’t be affected by anything like that.

“Nox, don’t be an asshole. We can’t go on holiday,” I snorted. “Remember what happened the last time we tried?”

Nox’s manic grin dropped. “Oh, yeah. Turned out to be a bit of a bloodbath, didn’t it?”

And that was putting it mildly. Whilst we couldn’t influence humans to kill, there were some who were naturally attuned to us. They often formed covens to worship us or some shit, but really, they were feeding off the energy we left behind in the mortal realm. An energy born of death magic. Some people use it for good, other people use it to become serial killers. Our last attempt at catching some rays ended up with a guy murdering seventeen holiday makers. Not our finest hour but we did get an epic power boost out of it, it just came with a lot of unnecessary death. Hades had been pissed and we’d been banned from holidays ever since.

“It’s a Blood Moon tonight,” I said giving Casimir’s shoulder a squeeze. “They’re always fun.”

The guy brushed me off with a scowl and left the club. Guess we weren’t doing clean up then. I looked around at the severed limbs and shrugged. The Ferrals would get a feast tonight. They were mindless beasts that roamed the outlands and weren’t picky with what they ate. If it was meat, it was food.

The club we’d just left a massacre in was right on the edge of Infernium, the capital city of the Underworld, and it was a shit hole out here. Just dead grass and flat lands as far as the eye could see. It was the perfect place for seedy activities, gambling, and plotting coups. This latest group had started to piss Hades off because they were gaining traction. Hades was King and he did not like to be challenged. There was only one person he seemed to let get under his skin, and I hadn’t quite figured out how she managed it. Some Reaper, Blue or Roux or something equally colourful. That girl had him whipped, he just didn’t know it yet but boy, was he gonna be pissed when he realised. I chuckled. I really wanted to be there when he made that realisation. Shit would decimate the fucking fan.

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