“Crowns are not always inherited.
Sometimes they are taken.
Sometimes they are bargained for.
And when they are, it is rarely the bargain-maker who pays the price.
A pact with Death and a stolen blade would alter two bloodlines forever.”
—Tatiana Summerdream, High Fae Queen
Piper
Ravenwood did not belong to the living.
The trees grew tall and black, their branches twisting toward a sky that never seemed to fully brighten. Mist curled through the roots like something breathing beneath the earth.
Piper Velasco walked its paths like she had every right to be there.
As she approached the gates of Hollow Night Cemetery, her brother’s voice echoed in her head, “Rodrigo and I have decided it’s time for you to leave us.” John’s voice, like boots on rotten wood.
Long John Buttercups, indeed. Piper snorted as she thought about how the idiot changed his name as soon as he turned twenty-one and took the helm of our family vessel, “The Devil’s Tempest”.
“First born, male heir, gets the ship.” Rodrigo, always digging into books, so old you could barely see the ink.
An ache struck her chest, and she swallowed hard to keep the tears from building.
How she missed him.
But Piper, the oldest—and not a man—had been abandoned on the shores of Tomarang.
She spent what little money John gave her to get to Ravenwood.
Piper curled up on the pew in the empty church, thankful for her friendship with Olive and Layne. A hot meal instead of funeral scraps.
Thankful for the full stomach, Piper curled up on the bench and quickly fell asleep.
What felt like minutes, but could have been hours, Piper was awoken by a cold draft along her arm. She began to stir and felt another cold sensation.
No, not wind.
A touch.
Her eyes opened slowly, lashes heavy with sleep.
The church was darker now.
“Maybe the fire went out?” she said to no one, as she began to sit up.
The candles along the walls still flickered, but their flames bent strangely, as though something unseen had moved through them.
Piper pushed herself upright on the wooden bench, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
Then she saw it.
Standing at the end of the pew was a tall, hooded figure, robes dark as the midnight soil of Ravenwood. Chains and small metal charms hung from its belt, softly clinking as it shifted.
Where a face should have been, there was only shadow beneath the hood.
Piper’s breath caught in her throat.
Slowly, she looked down at her arm.
A skeletal hand rested there, pale bone against her skin.
And just as slowly… it pulled away.
“Why do you sleep here?”
His voice wasn’t a voice at all, but something closer to an echo. The sound seemed to come from everywhere in the room at once, as if the walls themselves had spoken.
Piper blinked at him.
“Because I spent the money my brothers gave me on a ticket to Ravenwood,” she explained.
Her voice was calm, almost casual, as though speaking with hooded figures made of bone was something she did every day.
As they sat in the quiet church, Piper told him her tale. Not the whole truth—but enough to make him understand her position.
The pirates.
The ship.
The money that was supposed to be a beginning.
Instead, it had simply gotten her here.
The hooded figure listened without interruption; skeletal fingers loosely folded together as the fire crackled softly, behind them.
When she finished, the silence returned.
Grim sat still as death before he spoke again.
“Cemeteries are for the dead,” the echo said at last. “Not the living.”
Piper tilted her head slightly.
Then the figure rose from the pew beside her.
“Come to my castle,” he said. “We can talk some more.”
The words were simple, but the air in the church shifted as he spoke them.
Grim turned and began walking toward the doors without looking back. Piper hesitated for only a moment before standing and following him out into the cold Ravenwood air.
Across the courtyard of town, looming beyond iron gates and tall hedges, stood a large estate.
Grim led the way toward it.
An immortal deal was made.
The details of it would never be spoken aloud in Ravenwood.
Not by the living, not by the dead.
But from that night forward, the girl who had arrived with nothing—no ship, no coin, no family willing to claim her—would never sleep on a church bench again.
The bargain had been struck in the quiet halls of Death’s castle.
And in return for what she offered, Ravenwood gained something it had never had before.
A Queen.
Piper Velasco stood before the fountain in the courtyard of her new domain, the crown of Ravenwood resting lightly upon her head. The metal shimmered faintly with a strange green light, as if the realm itself recognized its new ruler.
The mist that haunted the town curled around her feet like a loyal servant.
She had arrived in Ravenwood as nothing more than a discarded daughter of pirates.
But Death had seen something else.
Not weakness.
Not desperation.
Ambition.
And ambition, in Ravenwood, was a language even Death respected.
So, a deal had been made.
And Piper Velasco had become immortal.
The Queen of Ravenwood.
More To Read
Continue Reading Chapter 2 A Tale of Two Crowns Part 2
The Velasco Saga 