Bought by the Raven King

A bride who climbed out of her own grave. A king who speaks to the dead. A cold that finally feels like home.

OLWEN

I’ve been faking a pulse for three months. Faking warmth. Faking breath. Counting petals to remind my heart how to beat, and how easily it could forget.

At the Bride Market, a wolf’s heat nearly burns through my borrowed life. So I choose the monster in the corner instead. The one made of shadow and frost. The one they only whisper about.

The Raven King buys me with funeral coins and says he’s purchasing my silence. I don’t tell him I’m already dead. I don’t tell him his cold is the first thing that hasn’t hurt since I clawed my way out of the ground.

I just need to keep pretending long enough to vanish.

CADOR

I see the living. I see the dead. I see the ones trying very hard not to be either.

My new bride is none of them. A void where a soul should glow. A silence shaped like a woman. My ravens call her sister, and perhaps I should fear her.

I don’t. She’s hiding something impossible, and she’s exhausted from holding it alone. I want to know what happens when she finally lets herself rest.