Prologue
MACKENZIE
I roll over in bed and slam against a wall.
Huh? Odd.
My bed isn’t pushed against a wall. I must’ve twisted around in my sleep and hit the headboard. I do thrash around a lot, especially when I have bad dreams, and tonights was particularly gruesome. My mind stretches into the silence, searching for the tendrils of my nightmare. I’m lying in bed and some dark shadow comes and lifts me up, pinning my arms so they hurt. He drags me downstairs to my mother, slumped in her favorite chair. At first, I think she passed out drunk after a night at the club, but then I see the dark pool expanding around her feet, staining the designer rug.
I see the knife handle sticking out of her neck.
I see her glassy eyes rolled toward the ceiling.
I see the window behind her head, and my own reflection in the glass, my face streaked with blood, my eyes dark voids of pain and hatred.
But it’s okay now. It was just a dream. It’s—
OW.
I hit the headboard again. I reach down to rub my elbow, and my hand grazes a solid wall of satin. On my other side.
What the hell?
I open my eyes into a darkness that is oppressive and complete, the kind of darkness I’d never see inside my princess bedroom with its flimsy purple curtains letting in the glittering skyline of the city. The kind of darkness that folds in on me, pressing me against the hard, un-bedlike surface I lie on.
Now the panic hits.
I throw out my arms, kick with my legs. I hit walls. Walls all around me, lined with satin, dense with an immense weight pressing from all sides. Walls so close I can’t sit up or bend my knees. I scream, and my scream bounces back at me, hollow and weak.
I’m in a coffin. I’m in a motherfucking coffin, and I’m still alive.
I scream and scream and scream. The sound fills my head and stabs at my brain. I know all I’m doing is using up my precious oxygen, but I can’t make myself stop. In that scream I lose myself, and every memory of who I am dissolves into a puddle of terror.
When I do stop, finally, I gasp and pant, and I taste blood and stale air on my tongue. A cold fear seeps into my bones. Am I dying? My throat crawls with invisible bugs. Is this what it feels like to die?
I hunt around in my pockets, but I’m wearing purple pajamas, and the only thing inside is a bookmark Daddy gave me. I can’t see it of course, but I know it has a quote from Julius Caesar on it. Alea iacta est. The die is cast.
Like fuck it is.
I think of Daddy, of everything he taught me – memories too dark to be obliterated by fear. Bile rises in my throat. I swallow, choke it back. Daddy always told me our world is forged in blood. I might be only thirteen, but I know who he is, what he’s capable of. I’ve heard the whispers. I’ve seen the way people hurry to appease him whenever he enters a room. I’ve had the lessons from Antony in what to do if I find myself alone with one of Daddy’s enemies.
Of course, they never taught me what to do if one of those enemies buries me alive.
I can’t give up.
I claw at the satin on the lid. It tears under my fingers, and I pull out puffs of stuffing to reach the wood beneath. I claw at the surface, digging splinters under my nails. Cramps arc along my arm from the awkward angle. I know it’s hopeless; I know I’ll never be able to scratch my way through the wood. Even if I can, I feel the weight of several feet of dirt above me. I’d be crushed in moments. But I have to try.
I’m my father’s daughter, and this is not how I die.
I claw and scratch and tear. I lose track of how much time passes in the tiny space. My ears buzz. My skin weeps with cold sweat.
A noise reaches my ears. A faint shifting. A scuffle. A scrape and thud above my head. Muffled and far away.
Someone piling the dirt in my grave.
Or maybe…
…maybe someone digging it out again.
Fuck, fuck, please.
“Help.” My throat is hoarse from screaming. I bang the lid with my fists, not even feeling the splinters piercing my skin. “Help me!”
THUD. Something hits the lid. The coffin groans. My veins burn with fear and hope and terror.
The wood cracks. The lid is flung away. Dirt rains down on me, but I don’t care. I suck in lungfuls of fresh, crisp air. A circle of light blinds me. I fling my body up, up into the unknown. Warm arms catch me, hold me close.
“I found you, Claws.” Only Antony calls me by that nickname. Of course, it would be my cousin who saves me. Antony drags me over the lip of the grave, my grave, and we fall into crackling leaves and damp grass.
I sob into his shoulder. Antony rolls me over, his fingers pressing all over my body, checking if I’m hurt. He rests my back against cold stone. “I have to take care of this,” he says. I watch through tear-filled eyes as he pushes the dirt back into the hole – into what was supposed to be my grave – and brushes dead leaves on top. When he’s done, it’s impossible to tell the ground’s been disturbed at all.
I tremble all over. I can’t make myself stop shaking. Antony comes back to me and wraps me in his arms. He staggers to his feet, holding me like I’m weightless. He’s only just turned eighteen, but already he’s built like a tank.
I let out a terrified sob. Antony glances over his shoulder, and there’s panic in his eyes. “You’ve got to be quiet, Claws,” he whispers. “They might be nearby. I’m going to get you out of here.”
I can’t speak. My voice is gone, left in the coffin with my screams. Antony hoists me up and darts into the shadows. He runs with ease, ducking between rows of crumbling gravestones and beneath bent and gnarled trees. Dimly, I recognize this place – the old Emerald Beach cemetery, on the edge of Beaumont Hills overlooking the bay, where the original families of Emerald Beach buried their dead.
Where someone tried to bury me.
Antony bursts from the trees onto a narrow road. His car is parked in the shadows. He opens the passenger door and settles me inside before diving behind the wheel and gunning the engine.
We tear off down the road. Antony rips around the deadly corners like he’s on a racetrack. Steep cliffs and crumbling old mansions pass by in a blur.
“My parents…” I gasp out. “Where are my parents?”
“I’m sorry, Claws. I didn’t get to them in time. I only found you.”
I wait for this to sink in, for the fact I’m now an orphan to hit me in a rush of grief. But I’m numb. My body won’t stop shaking, and I left my brain and my heart buried in the silence of that coffin.
“Who?” I ask, and I fancy I catch a hint of my dad’s cold savagery in my voice. “Who did this?”
“I don’t know yet, but if I had to guess, it was Brutus. I warned your dad that he was making alliances and building up to a challenge. I think he’s just made his move.”
I try to digest this information. Brutus – who was once my father’s trusted friend, who’d eaten dinner at our house and played Chutes and Ladders with me – killed my parents and buried me alive. But it bounces off the edge of my skull and doesn’t stick. The life I had before, my old life, it’s gone, and as I twist and grasp for memories, all I grab is stale coffin air.
“What now?” I ask.
Antony tosses his phone into my lap. “Look at the headlines.”