The Bone Collector’s Daughter – I: The Inheritance of Shadows

1: The Inheritance of Shadows

The letter arrived on a day drowned in rain, the ink bleeding at the edges like a fresh wound.

"My dearest Vera, if you are reading this, I am already dust among my collection."

Vera’s fingers trembled as she traced her father’s jagged script. The solicitor standing in her cramped parlor shifted uncomfortably, his gaze darting to the black-ribboned box in his hands. Inside, an iron key gleamed dully, its teeth worn from turning locks best left sealed.

"The estate is yours, Miss Locke," the man murmured, "though I must advise—some inheritances are better refused."

She didn’t heed him or his advice.

The House of Whispers

Blackthorn Hall stood at the end of a serpentine road, its spires clawing at a moonlit sky. The air smelled of damp earth and something older—copper, perhaps, or the faint rot of forgotten things.

Her father’s study was a cathedral of bones.

Skulls lined the shelves like grotesque sentinels, their hollow eyes tracking her steps. Femurs and ribs dangled from the ceiling on silver threads, a macabre mobile that chimed when the wind slipped through the cracks. In the center of the room, a glass case held his prize: a skeleton so pristine it seemed carved from ivory, its fingers curled around a rusted crown.

Vera pressed her palm to the glass.

"Who were you?" she whispered.

The answer came not in words, but in sudden, searing pain as the glass shattered beneath her touch. A shard bit into her wrist, and her blood dripped onto the skull’s forehead—

—and the bones moved.

The Prince of Rot

The skeleton sat up.

Not with the jerky motion of a puppet, but with the languid grace of a man stretching after a long sleep. Empty sockets filled with ember-light, and when his jaw unhinged, the voice that emerged was the equivalent of velvet wrapped around a blade.

"Little collector," he crooned, "you have awoken me."

Vera stumbled back, but the air had turned to syrup, thick and impossible to flee through. The prince—for he could be nothing else, with that crown fused to his brow—rose, his bones clicking like a deathwatch beetle’s song.

"Your father stole me," he said, stepping closer. "A petty thief, for all his scholarly airs. But you…" A finger-bone brushed her throat. "You smell like power."

Her pulse hammered where he touched, and the realization struck her like a slap:

She wasn’t afraid.

She was... hungry.

II: The Prince's Bargain

The bone prince circled her, his steps silent despite the weight of centuries pressing down on him. The ember-light in his hollow eyes flickered like a dying hearth, casting long shadows across the walls of skulls. Vera could feel the cold radiating from him—not the chill of death, but something deeper, older. The cold of forgotten tombs and abandoned oaths.

"You do not scream," he observed, tilting his skull as if studying a curious artifact. "Most do."

Vera swallowed, her throat dry. "I’m not most people."

A rattling laugh escaped him, the sound like dry leaves skittering over stone. "No. You are a Locke. And the Lockes have always been thieves."

Her spine stiffened. "My father was a scholar."

"A scholar who stole corpses from their resting places," the prince countered, dragging a skeletal finger along the edge of a nearby shelf. Dust rained down. "He pried secrets from the dead. And now you’ve stolen something far worse."

"And what’s that?" she demanded.

"Me."

The Curse Unveiled

He moved closer, his skeletal fingers flexing as if remembering the flesh they once wore. "I was a prince, once. Before your ancestors buried me alive in myth and lies." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I was cursed for a crime I did not commit. My bones bound, my name erased. Your father found me. Dug me up like a trophy."

Vera’s breath hitched. "If that’s true, why didn’t he free you?"

"Because he was afraid of what I would do if I walked again." The prince leaned in, his breathless voice curling around her ear. "But you, Vera Locke… you do not fear me. Do you?"

She should have. Every instinct told her to run. But the way he looked at her—like she was the first living thing he’d seen in centuries—sent a traitorous heat through her veins.

The Offer

"I can give you power," he murmured, his skeletal hand hovering just above her cheek. "Knowledge. The kind your father spent his life chasing. All you have to do is say yes."

"And what do you get in return?"

His grin was a jagged thing. "A body. A name. A kingdom reclaimed."

Vera exhaled sharply. "You want me to help you come back."

"I want you to choose me," he corrected. "The way no one else ever has."

The air between them thickened, heavy with the weight of the unsaid. Somewhere in the house, a clock struck midnight—a sound like a coffin lid slamming shut.

"Think on it, little thief," the prince murmured, stepping back into the shadows. "But not too long. The dead are patient… but I am not."

And with that, he dissolved into smoke, leaving Vera alone with the bones, the blood on her wrist, and a choice that could unravel her very soul.

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Volume II soon to come!