BURY THE DEAD

Status: complete

Amid the grit and pageantry of medieval Germany, a headstrong teenage noblewoman investigates a brutal murder.

Fifteen-year-old Eva von Hirshburg fears she will live and die in her family’s forbidding castle, scorned for sins her parents committed. When a mysterious young woman is killed at the nearby abbey of St. Nicholas, Eva is moved by similarities between the victim and her own dead mother. Convinced the abbot intends to ignore the crime, Eva vows to find the murderer herself.

Armed only with her quick wit and dauntless spirit, Eva convinces the kind but reluctant Brother Clement to help. Eva’s suitor, the charismatic Lord Friderich, protests, worried that Eva has become dangerously obsessed with the murdered woman.

Soon Eva discovers that one of her primary suspects has ties to Clement, another to Friderich. Unsure who to trust, Eva must choose between her friend and her first love. But in a world where gleaming chainmail, rippling satin, and even the humble robes of a monk conceal souls consumed with rage and desire, trusting the wrong person could cost Eva her heart and her life.

That night I dreamt I married a fairy prince with raven hair and eyes like molten gold. I sat beside him at our wedding feast in a dress of gleaming lilac gray set with a thousand diamonds, glittering like winking stars. The grandly carved table stretched farther than I could see, every inch overflowing with food: steaming beef and marrow pies, hare soup, capons and venison, jellied eels, partridge, plovers, pheasants and swans, cream fritters and sugared bread, all of it displayed in jeweled dishes of amethyst and almandine, ruby and rose quartz, jasper and citrine.

Gisela stood at my side, pouring blood-red wine into my crystal goblet, her delicate wrists in golden shackles. My husband touched my hand. We rose and climbed the broad marble steps to his bedchamber. My twilight gown was suddenly replaced with a nightdress of diaphanous silk, so delicate I feared it would dissolve at the slightest touch. A grove of silver trees grew in the center of the room. They bowed down before me, revealing the bed, its linens dazzling as new fallen snow. The prince gathered me in his arms. I closed my eyes as he lowered me onto the velvet blanket. A bitter wind swept across my body. I heard a distant keening, the sound of a baby crying.

I opened my eyes and found myself lying on a wooden pallet in the abbey hospital. At the foot of the bed stood Brother Karl, silent and menacing, like a terrible black bat. He stretched out a hand, a skeleton's hand, and drew back his hood. There was no face within, only a churning inky shadow that suddenly broke apart into a thousand spiders with scarlet eyes. They spilled across the bed, scrambling along my legs, up my torso, and into my mouth.

I woke up screaming.