Chapter 1: The Queen of the Empty Tomb

I kept watch over the Whitmore family mausoleum for ten years before I found out the coffin inside was empty.

For a decade, sunrise and sunset always caught me in that shadowy crypt. Every single day. No exceptions. The chill of the marble seeped into my bones, and the silence got heavier every year. Folks in town whispered about the crazy lady up on Bellamy Ridge, but let them talk. I didn’t care.

I’d made a promise, and that was all that mattered—until the day everything I thought I knew blew up in my face.

He’d used his wife as a cover. Faked his own death. Went underground, and waited... until the day he marched back with his followers and broke through the city’s gates.

By noon, the story was all over the local radio: a new leader, a man calling himself Sebastian Whitmore, stormed back into Maple Heights with a ragtag army and that wild look in his eye. The city council folded in a heartbeat. Folks lined Main Street to watch the spectacle, not realizing the real drama was up on the hill, behind those stone walls.

When we met again, he knelt before me and asked me to be his queen.

The memory is sharp as broken glass. Sebastian—proud, scarred—dropped to one knee right in the middle of the town square. The hush in the air, the way the sun caught the gold trim of his jacket, the crowd holding its collective breath. It was unreal.

It was the kind of moment that makes headlines and family legends, the kind people retell for years at the local diner over coffee and pie. The kind you never really believe until you’re in it yourself.

Everyone marveled at the new lord’s devotion. They congratulated me on my luck. But I refused him.

Neighbors I hadn’t seen in years came out of the woodwork, slapping me on the back, grinning like I’d just won the lottery. The mayor’s wife even brought over a homemade peach cobbler. But I didn’t say yes. I couldn’t. Not when my heart already belonged to someone else.

Because there was someone else.

Someone who, even when the world went to hell, had stayed by my side for ten years as a humble caretaker, guarding the tomb with me.

Deep in the Appalachian hills, cut off from the world, I swept the mausoleum, just like I did every morning, for Sebastian Whitmore. The broom scratched across the marble, soft and steady.

The air in the crypt was always cool, mixed with the scent of old stone and wild honeysuckle drifting in through the cracks. Every morning, I’d light a candle, say a quiet prayer, and get to work. Sometimes I’d hum an old hymn my grandma taught me. Just to fill the emptiness. It was all that kept me sane.

That’s how it always was. But today? Today felt different.

There was a heaviness in the air, the kind you feel right before a summer thunderstorm. My hands shook as I swept. I kept glancing over my shoulder, half-expecting something—or someone—to appear.

Word had spread that the general who’d led the army from Silver Hollow to take the city was also named Sebastian Whitmore. I didn’t even know if he spelled it the same way. Still, what were the odds?

Rumors travel fast in the hills. I’d heard the old men at the general store arguing about it, heard the preacher mention it in his Sunday sermon. Just another ghost story, I told myself. The kind folks spin when the nights get too long.

Some folks said he was the old Whitmore heir himself.

I’d overheard the postmaster’s wife say it with a knowing look, her voice dropping low. The Whitmores were old money around here, their name carved into every cornerstone and church pew.

But my husband, Sebastian Whitmore, was dead. He died right in front of me, in our second year.

I remembered it like it was yesterday. The cold sweat on his brow, the way his hand squeezed mine, the light fading from his eyes. I’d never believed in ghosts until then.

As he lay dying, tears filled his eyes as he promised me, “If there’s another life, Autumn, I swear I’ll make it up to you.”

His voice was barely a whisper, but I clung to every word. The promise hung between us. I couldn’t let go, even when the world moved on.

But what was there to forgive or not forgive? Did I even know what I needed from him anymore?

We were always a team. The fight for the family name was dangerous—I never blamed him.

I’d grown up knowing that money and blood ran thick in these hills, and the Whitmore name was both a blessing and a curse. They envied us. But they didn’t know what it cost.

That night, I meant to follow him in death. But then I found out I was pregnant. They locked me away in the east wing to carry the child alone.

The east wing was cold and lonely, the windows boarded up and the halls echoing with every footstep. All I had for company was the old grandfather clock, chiming the hours, counting down the days.

When the baby was three months along, a maid poisoned me. I was out for a day and a night.

I still remember the taste of that bitter tea, the way my vision blurred and the world spun out from under me. When I woke up, everything felt quieter. Emptier.

When I finally came to, my body felt oddly light—like something essential had been taken from me.

There was an emptiness in my belly, a hollowness that no amount of tears could fill. The pain was sharp, but the grief was sharper.

Grief swallowed me whole. I lost the will to live.

I stopped eating. I stopped speaking. I watched the seasons change through the dusty window, waiting for something—anything—to make it hurt less.

But my heart was dead. I begged him—let me spend my life guarding the Whitmore mausoleum.

It was the only thing I could think to do. I pleaded with him, hands shaking, voice raw. He relented, maybe out of pity, maybe just to be rid of me. Either way, I found myself at the mausoleum, a living ghost, surrounded by the dead.