Free Eterna and Omega by Leanna Renee Hieber

who you are, whom you work for, and what all this is about,” Rose declared, folding her arms.
    The woman sighed. “I told you. I’m Lizzie Marlowe. Miss Templeton likes to call me the visitor, although I rather like ‘Captain Marlowe,’ assuming I live to tell that tale.
    â€œDon’t let your department become something it’s not. You and Clara must stand up for what is right. A steadfast partnership. You’ll see. She’s been warned about you. Be warned about her. Wariness makes for good sisters.”
    In the next moment, Rose found herself alone. How that happened, she couldn’t be sure.
    *   *   *
    The trip was long and Moriel was quite tired. Drawing out the Summoned took a great deal of concentration and life force. They were draining creatures, those black silhouettes, the absence of color, the vacuum of hope.
    The sight of Vieuxhelles, his rightful home, cured all.
    It was a crisp, bright night when His Majesty Beauregard Moriel entered his looming, sprawling, ivy-covered estate with a sigh, noting sadly that his palace was a bit worse for wear. Admittedly, the staff had been greatly reduced while he was “dead.” He nearly jumped from the carriage and darted up the marble steps to the brass door knocker.
    In response to the knocker’s reverberate thunderclap, his steadfast butler opened the great door. An ancient creature, James had been with the Moriels since long before His Majesty was born.
    â€œGood evening and welcome home, Your Majesty,” James said with a familiar soft deference. “The estate has been prepared for you.”
    The butler escorted Moriel through the dusty, dark, cavernous foyer into the warmly lit grand sitting room, a sumptuous room that had always been his favorite. He basked in the glow of the golden objects that lined the walls and the luxurious furnishings. James lifted a golden crown from an ornate box and approached the waiting regent, the circlet trembling in his shaking hands.
    Before Moriel’s unfortunate stint in prison, this had been their daily routine; resuming the ritual was such a comfort. Moriel felt the gold settle into place on his brow. James had seated it perfectly. Crossing to a tall rosewood wardrobe, the eternal butler withdrew a fur-lined robe that he presented with the same slow ceremony, sliding it about Moriel’s body.
    This coronation had begun in his youth, and it always filled him with the same rush, both freeing and invigorating. He’d recommend it as a tonic for virility, were he not so loath to share the secrets of the diadem.
    From the arched window, Moriel looked out over his land lit by the kind of moonlight that made wolves howl in delight. His beautiful land. His familial acreage, back in rightful hands.
    Their estate had been taken, and the sin was Moriel’s earliest life’s mission to make right. A distant familial dispute two generations prior had escalated into an ugly affair that had disenfranchised the Moriel family from what was rightly theirs. The estate had been renamed Harcourt Hall, seized by the Wicke family and the Moriels erased from heraldry.
    This had taken the gravest of tolls on his father, and Moriel vowed to make the usurpers pay. The whole ordeal nearly killed the entire disputed Moriel line, but Beauregard had won his hard-fought battle. The estate and holdings, all again in the hands it should be. If the seat of his kingdom hadn’t passed down to him, would he not have become one of the wretched spirits his work bound to patchwork corpses, desperate specters built to undo the sanity of any commoner who looked upon them? He would have haunted the world forever if he did not have his rightful home.
    There was one convenient, fated aspect to the usurpation that had so grieved his family. On all accounts and records, there was no Moriel, no Vieuxhelles, only a nondescript Harcourt Hall that was not for sale, and the owner remained