Hallow Ground, Thomas Champbell had a poem about it at which Alec could only recall — And is he dead whose glorious mind, lifts thine on high? To live in the hearts we leave is not to die! 

Perhaps it should have been a sacred space, a place of the promise of everlasting mortality, but in truth Alec always thought of gravesites as nothing more than a wasted void where the shells of great men went to rot. It was the soul one should rejoice upon not mark a grave with the reminder that life was far more fragile than it should be. 

One day he would correct this error, but this night he would correct something far darker…his sister’s betrothed. Alec didn’t know much about the man, but what he did come to find out bothered him more than he’d ever let on. In secret just when the sun came down he took to the path to where the ad had lead him. 

Dressed in black he made his way through the stone and sculpted angels until even they turned their eyes away from him. He was to set fire to their sins should they dare hasten his judgement now, but already this man to whom he was to hire felt so very strange and out of place. Perched against the cross as though he had any right to dare touch it, Alec’s stormy blue eyes settled upon him to cast his judgement. 

“Have I kept you waiting?” He asked in a dull and deep voice as his eyes now studied the man’s drumming fingers, “Or are you nervous?”