Sunlight glinted as Rayna the Red unsheathed her sword. Fierce lips hissed an incantation caught up and drowned by whipping coastal winds. Seagulls squawked overhead, taunting, foretelling a bad omen as the sky turned shades of amber violet.
“Witch!” Hrothgar, Son of Ragnar, awaited her on the beach, sword ready. “You’ve led us
Surrounded by shouting hagglers, I sweep my eyes over the market as we step into an abandoned tent. Back turned to the crowd, I rummage in my pack for the scroll. Passersby will only see a traveling swordsman and his student counting their coins before visiting the blacksmith’s booth.
“You’re my best student. Like
The shoebox rattles. A crystalline scratching sound tinkles inside the worn cardboard. I clutch it in my aching, bandaged fingers as I stand trembling in the yard of the old livery stable at the edge of the village.
It’s my last option.
If he can’t help me, no one can.
One step at a time
I don’t like Dycin.
It’s not the guide’s superior attitude that makes me dislike him either. He was raised by the Knowledge Keepers. Of course, he’s smarter than me. No. I dislike Dycin because despite his knowledge, he has no idea what he’s doing but presses on anyway. In fact, I suspect we’re lost.
The moon bathed the graveyard in silver light, reflecting off the polished marble of younger headstones. The older markers seemed to hide from the light, becoming one with the shadows around them. At least that’s what Cassie told herself as she tripped over the second one of the evening. Cursing under her breath
Read it now
Eat your pies and drink your ale and listen well to this story of wonder, of wooing, of weeping, of weddings, of woe—and of some sneezing.
Turnipton was a simple village. The residents preferred it that way. They grew their potatoes and milked their cows. They had their occasional celebration, but no adventures
Ah, Día de los Muertos. A day we set aside to honor our family members. To spend time with the living. To remember our dead.
Except they’re kind of hard to forget when their skeletons are staring at you from across the table.
“Well, Finny! Have you decided to follow in your pop’s footsteps
When you plan to murder a monarch, the last creature you should ever tell is a tree.
Yes, every peasant child knows you can’t trust oaks, but I had to get the woods involved. You see, fae kings are notoriously bad at dying, and it would be unacceptable for a man of my station
Waves sloshed below the old man as he sat at the pier’s edge, waiting. A face emerged from the sea, her hair as white as the foam on the wave crests.
“It is good to see you, Mr. Crispin. You have the boot?”
Puzzled as he always was during these exchanges, Crispin held it out.
The years haven’t been kind, but—Grete adjusted the eyepatch, making sure it didn’t ride on her cheekbone—kinder than I deserve. She glanced out the grimy window to the alley below.
“Oh, Schatzi, is that scar bothering you again?” Cook dipped her finger into a tin of salve.
Grete shrunk back, wrinkling her nose.
Grandpa steered the hover-boat into a valley where salt and magic crackled around us, parting tall grass like waves in a sea. The clouds grew soupier, and I could feel the fish swarming overhead.
Decades ago, when enchantments slipped from the skies, the world had transformed. Suddenly, magic was real. And we could capture it.
Today was yet another day her curse might lift—and Iris couldn’t let it.
She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling as waves of Priam’s love reached out from his wing of her castle. His affection buffeted like a breeze, twining around her limbs—and tearing into her beast-curse, the curse that
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