Hot wax seared Asiya’s nostrils as she knelt before the candlemaker. She touched her face to the dirt, then lifted her gaze. “Alnisa hakim.” Wise woman. “I come to you today to ask that my candle be restored.”
Asiya held out her cupped hands, revealing a candle stump. Its thin tallow was
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The official communication mirror flickered into life as I sat in the throne room reviewing correspondence with Prince Corduroy. I may be a princess, but I was also his employee.
“Corduroy,” boomed the Magic Administrator. The most powerful man in Afteria, he always spoke in bellows. “Your latest petition has caught our attention.”
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As I stepped into my apartment, the aroma of chocolate greeted me. I hung up my coat and shook the weariness from my shoulders, while my mouth watered from the fresh, chocolatey goodness wafting from my kitchen.
Like cookies. Gooey triple chocolate cookies I’d eaten at Grandma’s house when I was a little girl.
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I sit, enthroned in the branches of a mighty oak. Waiting…
Grandmother had warned us not to gather herbs in the woods. “Beware the wolf who hunts the forest for unsuspecting souls,” she would say.
That day, I forgot.
I should have known better, but I was drawn by a man more beautiful
Colors splashed behind the blind man’s eyes as he stumbled through a crowded marketplace. An eruption pulsing between blood red and pale blue shouldered past. A burst of yellow and brown darted in front. Kolzak swallowed down a wave of nausea, forcing himself not to collapse under the colors relentlessly smashing into his mind
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The king is dead.
I slump in my best dress on the pew at the back of the cathedral while the funeral bells toll overhead. Outside the church, villagers scream in protest at the leaving nobility, whose emotions stream behind them in trails of color. Amber irritation. Pale boredom. Sour, brown fear.
Of all the underground clubs in this sodden sponge of a city, it had to be that one.
I tugged my fedora lower over my brows, but it did little to block out the damp chill of the October night. My neck prickled as I surveyed the disturbing sight splayed out on the alley’s cracked asphalt.
I watch through frosted windowpanes as the alchemist rides into town.
His furs are damp with dew, his hands hidden but for his reddened fingers. He glances up at the orphanage, and the vision lashes my eyes like a pine branch.
A fat old man with dead eyes. A little black bottle
“You find them in the weirdest places,” Aida said to me.
She overturned a rock. A black and yellow-spotted salamander scampered beneath a nearby mossy log.
“I haven’t looked for salamanders since elementary school,” I said, getting ready to squat next to her. “I’m game.”
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Verdant rivers of life rushed from the mountaintop beneath Sayara, flowing around her. The currents carried her mind deeper until she touched a faint presence—a spark fighting for its life.
The familiar clicking of wood on stone disrupted her focus. She searched for the presence again—but nothing. What was it doing inside the mountain?
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Ávila de la Mora peered between the trees of Inverness Wood with a pigeon perched on her shoulder. “You’re sure this is the best entrance, Atlas?”
Yes, the pigeon cooed across their bond. The trinket is not far from here.
As soon as she crossed into the wood full of magical creatures and artifacts,
The blessed coffee cup is almost to my lips when the call comes.
“Linda, 10-91a. Fifth and Columbus.”
Carla. She’s one of the few cops open-minded enough to take me and my work seriously. 10-91a is the code for “stray animal.” In my case, though, it means something different. Carla leaves her mic on
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