Havok Publishing

Tag - curses

S2 Fantasy Friday featured image (season 2)

Let Them Eat Cake

Apparently, poison tasted like cake. The M.A’s—aka Master Assassin’s—butler hovered over my shoulder as I stared down at the remaining crumbs. After I enjoyed every bite of the slice of cake, the butler victoriously announced he’d poisoned it.
What an idiot, a shrill airy voice whispered straight into my mind.

Read it now
S2 Fantasy Friday featured image (season 2)

Sticky-Fingered Sailor

“Thief!”
Esme stormed across the weathered floorboards of her seaside shop. Displays of enchanted sea-glass and metal pendants swung in the wake of her temper, clinking like warning chimes.
Jack froze, his hand half-in, half-out of the small wooden chest that usually stayed beneath the counter, away from customers’ curious gazes.

Read it now
S2 Wacky Wednesday featured image (season 2)

Midas’ Heir

Mind, there’s nothing inherently surprising about finding a drunken old man in the royal garden. I just never expected to see one eating Grandpa’s roses. Horribly undignified behavior for the most respectable house in Phrygia. I leaned over my balcony rail, fumbling through my mental lexicon for the appropriate words to address this situation.

Read it now

The Ship In The Bottle

She’d heard of a ship in a bottle.
But a ship caught in a storm and trapped in a bottle—that one was new.
Sitting at the counter, Deidra studied the strange bottle—more of a jar, really—and the little storm thundering and pouring down rain above it. Frantic men the size of ants

Read it now
S2 Thriller Thursday featured image (season 2)

Burial

The king was broken in pieces.
Ezahtira shouldn’t have been surprised. Ever since the gods punished the kings for their corruption, the nation of Cadmar had suffered the Two-Taloned Curse. The First Talon turned each king into a stone-like substance at death, after which he would crumble.

Read it now

The Day My Sorrows Sang

I clenched the fistful of grass while trying to ignore how my hands now appeared. My feet ached as I trudged up the desolate path, but a worse anguish lodged in my heart, threatening to overflow.
A few places in the kingdom might offer me refuge, yet here I was, heading to the one place I’d never be welcome.

Read it now

Gilded Finality

As I finish the preparations to remove the sweet child I had raised, my eye catches on the glinting of the crown. I want to smash it. If he hadn’t been royal, he’d be alive. The crown seems to agree—if I didn’t know better, I’d say it was weeping.

Read it now

The Curse of Jasper Throe

“You’ve got to be pulling my ever-loving, god-forsaken tail.” Jasper Throe grumbled upon seeing the Gray Book. He unceremoniously plopped down the groceries.
The apples were going to be awfully bruised.
This vellum-covered grimoire had the audacity to splay itself on his kitchen counter as though it were a cookbook.

Read it now

Theosis

They couldn’t execute my second son because I couldn’t conceive him.

I burned for a second son. I burned like my first son had burned on his pyre: head tilted towards the sky, mouth open and gasping for air, neck tendons standing out like cords as the fire licked his skin and devoured his heart.

Read it now

The Elusive Serpent

I’m not seasick—I live on this ship, so you can bet I’ve got my sea legs—but the old hag I stole the chalice from at New Providence must have been a witch. Her nasty shout as I ran made me smirk, but… I’m turning green. She must have cursed me!

Read it now