The white dust of time-pulverized skulls eddies beneath my feet, bones long crumbled in the timeless centuries before ours, from eras even before our undying king was born.
Gaudy sunbeams dig intrusive fingers between the bars of my cell, the light accompanied by sand and sound. The wind is carrying the click-clack of talons on flagstones, the beating of wings, and the stench of the king’s rotting ex-lovers.
Outside, vulture beaks strip meat off carcasses, corpses discarded more like kitchen scraps than human remains.
I don’t think of my imminent death, though, nor of escape, but of you.
I shouldn’t, of course. The way my heart beats when your name creeps around its perimeter tells me that I am not as invulnerable to you as I would like, that I am not impervious to your call, your whisper, or anything you offer.
If only you had knocked, I might have opened.
But you crept through the window.
Why did I even bother locking the door?
Assassins, after all, don’t need doors to get in.
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Never bargain with a man clad in unknown intentions. (Unless one is quite desperate.)
Poppet is desperate. Her mother eternally sleeps. Her father eternally weeps. And Poppet herself must perch on a strict little chair every day and feed them both to keep them alive.
She’s at the point where she would even welcome a villain to alleviate the dire tedium of her life.
And then.
A tormented stranger breaches her castle walls and offers her one of her dreams.
For one day, he will lift her out of her pit of loneliness.
If only he hadn’t turned her father’s endless tears to endless blood, Poppet might even trust him…
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Sydney, Australia: a young woman with a family secret becomes entangled with an enigmatic stranger.
He was brooding and beautiful and… she was intrigued by the grief which spread from his eyes to the space around him, held up by his music. The music pierced Em’s heart, though she couldn’t understand the words…
An Inheritance by E.H. D’Urbin
In a South African asylum, a cursed creature sings hope to a grieving woman.
Sometime after midnight, the storm that had raged during my arrival blew over and the moon bathed the garden in silver beams of light. I awakened, drenched in sweat… to find a shadow lingering right outside my window…
From the Ashes by MS Weaver
In the old-world charm of Orlando, Florida, an enchantress’s fiancé becomes something else after dark…
His smile was slow to spread, like a viscous puddle of blood. “Hello, Julia. Pleasure to meet you, at long last.”
I Love You After Dark by Taryn Moreau
Out at sea, after the fog descends, a newly wedded wife senses something watching her.
Something in the water.
Something that knows her secrets.
I loved our wedding day. As I came to love him, despite the lies…
The Cracked Compass by Beth Green
In a country between the cracks of existence, a young woman’s imprisoned inhuman lover summons her into peril.
Once upon a time, you were scarred and pitted and you walked crooked and I loved you.
Unbeautiful Corners
In an abandoned Texas hotel, an intrepid ghost-girl from the 1920s and a stubborn boy from the present day wage an epic battle of wills.
It wasn’t being dead that bothered Audrey so much. It was that the constant sameness of every day was just so boring.
A Fool For You by Nicole Herron & Renee Edwards
After the stage lights go dark in North Carolina, and rich soil sifts over buried secrets, love still thrives.
She woke to a dark figure looking down at her… two eyes, dark and round as hollows… a thin, wide mouth and the suggestion of a nose. A spill of shadows resolved into trailing hair over a knobble-jointed body.
Whoever this was wasn’t human…
The Wind Chimes by Katherine Traylor
In rural New York, an orphan prey to strange dreams encounters a creature of storybook nightmares.
Wings protruded from the gargoyle’s back, each tipped with a sharp talon that promised agony should one pierce its prey…
Stone and Hellfire by Lynn Rush
In the streets of medieval Tallinn, Death and Fate wreak havoc in the life of a starving artist.
“Kiss me.”
The shouts from the market, the wind rattling the windowpanes, the whole outside world stopped as Agnes stood up on tiptoes, looking at him as if he were the only person in the world.
The Dance of Death by Sky Sommers
In labyrinthine Prague, a lonely woman makes a lover from a scrap of soul.
“Don’t you trust me?”
Samorost by Sonya Lano
Come, dear mortal, enter without fear.
(I promise it’ll end happily for those who dare…)
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Cousin Ebermeisters can’t be trusted. Neither can five-headed trolls (sly things; always keeping secrets). Neither can princes.
Especially not princes.
In fact, for ex-princess Nikaela, all men are undeniably, unquestionably, indisputably, absolutely, without a doubt and with no exceptions bad news.
That’s why she and her ex-princess friend Saige have a nice little swindle going where they fleece unsuspecting noblemen of their pocket change at royal balls. It’s not exactly a lucrative line of business, but it pays the bills.
At least it pays the bills until Saige (not the sharpest eel in the barrel) chooses the wrong man to cross, and she and Nikaela wind up cursed…
As if that wasn’t bad enough, an unwanted suitor with a head full of chivalrous nonsense and a mind to win Nikaela’s heart chooses that inopportune moment to step back into her life.
And as if THAT wasn’t bad enough, a dragon and a would-be hero sweep into Saige’s life.
And as if that STILL wasn’t bad enough, the untrustworthy men in their lives are about to turn each girl’s well-ordered opinion of the world on its head.
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Sonya Lano 