“I survived only by luck,” the guest recalled. “The path had broadened just then – or else our attacker wouldn’t have been able to stand on it – and my horse reared in terror. It nearly tossed me into the… Continue reading

What a cold climb it had been, a purposeful caravan turned to a funeral procession of two. They had ridden in silence and, soon, in soaking rain that turned the dark to a stinging, hostile force, howling and lashing at… Continue reading

No one travelled by that road if their destination left them any other choice. Narrow and rocky, it deferred to every twist and ridge of the mountains it traversed, making it no shortcut to anywhere except a cold, lonely death.… Continue reading

It didn’t make sense. There had never been any danger in the manor – there had never been anything but her mistress’s will. A sanctuary as solid and suffocating as a stone coffin. The guest sitting with his dagger on… Continue reading

The man who stood outside, soaked by the rain Trina had heard only as distantly as the foyer’s clock, brushed his sodden hair and hat up and out of the way for a better look at her. A tall man,… Continue reading

Trina dusted the mantle as she did at the same time every day, with the same movements. Lifting the same trinkets for a quick left-to-right-and-back-again beneath them, willing herself to drop one of them, just to prove she could. Just… Continue reading

Knee-deep in the water, she looked back over her shoulder, and a wall of pitiless stares blocked her way to shore. Shining with moonlight, some few of them with tears, but for themselves, she knew, not for her. For having… Continue reading

He didn’t need to risk removing his glove for a sure diagnosis. The brickwork’s fever baked through the leather, radiating faintly against his face even at an arm’s-length distance. The light through untinted windows swam nonetheless in a sallow corona,… Continue reading