Category: issue 2

The package promised “a different you in five shades!” Candice had bought it on a stupid whim. A month ago, she would’ve been more likely to wear clown makeup than lip gloss. But to win Audrey’s heart, she’d convinced herself she needed a perfectly painted smile.

This is what happens when you have pirates in the family: you end up inheriting all kinds of junk when they die.

It’s only part-time—you can always quit if you don’t like it. That’s what you told yourself when you were hired, and that’s what you tell your friends, too, when you meet down at the pub to buy them all drinks, for once, because apparently the Dark Lord pays on time and by direct deposit. Which, honestly, is more than you can say for your last couple jobs.

Princess Severna, in her personal preparations for the Kingmaker Hunt, discovered the pleasures of raw meat. First gobbets of beef from the kitchens, barely seared over flames; then larger hunks, carefully cut, raw and dripping. Soon she grew used to blood’s heavy, coppery tang, and she would run to the returning hunters, greedy for their latest kill, heedless of the mud that gathered on her slippers.