Category: issue 2

Warm breath tickled his nose, a rumbling carpet pressed against his mouth, and Martin tasted stale fur and icicles.

“Pay particular attention to the coffee service,” I said, pausing to hold my breath as my dress zipped itself. That had been a very tricky spell to get right. “We have the seating plan for the dinner, but who knows where they’ll sit in the drawing room. Keep an eye out for the coat-fetching spell as well. I reinforced it yesterday but I can’t be sure how it will stand up to this many guests.”

If I allowed color anywhere in my world it would have been in this sliver of a space—a galley kitchen in a tiny one-bedroom apartment full of beige carpet, white walls and white banker boxes. Perhaps it would have been safe to let the Honeycrisp apples tucked in the refrigerator crisper sit on the kitchen counter cradled in a sunlight yellow bowl.

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.