Category: issue 4

The speedboat coasted through Tripoli harbor, running swift and quiet past the last indignant bastions of loyalist territory. Maryam huddled with her coded notes, diligent as ever, reviewing the file on our target. I leaned back in my cold plastic seat and watched my kindred stars as they stepped through the slow obedient constellations of their dance.

We didn’t know the Dark Lord would raise an army of the dead. We never thought the young prince could turn traitor. We’re menaced by ghost-wolves, stranded in an outpost on the cold edge of the world, and all signs say that we are, as our first-year Master of Field Operations Planning would say, “utterly fucked.”

Sen was the twenty-third Chosen One to save the world. She knew she would not be the last.

That night, as she shook out the laundry, Corinne got called in by her mam when the sun started tucking itself in behind the horizon, even though she was grown. “The rooks come out at dusk,” her mam said, the same warning she’d always given.