Zee lives with her father in a windup world. Bored with her life, she decides to visit the carnival. She meets a boy, and things go from there.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
BCS
134 free-to-read stories from BCS
Even the ghosts have abandoned the ruins of the space station once known as the City of High Bells. All but the faithful temple cat, who sees a starship reenter the system after many long years.
Content warnings 4
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar
Until a visiting starship arrived, the other mermaids thought Essarala was silly for wanting to explore the galaxy.
Content warnings 1
death
Baekdo, a fox who wants to become human, needs one more kill to achieve his goal. A collapsing city in the middle of a civil war seems like a good place to do it but there are complications.
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
Thuy seeks her daughter's remains in the twisted parts of unreal space where salvagers pick over the remains of wrecked starships.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
In which we learn how an over-enthusiastic chef inadvertently brought about the end of the war.
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
"Once, in a certain kingdom, at a certain time, a river flowed under a bridge. It flowed under a bridge and past a willow tree, and in that willow tree dwelled the spirit of a girl who had drowned. I dwelled in that willow tree, and I was content."
Content warnings 1
death
"Upon my return to the village, it was my husband, Adamet, who took me gently by the arm and guided me across the docks spanning our marshes until we reached the preburial cottage overlooking the sound. We stood side by side in the shadows of the cottage,...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Rugg the spellbreaker was only passing through the Devil’s Palm on his way down to the coast, where he hoped to find his mother. He’d have avoided Ganvill, except he was running low on boom powder and salt, and the little settlement was the last tame...
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
"At the center of every starship was a bonsai starship. It rested in the starship’s command garden and provided the magic that propelled it. Novice Kei had known this longer than she had known her own name, especially since she was the eighth Kei who...
"He could hear her voice more clearly now, as though the notepad were merely a synchronizing gear between the two minds caught in his head. She sounded sick and frightened and tired—like a young woman trapped alone in a strange place, not like a witch...
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In an empire obsessed with war, a healer married to a warrior seeks to escape the endless fighting, killing, and dying.
Content warnings 4
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar
On a cold October midnight, teenage Susanna takes her dog and a musket and sneaks away into the woods. Things happened ten years ago when she got the dog. Bad things. And now the reckoning is due.
Content warnings 3
animal-harmchild-deathviolence
Constantius, a con man on the run from the law, arrives in Sempa on business of his own, but lets himself get tangled up in the problems of a girl he met on his way into town.
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
When Reyna kills a rot hound, she knows her dead sister’s prophecy is coming true, and there’s not much time to convince the rest of the hold they all need to flee.
Content warnings 4
deathslaveryviolencewar
Raised by her grandmothers, Aviya thinks about her future, and thinks about trying to find the source of a magical scrap of "cloth of the wind."
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Tarma had only just begun the Widow Fenton’s flax when the Shadow Undying rose once more. At first she thought that the shutter on the upper window must have come unwedged, since the light shouldn’t have failed so early in the day. But the unholy chanting...
Content warnings 1
death
"Kwayask nātohta. Listen carefully. There once was a woman who sewed clothes so powerful they made you become the person you needed to be. Children’s feet wrapped in her flower-beaded moccasins never stumbled. Otipēyimisowak orators, backs held straight by...
"Modern bodies are made in large quantities. Factories line the edge of the Fissure Basin. Workers scoop sand and mud into large churning vats, feeding extruders that empty into molds in the standard shapes. Factory supervisors smooth out imperfections and...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"I don’t want to say goodbye, but with dawn brushing Ri’s warm forehead, I can’t help kneeling by her bed and saying, “Wake up, darlin, Ma’s going out.” Jer’s look asks why I’d ever do anything different, and why’d we have that whole fight about it last...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
When the Demon of the North takes her father, young Claudette teams up with a university professor to hunt it down and kill it.
Teenage Jack, the cook’s boy, and Roderick, Lord Robert’s son, are unlikely but unshakable friends, even when Roderick has to marry a grown woman. Even when Jack has to venture to elf-land to rescue them.
The night watchman was warned not to look at the imprisoned witch, Kalmashi, but it was hard not to, and now he’s having strange dreams.
Content warnings 2
deathwar
When the Dynast dies, his daughter Lin flees before her older siblings can kill her. She has a place of safety in mind, but she’s never been there herself and needs help to get in.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
The story of how Belezal, a war refugee in Khalem managed to escape to a better country and how he came to terms with having lost not one but two homelands.
Jorren gets a dangerous commission for magical clothes. One that might let her recover much of what she lost when she fell out of favor decades ago, but only if she can figure it out. And survive it.
Serving good food is always a challenge, but it’s even harder when your restaurant has to cater to dead people as well as live ones.
Content warnings 1
violence
Attacked by endless flocks of ravens, the Bjebu people flee their village to a strange place controlled by a strange god, who grants them safety in exchange for “three offerings of sorrow.”
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
As a composer, D’Isle knows that the Bloodlords tightly control music because it can attract demons from the forest. He’s alarmed when his new prima donna starts improvising illegally.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Mara has made a deal with a scavenger girl to help her rescue her best friend, who left the underground habitat to try to talk to the aliens and never came back.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Action, Adventure, Tragedy, Victory—with Lots of Cats.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Ancient nanotech controls a few humans to enforce harsh anti-technology rules on a reluctant population. Colton escaped its control at the cost of losing all emotion, and he struggles to be accepted by a caravan that’s trying to evade some of the restrictions.
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
The Life Tree protects the villagers, at the price of human sacrifices. When it takes Jiteh’s brother, she starts looking for ways to escape.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath
"It was perhaps inevitable you would arrive at the Goblin Library. You begin your walk at the open window of the Goblin Reading Room where your grappling hook bit the sandstone windowsill. Cries of alarm and dismay follow you up from the streets below, yet...
Content warnings 1
death
"After we kill our father but before we leave the island, we argue. Cal doesn’t want to go; he’s afraid of the water. Even after the rest of us outvote him two to one, he refuses to move, crouching on the ground, pressing the ruined side of his face into...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
"Your payment first. The Badchen Yankel is too aged, too well-traveled, and too experienced to extend credit to an audience. Now pinch your lips and listen. It was the year of their lord 1618, and we’re two days outside Grodne when we run into the demons....
"We were waiting for the sunset, sitting on the porch of the bleak stone house that was filled up with our longing. The sky was empty. The air, when I sniffed, was cold and bleak. There were no clouds, and we knew it might be a night when we’d see what we...
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-onesuicidewar
"The fireflies lead me to the clearing where my lover waits patiently. I can see her illuminated by the light of the moon. She stands under the udala tree, an image of perfection, her dark skin glowing in the silvery moonlight. The warmth of excitement...
Content warnings 1
violence
"Our storytellers sing that the Great River Gimamu brought life to the world when the gods first stepped out of it. But when I saw the ships that morning, I knew that it also brought death. As I sat at my stall, weaving the final threads of a new basket, I...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"His Majesty plights his troth to the boy by the failing light of the waxing Luster Moon, an auspicious night for waterfowl, prayer, and paladins. Wrong, all of it. Child-groom Softwind Sunder is hellebore and winter sun, plantcraft and rage. When he spits...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Herein is the account of the evening the crew of the Forever Trying invited the Grand Faerie Lord of Vast Space and Its Great Mysteries into our home. I, Felix, Chronicler of the ship, endeavor to capture a true and accurate record of transpired events on...
"The first time I saw her, she stood in the arch of the gate, a black spindle against the open stretch of road. I looked up from where I was kneeling in the garden and couldn’t look away. Head to toe in black, her face veiled. The air smelled like new...
"The first thing I asked, when the mage-king gave me a mouth, was whether he had given me a soul. His people’s beloved king, who held back the lords of the undead when they came roving; by whose conquering hand the strongholds were fed in the long fallow...
Content warnings 3
abusedeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violence
"There had to be other islands capable of supporting human settlements, Alain told himself. Life should be possible beyond the shores of Heora. That was the article of faith that drove all Exploration. They simply haven't sailed far enough to find a new...
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
"I was told I must swear fealty to William the Bastard. He had taken England, made himself king, fealty was required. But I did not swear and none could make me. He could kill me, or rather order his men to kill me. But he would not, because he wanted to...
Content warnings 1
violence
"Commander Maeb Len knows that, more than anything, an army needs hope in order to struggle onward. They need a vision to fight for and faith that the future will be better than the past. Better than the present. The People’s Army itself is one such hope....
Content warnings 2
deathwar
"A pause only Winnifletch herself notices, a twinge in her guts as she unsacks the gull that Gert Mews has lugged to her sea-spindle shack. Dazed but not dead, the bird crawks down onto her workbench. Think of shearwater honey, Winni tells herself, with...
Content warnings 1
animal-harm
Two lovers in academia exchange letters ostensibly about newly discovered rodents, but it quickly becomes clear there’s more than meets the eye.
In 19th-Century Texas, a German immigrant mother defends her farm and family (in the absence of her husband and eldest son) against a vicious wolf as well as some of the local townspeople.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onegore
Laema joins the Pirate Queen’s voyage to the south pole but secretly plots to assassinate her.
Content warnings 1
death
The Augur can tell your future just by studying the skin on your body. His prophecies are detailed, and he’s only been wrong once. But when he raises an orphan girl, he’s bothered that she wants to follow in his footsteps.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Now, dry and dead, the gardens sulk in the center of the city; not our pride, but our shame. Now the beds and planters are dry with dust, the carvings are chipped away for lime, the paths are run only by rats and ragged dogs. Now it is a place where no...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Anell takes a job with a great house researching immortality, but she secretly works on her own research involving reproduction.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
In a hostile, ruined Earth, a teenage girl struggles with the consequences of the death of her twin sister.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In the aftermath of the king’s assassination, the guard commander and high mage struggle to discover who was behind it and what to do about it.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
They say that when women throw themselves into the sea, they turn into seals. Teen-age Louise, dying of tuberculosis, finds a magical seal skin that turns her into a new person. Then the owner shows up.
Content warnings 3
abusesuicideviolence
Zayred and Meiri used to be close friends and powerful magicians who could win battles through singing, but now they’re devoted to destroying each other’s reputation.
Content warnings 2
deathwar
Jared has almost brought the princess to safety, but he worries that Kat, the crazy women who accompanies them, might have betrayed them.
Content warnings 2
sexual-violenceviolence
From childhood, Flora, painted disturbing paintings, and her nurse fears the young lady carried this obsession into adulthood.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"They are travelling in the great dark before them nothing behind them stars just the two of them the man that captains and the ship that sails darts flies through space —whoever said space is empty did not know what they were talking about space is full...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorsexual-content
"Sing. Sing the world into being. The world’s misty valleys and sunlit hills are described by the song of all things. So is the work of skilled hands and the begrudging march of soldiers’ boots. Every action, every object, in the past and the present and...
Content warnings 1
violence
"I was so excited to be working on the locomotives I’d loved since childhood. I’d been given an opportunity no one else in the valley had ever received. But suddenly I understood the conflicting emotions of pride and worry I’d seen in my parents. I trusted...
Content warnings 2
child-deathviolence
"Blackheel Lysha put down a fine table of grub for breakfast: pinky beans, cornbread, boiled shellbird eggs, roast marsh hen legs, and a gooey gumbo of okra and sweetcrab. And what a nice longhouse too, with rare glass windows to keep all the nasty sooty...
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
"You ever love a place more than people? Mama Patch’s house held me and all my running and snooping without ever forcing me to slow down or stay put. I could run from the rafters down the bang-bang spiral case, then sideways through the six rooms of...
Content warnings 3
homophobiasexual-violenceviolence
"The first time Knucklebone tried to kill himself, he’d already been dead for one hundred and thirteen years. He’d died in a workplace accident, which meant it was within their legal rights for the Cogsmith Railroad Company to bind his soul to his...
Content warnings 3
suicideviolencewar
"The first time through this cycle, Devaki does not believe he will go through with it. Kasma is her brother, after all, and for all his fears, he didn’t kill her when he had the chance. So as her baby grows inside her, the first fruit of her marriage to...
Content warnings 3
child-deathpregnancy-losssuicide
"The angel Azrael rode the dead horse across a broken plain that went on so long he lost track of the days. The empty heavens gave him no clues, for the sun seemed to linger just beyond the horizon without actually making an appearance. As if it were as...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
"What lies beyond the Sea of Beasts is known to few, for few are foolish enough to try and cross it. This is not because of the beasts, which all died so long ago their bones have turned to stone, but because it is ghastly. Most of the fish are spiny and...
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
"Good stone, like water, wrought truce by necessity. Here, the river became a waterfall and ate the earth like honeycomb. Here, teardrops of flint washed up at a stone knapper’s feet. Bands of every people in the vastness of the world came for the stone....
Content warnings 3
animal-harmgoreviolence
"I was no friend to the god of high places, of peaks and spires and rope bridges over narrow canyons, and I had no reason to expect that he was a friend of mine. But my mother kept asking, what could it hurt to ask for his favor. What could it hurt to try....
"Good morning, Akasma.” I say these words to my spaceship every day, whether it is a good morning or not, because she is the only being I can safely talk to, and she has said she likes my voice, froggy and raspy though it may be. My spaceship is not, for...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"When Ariana sent word to her birth mother, Scarlett, that they needed to speak, she didn’t really expect a response. Scarlett had abandoned her with her father as a barely weaned infant and only returned when Ariana was twenty. In the few years since,...
Content warnings 1
violence
"Terse heard the disturbance in the woods long before the short, sturdy girl shoved through the overgrown hedge. He flung open the door of his workshop, and she startled, nearly dropping a large knapsack dangling off of one shoulder. “Can I help you?”...
Content warnings 1
violence
"My sister Angélique found me on a warm spring night. She was not looking for me but for a doctor who could treat women ridden by hags. (Such creatures were properly called soucouyants, but the printers took such liberties with the spelling in my weekly...
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
"I knew a woman once who lived in Palmary on the Sunwash Sea. Or did I ever really know her? You see, in the time I spent with her, I came to question what I thought I knew about women and everything else—and that’s a strange thing for a man who’s...
Content warnings 1
suicide
"The angel Azrael rode the dead horse across the empty lifeless land for what seemed like an eternity, not encountering another living soul until he crossed paths with a mutilated preacher, who erupted from the a great rent in the earth as though Hell...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
"I realized I was in love with Ivor the day he went up the mountain to speak with the goddess. We were at that age when the affectionate ease of childhood tips over into something different, when every touch could be the casual brush of friendship or...
Content warnings 1
death
"Nogorod is built of black rock and dull iron and pale ivory, a city of high towers rising like petrified trees beside the rough grey seas. The common folk are whale-fishers, hunting with harpoons from their ships, but the nobles are all wizards, and they...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"It is the shared birthday of the isle of Barradwyth. As a gift, Cyfris has promised his granddaughter Cydovan the one story he has never told her. They are sitting on the balcony of their home on Barradwyth Station, overlooking a street paved with mosaic...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"When my lover gets the Burning, I prepare to go to the Binding Place, where the mountain meets the sea. Even in her delirium, she smells the offering meal cooking and sees my half-full pack. She begs me not to go. It’s a journey lovers and pilgrims...
"The entire time they were walking towards the Dragon Stairs, Giền said nothing. She merely changed shape in Thanh Lan’s arms—not growing heavier and heavier, which Thanh Lan could have understood, but by turns lighter and heavier, her shape shimmering...
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
"That dying anchor said some mysterious ‘he’ was looking for her. Chakatie tried to think of who that could be. When she’d been an anchor in charge of her own land, she’d thought she’d been even-handed. But traveling with the day-fellows had revealed to...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"We cannot go landwise. Too vulnerable for a start, and the finless watch their beaches like crabs, scuttling this way and that, their eyes pinched and ugly. They have set a line of posts on the edge of the world, deep in the sands. Each spike bears the...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"It’s late morning when Syenok catches the worrying tang of blood on the wind. There, then gone again before she can confirm it. Still, in the wasted lands, blood is not a scent you ignore. Not if you want to survive. “Hold,” she says, cautiously reining...
Content warnings 1
violence
"It’s a pretty near thing, Nicolette. A pretty near thing.” Cédric mumbled to a bare skull in an alcove, the half-dead candle encrusting its forehead giving off barely enough light to fill the corner of the old storeroom. The skull was not Nicolette’s;...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"During the unbearable years of tyranny, the political prisoners of the Anchorite Hegemony made a solemn covenant: when the time came, they would cross the last miles to freedom on their feet. For reasons of youth and idiocy, Tishrel thought he would have...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"She was different. She was distinguished by the oracles. She spoke to the gods, who descended on her in disorienting, frightening fits that made her vision blank out and caused her to fall down. As God’s Wife of Amun she had been closer to the gods than...
"Pick me up, girl. I’m such a pretty, delicate thing, hidden behind the gondola’s cushion. You feel me before you see me: the soft velvet of the cushions suddenly replaced by the roughness of my lace and the cool touch of my silk. Your fingers are smooth...
"Lamia burst like a shattered glass into the scream and scouring heat of desert wind, loosing the power that had lived in her ever since she had returned from the Refiner of the Desert. Her fire lashed across the wide plaza atop the Spire where she had...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"The ghosts the hollow-eyed girl in Junction Square was selling billowed from her basket in wispy ribbons, whipping and fluttering in wind I could not feel, their tantalizing snap and shudder of cloth lighter than air, heavier than sorrow. I saw her from...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
"The song begins like this: “Once there was a fishgirl who sacrificed her heart and life and voice for a prince, and her reward was a path to heaven.” All those stories, about fishgirls yearning for legs... Are human storytellers really so arrogant,...
Content warnings 2
suicideviolence
"When the messenger arrived at my Kamakura estate, I knew he wasn’t human, and that meant trouble. I read the letter three times, as if repetition would lead to better understanding. Foolish of me, as Lady Kuzunoha’s direct nature would not allow for...
"It was an inauspicious beginning to my mission to find the deathmage and bring her to the capital. I found her exactly where the Mandate said I would: at a tavern table, in one of the northern work camps, wasted drunk. Her long black curls, laced with...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"But think—if we succeed, I’ll acquire a whole boxful of memories. Big, jewel-like memories whose sharp edges will tear my master’s world around me like old silk. I’ll escape. Eat a whole orange rather than a mere pip. Oranges are bright, like the sun. Do...
Mir’s mission to deliver codebooks gets complicated when she realizes she’s being followed—and followed by more than one person at that.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"We learn to live without sweet berry jam, cabbage cooked with apples, and wine. We train ourselves not to miss the flowers, and we toe the line. We always toe the line. When the soldiers ransack our homes, collecting any purple item of clothing, we hand...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Olive’s life changes when her hated little sister’s red wings become visible in her chrysalis, and everyone knows she’ll be the new queen when she emerges.
When Astrill finds a cat-like alien attached to the outside of their spaceship, things get complicated for him and the other smugglers, and the more they learn about their visitor, the worse it gets.
"They’d built a new Vault of Potions after the flood—of course they’d had to, with the thaumatically cursed mess that had become of the old one. Still, it made me twitch and reach for my wand, walking along the familiar tree-lined quad and hearing the...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Deff and his team hunt the countryside for illegal Heroes, whom they kill and then sell the body parts. Something truly terrible happened with these “Heroes” in the recent past, and it’s not entirely done.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Six years ago, after the slaughter of anchors by Frere-Jones, Alexnya was made the new anchor, but now the grains have decided to try her for Frere-Jones’s actions—even though she had nothing to do with it.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Madam Grey sells life insurance to the young men recruited by the Empire to fight in the Grass War. The war goes badly, but she has a chance to end it—at great cost.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Benedetto makes his living running a calligramancy shop, where he makes magic via writing. Today, he snapped, closed the shop, and started an elaborate spell of unknown purpose.
Content warnings 1
child-death
The village people suffer from the Duke’s construction of the big tower, and even thought the villagers disapprove of her, old Gert can’t help doing things for the little children who come to her for aid.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
The narrator paints the best portraits, and her work commands the highest prices. But she needs a lot of money, and she puts her work to a darker purpose.
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
Two selkie women, childhood friends who’ve drifted apart, get together for an adventure in an abandoned human mine.
The godling of Town H sits in her office, depressed because with the bankruptcy of the company, her town is almost dead. But she has to rouse herself because something is attacking the town, and her people need her.
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
Bretchen wants to be a witch, but she doesn’t know how to go about it. Her grandmother has some ideas, but her mom sends her to learn knitting instead.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
A nobleman offers Navid’s family a vast fortune if they’ll make him a magic coat more powerful than anything they’ve ever made, and in the span of a single month. It will change their lives, one way or the other.
Lukas has grown rich selling his magic wish-fulfillment tea, but he’s dissatisfied, and his wife is looking elsewhere. Two young people come into their lives and everything changes.
Content warnings 2
sexual-contentslavery
When teenage Guerre is called to be a cropsinger, she makes a big sacrifice to serve her family and community, but her brother refuses to accept it.
Content warnings 1
death
They say the mountain women have “unnatural habits” so when Katrin falls in love with a lowland man, no good can come of it.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
When the young magistrate arrives at his remote posting, he sees that some of the villagers are amazingly strong, and he decides to learn how to make the magic potion that makes them so.
Content warnings 1
violence
Rielle accepts an offer from her husband’s rival to play accompaniment for his daughter in a competition. They need the money, but there’s something too perfect about this daughter.
Lia’s mother wants her to dress like a lady, but their city is about to fall to the enemy, and what they really need to do is flee.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
When an unkillable black crow haunts the princess, Wynn goes beyond the kingdom to find the only weapon that can destroy it.
Content warnings 1
death
Thread, Rina, and Aakash have a mission to capture and kill a girl who has illegally acquired magic. Thread has second thoughts though.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Viorica attempts to steal the famed Şiret Mask from Codruţ, brother of her dear friend. There are lots of complications, not least of which that Codruţ expects someone to try to take it.
In Elizabethan London, an entrepreneur skilled in identifying legitimate antiquities ends up with a bottle that happens to have a demon in it.
"She rose, feeling the aches where the dead had touched her, and gathered him in her arms. She’d hold him tighter this time. Oh, he’d fight her all the way, but they could get back on their way to the isle and the elf-king, and it would be over at last."
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"I watch the King sleep beside me and worry over the rapid movements behind her eyelids. The air in the bedroom smells faintly of something burning. My mouth is dry—I wet my lips and hold my breath so as not to disturb my King’s sleep. I can hardly see the...
Content warnings 1
death
"The angel Azrael rode the dead horse across the broken land under the light of a half moon until he came across a graveyard that seemed to have no end. Wooden crosses stretched away to the horizon, more than he could count. Many of the crosses were bent...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"I remember the night I became a ghost. My husband, the Emperor, served the tainted tea himself; my punishment for giving him yet another girl-child. I was not the first Empress to drink from this cup. My newborn daughter lay on my bed, wailing. The...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Not so very long ago but before you were born, an idle lordling went riding through one of the great forests that sweep across the Isles. You may guess which forest, and which man, but I will not tell you. ... None of the stories his mother had told him...
"The ferryman’d had a poor, cold day, is how it starts. There’s other ways to start this one, but this time, we’ll start with the ferryman. It was shadows-eve, the coldest, longest night of the year, when the blackbird breathes all over the world. He’d...
Content warnings 3
child-deathracismviolence
"Right,” I said. “Well, it’s a letter to the parents of the girl I love with all my heart and soul, telling them how I’ve just watched their daughter being dragged away screaming by soldiers and loaded on a ship to be taken as a sacrifice to the Black...
Content warnings 1
violence
Don Jacinto flees when he gets a letter from his crazy brother, not wanting to get involved in his quest to wake a supposed sleeping god.
Content warnings 3
goreviolencewar
After war destroys their homeland, the Butterfly People come to Ksmal as refugees. They’re welcome, but only if they assimilate, and not everyone is happy with that.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onewar
"Really, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Shamans drag away poor farm girls from the outlying provinces all the time (particularly in seasons of great calamity, as everyone insists we are in now). Even then their lives stray little from their...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Young Mira has a gift: gemstones sing to her. She wants to use it to help her family, so she leaps at the chance to join a young man who’s hunting for a long-lost ruby mine.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Jing and her father climb a mountain to find and kill a Snake-Devil that has been killing people and goats, but she’s not exactly what they expected.
Pan Bao, his daughter Jing, and their snake-devil friend, Mei Li, encounter a ghost who needs help. They usually expect to be paid for their sorcery, but the ghost is very persistent.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
Tamalat has come to a priest to find out how to restore her friend Brio's shadow, in the hopes it will restore him to what he once was.
Content warnings 2
suicideviolence
A young American in the early 20th Century visits a remote principality and is shocked at their notion of justice.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence