“I pursued my enemies and overtook them; I did not turn back until they were destroyed.” The absence of my lord from me, from my bed, from my daily presence, is like a chill of deepest winter that will not leave me. It is wrong to be without him now, when I should be swelling with new life as all of nature is. The grass and the corn are springing green. The lambs are born and suckling, and the orchard bees are busy with the blossom, assuring us of fruit to come.

Set in the same thrilling world as Genoveva Dimova's The Witch's Compendium of Monsters series, “Ace Up Her Sleeve” is a standalone, spoiler-free story featuring the fire witch Kosara, who must match wits with the Tsar of Monsters in a high-stakes card game that is equal parts magic, skill, and subterfuge . . .

The Poet Laureate was fetched from his retirement in a lighthouse on the far shore of the Founder Mer to compose a song of eighty-six interlocked stanzas like steps on a stairway spiraling down into a cool dim quiet. But on the forty-seventh stanza of its recitation, the Governor squinted into the space over the Poet's shoulder and said, "listen, any deeper and we shall hear the words those beasts sing as they pass" and demanded that the previous stanzas be read in reverse; "back to the surface," he said.

On the island of Manhattan, there’s a building out of time. I can’t tell you where it is, exactly. It has an address, of course, as all buildings do, but that wouldn’t mean anything to you. What I can tell you is that the building is called The Oakmont.

Rugg was ready to turn back and try to make Ganvill when a bright dot of light appeared through the churning murk of the storm: a campfire. Never trust a light too bright in a dark hole, the speaking goes, but then he smelled roasting meat. And then he heard the flute. A sweet, sad little song, a flutter of music. Bone flutes had a tone distinct from those carved of wood or reed; lonelier, somehow. A sweet breath of music sighing out to the wild.