Pieces of We I hold your heart in my hands, and it is my own. A broken thing, fragmented and beautiful. A fiercely delicate, dangerously sharp work of art. It is an exquisite glass sculpture. A rich jewel of life and goodness and truth. It has been droppe...
My love is a fire. I am a beacon of light in the darkness. A flicker of safety and shelter. A torch that lights the hidden paths of despair and madness and ugly things we do not want to face alone. My glow chases away the demons and predators and things t...
The next morning was mild, if not as clear and sunny as the day before. Clouds hung in a haze over the sky, drab and dreary and promising cold and snow to come, but all in all it was a favorable day for the middle of a Dale winter. Rael was sitting agains...
In the late morning hours the sun shone bright and glorious on Trelling’s Rest. The overcast clouds of yesterday’s snowfall had fled in the face of a clear and temperate day, the sort of mild and cheerful day DarkFyre Dale rarely saw this deep into winter...
Wordless, Silmaria burst into motion, springing forward to dash down to her burning home. Or tried to, at least. Before she’d gone two strides, Lord Rael’s hand shot out and grabbed her by the wrist in a grip like steel. He yanked her back toward him and...
I don’t think I’d ever been so nervous in my life. I sat there on the padded bench in the hotel lobby, one of my legs bouncing restlessly over and over again as I tried not to fidget and failed miserably. My palms were sweating. I’d already wiped them off...
A light knock sounded on his door the next morning. Setting aside the remnants of his breakfast, Rael wiped his mouth before rising and answering the knock, half expecting it to be Silmaria. Selm stood on the other side of the door instead. His Halfling a...
When Silmaria came back to herself she was lying on a soft, large, comfortable bed. A bed that size should have been draped in silks and finery, but instead was covered in simple, practical sheets of cotton and a heavy, warm wool comforter. The glow of a...
The shop was claustrophobic. Despite the blustery cold outside, the room was oppressively hot. Four sooty wall sconces cast off a weak glow. The rest of the light came from two stone hearths in opposite corners of the room banked high with logs, radiating...
Rael sat at the long, ornate dinner table in the main dining hall with his long legs stretched out before him, leaning back in his chair as he rolled a small apple around in his hand. Selm, his whiskers newly trimmed and looking determined, watched him qu...
The key clinked into the lock, and I was already tired before it even finished turning. I opened the door to my apartment and lugged my workout bag with me. I ached everywhere and I needed a shower, and I was pretty sure I had the start of a black eye, wh...
Silmaria was on her hands and knees in the drawing room on the west side of the Manor, scrubbing at the wooden floor with a soapy rag. She was not particularly in the best of moods; some idiot had tracked dirt into the room, which was made all the worse b...
Rael still wasn’t sure he was making the right choice. He was torn between feeling he was abandoning his duty and honor, and the certainty that remaining here at the war camp meant it was only a matter of time before another assassination attempt came. He...
Master Edwin IronWing’s study smelled of oak and wood polish, and leather and old vellum. It was a spacious, open room. A huge window took up the north-facing wall, staring out over the planting fields to the north. In the distance the DrakeSpine Mountain...
"If ye can spare a moment, Milord, I'm ready to report." Rael looked up from a map covering the huge pinewood table in his tent. A variety of similar maps and charts were arrayed on the table and rolled into tubes propped against the desk. There were writ...
