I could do with a boy or a burrito.” I rubbed my belly, the silky material of the longsleeved tunic that I wore as a mini dress sliding under my fingers. Were TV shows and book covers to be believed, I’d stake out my prey with a sleek fall of hair, clad in head-totoe leather. […]
The world spun tighter on its axis when the Kovrovs came to visit. It took a lot of work to put on the necessary show—cleaning the house, planning the meal. Luke lingered in his room to avoid the chores and steel himself. Luke had two ties draped around his neck, the plain black one he […]
Graves had always freaked Scarlett out. Dead bodies trapped in boxes for all eternity and buried six feet under the ground. No. Thank. You. If Scarlett had any choice, she would be far away from the garden of the dead. But her mom now rested there in a cherry wood casket. It was mostly her […]
The journalists arrived before the coffin did. They gathered at the gate overnight and by dawn they were a crowd. By nine o’clock they were a swarm. It was near midday before Corvus Crow made the long walk from his front door to the tall iron rails keeping them at bay. “Chancellor Crow, will this […]
UNCLE WILLIAM HAD returned over an hour ago, yet he hadn’t summoned her. Sage sat at her desk in the schoolroom, trying not to fidget. Jonathan always fidgeted through her lessons, whether from boredom or resentment that she—a girl only a few years older—was his teacher. She didn’t care, but she wouldn’t give him a […]
Empress Yui wrestles with her broken zither. She’d rather deal with the tiger again. Or the demons. Or her uncle. Anything short of going north, anything short of war. But a snapped string? One cannot reason with a snapped string, nor can one chop it in half and be rid of the problem. When she […]
I DIDN’T KNOW HOW LONG I had been in the king’s prison. The days were all the same, except that as each one passed, I was dirtier than before. Every morning the light in the cell changed from the wavering orange of the lamp in the sconce outside my door to the dim but even […]
Alex reached up cautiously to touch the soft feathers on the side of the Thunderbird’s face. She cooed, pressing her head into his hand. “How am I supposed to ride you?” he asked her, picturing his ancestor Leander on the back of his warbird, Tempest. Thunderbirds could definitely be ridden, he knew that much, but […]
Yeah, I know. You guys are going to read about how I died in agony, and you’re going be like, ‘Wow! That sounds cool, Magnus! Can I die in agony, too?’ No. Just no. Don’t go jumping off any rooftops. Don’t run into the highway or set yourself on fire. It doesn’t work that way. […]
Here, now, dreams have no limit. The people of Syl Anagist have mastered the forces of matter and its composition; they have shaped life itself to fit their whims; they have so explored the mysteries of the sky that they’ve grown bored with it and turned their attention back toward the ground beneath their feet. […]
Staring at the sky in Bharata was like exchanging a secret. It felt private, like I had peered through the veil of a hundred worlds. When I looked up, I could imagine—for a moment—what the sky hid from everyone else. I could see where the winds yawned with silver lips and curled themselves to sleep. […]
He blew a short breath, frost gathering on the wavy glass instantly. Jaime scratched a small star in the ice formed from his exhalations, watching as the glass steadily frosted again in the trail left by his fingertip. Dawn was an hour off yet, the stars shone brightly overhead, and the herb garden just outside […]
PRISON WAS NOT like Call expected it to be. He had grown up with the crime shows on television, so he thought he was supposed to have a gruff roommate to show him the ropes and how to get really buff from lifting weights. He was supposed to hate the food and not start anything […]
K yra sat cross-legged in front of the fire, breathing in the incense and focusing on the door in her mind. It was a small door, growing smaller every day. Behind it lay the soul voices of humanity. Her gift. Her torment. The voices had once battered her mind, rendering her incapable of normal human […]
“TRY IT AGAIN, ” Percy told me. “This time with less dying.” Standing on the yardarm of the USS Constitution, looking down at Boston Harbor two hundred feet below, I wished I had the natural defenses of a turkey buzzard. Then I could projectile vomit on Percy Jackson and make him go away. The last […]
Hey. I don’t know you. I can’t guess who you might be. But I’m done with this Codex now, and I think it’s time I pass it on. Okay, I’ve written all over it. And . . . drawn all over it. But I think it’s better than a fresh clean Codex, because I’ve corrected […]
There were things Dillard Wayne Early Jr. dreaded more than the start of school at Forrestville High. Not many, but a few. Thinking about the future was one of them. Dill didn’t enjoy doing that. He didn’t much care for talking about religion with his mother. That never left him feeling happy or saved. He […]
Mirrors streamed past as she sailed by. In each, a vessel of the firebird, forgotten by time, but not by the firebird itself, called out to Echo. Some she remembered from dreams past; some were new. She recognized a Drakharin woman with white-blond hair in warrior braids who shouted, “Cha’laen” – the Drakhar word for […]
Once upon a time, before the whole world changed, it was possible to run away from home, disguise who you were, and fit into polite society. The children’s mother had done exactly that. Susanna was one of the Boston Owenses, a family so old that the General Society of Mayflower Descendants and the Daughters of […]
BRİDGER GRİPPED THE SLİCK METAL of the drainpipe and imagined the headline for the following day: Teenager Falls to His Death Attempting to Apply for a Job. It’s shocking, pathetic, and morbid—and plain sad—perfect for the people who still read newspapers. The obligatory paragraph about his life that accompanied the headline would be laughably short, […]
