0 Comments
0 Shares
0 Views
0 Reviews
Directory
Discover new ideas, create new connections and make new friends
-
Please log in to like, share and comment!
-
The Faded BouquetChapter One My hands were shaking so badly that the screwdriver slipped twice before it caught the head of the rusted bolt, and by then the smell of the damp plaster and the old, sweet rot of the wood had settled into the back of my throat, making me gag. I was thirty-four years old, and I was perched on the top rung of a ladder that groaned like a dying mule, trying to hold up the chandelier...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Faded QuadrantAct I I remember the weight of the pen before I remember the sound of the door, a heaviness that seemed to drain the strength from my wrist and leave my fingers trembling against the cold linoleum of the care-home floor. We were sitting in the day room, the television low in the corner, playing a program about fish stocks that neither of us was watching, and the air smelled of boiled cabbage...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Distant GardenElias. The Abbot’s voice cut through the silence of the scriptorium, sharp as a chisel striking flint. I looked up from my ledger. The ink was still wet on the page, a dark smear that looked like a bruise. I closed the book. The leather cover was worn soft at the corners, smooth as river stone. I am Elias. I am forty-two years old. I have been a clerk in the Abbey of St. Jude for twenty years....0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Distant MetropolisThe damp in Oakhaven did not merely settle; it inhabited, seeping into the bones of the stone walls and the joints of the men who lived within them. Elias Thorne sat in the corner of his study, the air thick with the smell of stale ink and the metallic tang of the iron key in his palm, a thirty-two-year-old scribe whose hands trembled not from age but from the terrible weight of the document he...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Distant GardenThe alkaloid was pure, a crystalline white powder that smelled faintly of iron and rain. Dr. Elias Thorne held the vial up to the gaslight in the King’s private chamber, watching the particles dance in the amber glow. The King lay on the bed, a hollowed-out figure beneath the heavy wool blankets, his breathing a wet, rattling rasp that shook the entire room. Thorne wanted to save him. It was a...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Golden VisitThe rain had not stopped since Elias Thorne crossed the threshold of St. Jude’s, a sound that drummed against the high, arched windows like a relentless, muffled applause for a performance no one was watching. He stood in the entrance hall, his coat dripping onto the cracked terracotta tiles, the smell of wet plaster and old decay thick in his throat, a scent that seemed to cling to the back of...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Wistful PetalGreta Klein is thirty-two years old and owes the duchy a tithe of grain she does not have. The debt is not for gold, but for the grain that should have filled the silos of Saint Jude, a monastery that burned down three winters ago. I left the city at dawn, the light thin and gray over the alpine peaks, to find the missing royal seal. The seal was the only proof that the debt was void, a legal...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Golden RitualZainab Tareen, forty years old, stood before the King with the ceremonial sword in her hand, its weight a familiar ache in the wrist that had served the crown for two decades. The throne room was cold, the stone floor slick with the damp that seeps up from the valley below, and the air smelled of wet wool and the iron tang of old blood. Kael, my former lieutenant, now standing at the King’s...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Wistful IncenseChapter One Aaltje Rietveld was thirty-two years old and owed forty-seven shillings to the company store, a debt that sat on her chest like a wet wool coat. She stood in the back room of the Federal Writers’ Project office, a place that smelled of damp paper and the metallic tang of old ink, and watched the High Chancellor, Van den Berg, sign the inventory sheet with a flourish that looked more...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
Arabic
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Deutsch
Turkish
Dutch
Italiano
Russian
Romaian
Portuguese (Brazil)
Greek