Category: All These Broken Things
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Alessia woke with a gasp, sweat-drenched and trembling, her fingers clawing at the blanket tangled around her. For one terrible, disoriented second, she felt it again. The shackle’s bite. The phantom weight. Walus’s laughter echoing in her skull. Dionys’s hand closed around her wrist before she could shred the blanket, his grip iron-tight and immovable.…
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The tent was wrong the moment Dionys pushed through the flap. Too quiet. Too still. No shallow breathing, no rustle of wool, no muttered argument with Askarion echoing from the corner. Just an empty bedroll, cold to the touch, the indent of Alessia’s body long since stolen by the air. His blood became ice. Then…
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Askarion’s glare could have curdled milk. He stood like a vengeful statue, arms crossed, brows lowered, watching as the last crumbs of evidence vanished into Stella’s defiant mouth. Alessia, sprawled on a cot with her ankle up, had the decency to look sheepish. She made zero effort to hide her own half-eaten honeycake. “Really.” His…
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Odrian woke with the dawn, clutching empty air and thoroughly resenting it. Canvas roof. Smoke in the air. War camp. He lay still for a moment, staring up at the sagging seam of the tent before sighing like a man personally betrayed by morning. “Traitor,” he muttered toward the sun. He swung his legs out…
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Alessia was going to set the tent on fire if Askarion didn’t let her up soon. She had been in bed for days, her ankle a throbbing mess of stitches and poultices. She was losing what was left of her godsdamned mind. Stella had taken to her role as “warden” with terrifying enthusiasm, threatening to…
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The morning light cut wrong through the canvas. Too sharp, too insistent. The kind of light that found wounds. Alessia had been awake for an hour, counting the water stains on the ceiling, watching the shadows shift while the bronze at her ankle throbbed in time with her pulse. Three years of the metal growing…
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Dionys pushed through the tent flap with the smell of salt and iron still clinging to him. Blood, not his own, dried stiff on his forearms and streaked across his chiton in dark, crusted lines. He moved directly to her cot without pausing to clean himself, dropping into a crouch at her side. “Marko went…
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The observation post reeked of fish oil and old rope, a slat-crusted shack perched on the breakwater’s edge where the wind cut through her chiton like it was trying to peel her skin off layer by layer. Alessia pressed against the rough timber, her ribs screaming in time with the surf, the shackle grinding against…
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“You’re swaying,” Dionys said, low enough that only Alessia heard it. He stepped closer, his shoulder brushing hers, blocking Lauthen’s view with his back. “Don’t fall here. Not in front of them.” He extended his forearm, horizontal and steady, not asking permission. “Take it. Or I carry you. Your choice, but we’re leaving.” His other…
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“The Formicari take the three berths,” Odrian said, his voice slicing through the council’s murmurs. He leaned over the map, tracking the charcoal marks she’d scratched into the vellum. “Aurelis, your shadows hit the third berth first. The currents are worst there, and if the cargo’s heavy enough to scrape bottom, they’ll be struggling to…
Tiny Raven 