Roan woke the next day and listened. Her ears were not the beautiful, silky hound ears she was used to, they were small and naked. Luckily, the changing magic had changed only their shape, not their ability. Her family was still asleep. A peek at the window showed the sun rising. The town was quiet …
When she’d run out of tears, Mariah had been laid in a patch of soft moss and grass. Long strands of grass rose over her and curved inward, making an effective sun shade. Still naked except for a makeshift diaper, she appreciated the shade. Mariah didn’t know if she could get a sunburn in Faerie, …
Roan rose from the odd-smelling bed and stretched her arms to work the soreness of shapeshifting out. Lord Ehadenther and Wunk were already gone, she could hear their steeds’ hoofbeats receding from the human house. They could have stayed a moment to make certain there were no ill effects from the magic. Roan thought, curling …
Mariah had a headache like she’d never known. Her heart was pounding from relentless nightmares. It was really unfair to feel hung over without having had the fun last night. Work was going to be absolute hell. On its best day, a shift at the assisted living facility wasn’t a walk in the park. She …
Prologue The wind wailed through the trees with the sound of grief and loss. It was not like grief and loss, it was the screams of mortals who had lost their bargains with the faerie. A pair of riders drove their horses with inhuman speed through the blackened, winter-touched trees. One of them was astride …
A trip on the ramshackle glider was the stuff of Little stories. The furnace vents gave way to stovepipes, attics, and crawlspaces without rhyme or reason. Each time the passage split or opened up to a larger space, Alanna would call out a direction and the stuffies would coordinate to steer. Shacklebolt, actually Wingsley Shacklebolt, …
Beartholomew fell back before the press of the Gloomlings. Everywhere he looked, there were nightmare creatures. They were of many shapes and colors, though all the shapes were sharp and all the colors dark. One was black with an oil-slick shine to it’s cruel mandibles, while another was a leaden red color, bursting with thorns. …
Beartholomew stirred as his Little rolled over in her sleep. She mumbled something sleepily, likely dreaming. As always, he was curious about what her dreams held. Unfortunately, he knew little about the Stuffie-Art of Comfortication. Even if he thought his Knight, Alanna, would allow him to enter Briana’s dreams, he lacked the ability. For a …
“Belade, you’re going to break it!” Athiss fretted behind his friend. He’d have liked to pull her away from his crystal garden, but she had her hands on the delicate main cluster. One wrong move and it’d crack, destroying three years of growth. “It’s fine! You’re too precious about your crystals, that’s why you’re always …
Alanna watched her Little, Briana, as she fell into a deep sleep. She smiled fondly, the dark brown embroidery of her lips curling. It had been strange at first to be called as the stuffie to an adult baby girl. Mere days into her life with Briana, Alanna realized that her Little had as great …