BROKEN

It was a safe haven, a paradise—one he'd made for the woman who was his very heart, amidst the last of the sacred wildwood forests, away from demon-savaged city. Unicorns slipped and shimmered like moonbeams between the trees, though they didn't come near the palazzo itself. Robins and blue jays, meadowlarks and goldfinches sang their songs for her; they weren't bothered by mindless screams late in the night or heartbroken weeping as dawn broke.

Crocuses pushed through the earth in bursts of gold and purple and lilies filled the air with their fresh, sweet fragrance—it blanketed the subtle sting of blood that sometimes hung in the air. There were no roses, though the heavy rainbow of blooms would've comforted Juliet. Romeo could not risk roses. Not after what she'd done the last time with the thorns.

For a moment, all he could see were white roses stained with crimson. Her skin, so very pale, stained with that same crimson.

He shook the memory away.

Prince Romeo—oh, yes, he was sovereign of their fair city now; all had been forced to bow before the sorcery that had won him the crown of Verona—Prince Romeo strode up the soft earthen path lined with blue larkspur and pale primroses.

His guards marched behind him, careful not to damage or otherwise disturb the flowers. Not after what had happened the last time, when Juliet had screamed and wept over a broken patch of marigolds and been inconsolable for days. Every one of Romeo's footsteps suddenly seemed to take a Herculean effort. The earth was yielding as flesh beneath his black leather boots.

The marigolds, he thought, were for someone she loved. The shade of Tybalt returned to haunt them yet.

Wherefore villain did you kill my cousin?

Portia, Juliet's nurse, bowed low to him even as she opened the front door of the sprawling palazzo. She'd been the head of this small, sequestered utopia for the last two years, ever since Romeo Montague had swept through Verona like a vengeful ghost and taken control.

Even now he could hear the howling of the wolf-shades he'd set to hunting the Capulets. It mingled with the phantom screams of the dying.

Romeo pushed the sound away. Such nightmare-memories had no place here. This was Juliet's haven. He could not let the charnel-house shades find their way here.

"Portia," he murmured, inclining his head. The nurse fell into step beside him as they moved down the corridor; the shadow of her fear hovered close. Romeo's eyes slid over the tapestries and brightly woven wall-hangings that added color to the hallway. "How is she today?"

"She appears lucid, for the most part, milord," Portia said softly. "Yet her memory has slipped from her grasp again. We caught her digging in the garden again early this morning near dawn, yet now she will not let us near. She has asked for you."

"Has she eaten yet?" It was midday, he thought, but sometimes Juliet did not eat for days at a time, depending on how long her lucidity lasted. And sometimes, when she was fairly lucid if amnesic, she would only eat with him.

Portia shook her head. "Not yet. A meal waits for both of you in the garden. She has been walking there for most of the morning."

Romeo found Juliet in the garden, just as Portia had said, beneath a stand of cypress trees. She wore no shoes. Mud caked her feet. It was spring, and it had rained the night before. Clutched in one muddy hand was a bouquet of snowdrops white as bones. The hem of her simple blue gown was torn and damp. Her hair hung down her back in a tangle. Yet when she turned her head and found his face with her sloe dark eyes, the joy that lit Juliet's face threatened to crack his very heart in half.

"Romeo!" She ran to him. He could do nothing else but hold out his arms to her. When she threw herself into his arms and he enfolded her, he felt her bones pressing into him through dress and easily-bruised skin. Tiny particles of earth sprinkled his black velvet sleeve as she clutched the bedraggled nosegay of flowers. "Oh, you're here! You're here. They won't let me leave," she said, frowning. She pulled back to look up at him. "Why won't they let me?" She always asked him that.

His throat ached and his eyes stung from holding back tears. There was none of Juliet's familiar light in those eyes. Something was missing from her gaze. It hurt him, made him despise himself, yet when she remembered and the light returned it always terrified him. At least when her eyes were dull and soft and brown, she didn't hate him. Couldn't loathe him nearly as much as he loathed himself.

"It is for your safety, cara mia," he murmured, and waited to see if she would understand, or at least accept. Waited to see if his words would trigger her memory, or a psychotic episode. It took so little to send her from mostly-lucid to shuddering with madness.

In the end, she merely nodded.

"What's that you have there?" He asked, forcing a smile that felt as if it would crack his face. He cupped the hand holding the flowers.

"For you," she said brightly, like a child presenting a gift. She held up the flowers. The roots were still attached, slender white veins yet gasping for the nurturing darkness of the earth. "Do you like them? I wanted to do something to cheer you up. You've been distracted lately. Sad. Do you like them?"

If he gave into weakness, she wouldn't understand why he wept, Romeo thought, and it would only distress her, so he forced himself to bear up.

"I love them," he murmured, and took the little bouquet. "Very much." Knowing he could not bear to see that beaming smile for too long without breaking, he asked, "Have you eaten?" When Juliet shook her head, he suggested oh so casually, "Perhaps we could have lunch." He gestured to a little pavilion draped in airy white a bit nearer to the palazzo.

"Alright." Juliet slipped both arms around one of his, heedless of the dirt.

As he'd expected, Portia waited by the pavilion's large white wicker table and chairs. A large bucket of water sat at her feet. A bar of soft amber soap set on a cream-colored dish rested in her hands and she held two washrags and two hand-towels draped over one arm. Romeo laid the bouquet of flowers on the edge of the table and rolled up his sleeves. He glanced at Juliet. She stared at the water, head cocked to one side, eyes vacant.

"My lady," Portia murmured. "If I may—" Juliet jerked back, eyes narrowed . She shook her head. In a gentle, placating voice, Portia tried again. "Come, now, milady…"

"Give me your hands, Juliet," Romeo said. His lady turned to him. He held out one hand, surprised it didn't tremble. "I'll help you get the mud off."

She blinked. Her brow furrowed. "I can do it."

"Let me," he insisted gently. "Please." After a long moment, Juliet nodded and gave him her hands. Romeo pulled off her wedding ring and set it on the wicker table beside the flowers.

As he carefully and gently washed away the caked-on earth, he found some damage to the delicate appendages. A torn fingernail. Cuts from sharp stones that had gone unnoticed while she dug up the flowers. Dried smears of blood were dark brown beneath the lighter brown of the mud.

Blood had been the instrument of Verona's demise. Juliet's blood, he'd thought. Tybalt's blood mingling in the street with Mercutio's. Romeo's own spilled by the blade that had cut down his new-sworn kinsman and ripped all asunder. With that blood, he'd summoned a conflagration that swept through the streets to burn them clean, a pack of wolves, a legion of demons to purge Verona of all who bore the blood of Capulet.

All but one.

When Juliet's hands were at last clean, the cuts cleansed and the short, raggedly-bitten nails white and free of earth, Romeo insisted on washing the dried earth from her feet. Because he was the one to ask, she acquiesced, though he could see she didn't understand why mud on her feet was a problem. He found pale gray-blue bruises marring the soft soles of her feet, and a few scratches. When he was done, she donned her ring again and sat down to eat.

He had to coax her to eat. Not because she wasn't hungry—at least, he didn't think so. More that her mind, anchorless and unable to stay in the present, forgot to keep having her feed herself. She'd become so thin…

So he did his best to coax her through the simple meal of bread, fruit, and cheese, calling her back with soft words every time her mind wandered down some new avenue of insanity and her eyes drifted away to gaze unseeingly at the forest beyond the garden walls.

"One more bite, cara," Romeo murmured near the end of the meal. Juliet jumped as if he'd stuck her with a pin. Her eyes met his. She frowned. Looked down at her plate. The raspberry custard was the last of the food on her plate. He'd managed to get her to eat the rest of it. He knew her nurse couldn't get this sort of result. Keeping that fake smile plastered on his face, he added, "Just one more bite and we'll do something else. How does that sound?"

Juliet scooped up another bite of custard. Stared at the creamy burgundy dessert.

"It's red," she said softly. "It's not supposed to be red." She set the spoon down, staring at it in consternation. "It's supposed to be yellow. I don't know where the yellow is. It's supposed to be yellow but I've lost the colors." Chewing her bottom lip, she glanced around. Turned confused eyes to Romeo. "Romeo…do you know where they are?"

He didn't know where he managed to dredge up the words, or the strength to say them to her. "Amore mio, you haven't lost yellow. It's supposed to be red."

She shook her head vehemently. "No. No, it's custard. Custard is yellow. Like the roses you gave me." The roses with their thorns that had torn her bruised skin the last time she'd remembered what he'd done. "I lost the yellow and I don't know how to get it back." She nibbled on the edge of her thumb. Frowned at her plate. A tear spilled down her cheek. "How could I lose yellow? If I lose yellow I lose sunshine and your roses and—"

"Juliet." It hurt to say her name. How it hurt. Hurt to see her sorrow and her bewilderment. This was his fault—her alarmed confusion, and the madness that had created it. "Juliet, yellow isn't lost. The custard we usually eat is yellow, but this time it is red. I wanted to try something new. It's raspberry, sweetheart. Raspberries are red, remember?"

A frown twisted her mouth. "Raspberry?" She looked up from her plate. For a moment, the cloudiness in her eyes faded a little. "You prefer lemon. It's your favorite. We always have lemon."

"I wanted to try something different," Romeo replied. I'm sorry, he added silently. I'm so sorry, cara.

"Different?" She frowned more fiercely, brow furrowing as she struggled to understand. All at once, her expression cleared. She nodded. "Raspberry. Raspberries are red. I didn't lose yellow. Yes." She nodded again. "Of course." She picked up the spoon again. Took a bite.

Her mind is so broken, Romeo thought, fighting to swallow the custard. Such little things upset and confuse her so much. Raspberry custard instead of lemon. Washing the mud from her hands. Marigolds accidentally crushed beneath his boots. She'd screamed herself hoarse over the dead flowers, he remembered. Screamed as if she were dying. It seemed Tybalt's name had torn from her throat to shatter the world.

Mi amore, my beloved, he thought. He wanted to say the words but they sat heavy as lead on his tongue. Oh, my love…

"I had a dream last night," Juliet whispered suddenly, pulling him from the poisonous sea of his remorse. Overhead, thunder rumbled. "It was horrible."

A stone seemed lodged in his throat. A dream… Every time she had an episode, every time she remembered the truth of what had happened, it was prefaced by a dream, a nightmare of killing and bloodshed and carnage.

"It was only a dream, Juliet."

She shook her head. "There was fire. Screaming. Blood ran down my window like rain." She glanced from the spoon to him. Another tear fell. "The streets were rivers of blood and the dead were everywhere. Dead children. My family. Corpses in the street." The spoon fell to the plate with a harsh clatter. She hugged herself. "And there were monsters. Wolves with devils' eyes and shadows with teeth and roses tearing across throats with their thorns. Monsters butchering innocent people."

Romeo was at her side in an instant, sliding his arms about her. His heart beat mercilessly against his breast. Please, he prayed, not for the first time. Please, don't let her remember. Don't let her remember that day. If I had known…if I'd known the truth, I would have never…

But aloud, all he said was, "It was a dream, Juliet. Only a bad dream."

"Tybalt was dead," she whimpered.

Romeo closed his eyes as grief tore through him like claws. Tybalt. Her cousin who was like a brother to her. And Mercutio, dying in his own blood, fallen at Tybalt's feet…

Turn and draw! Madness fueling rage in the eyes of the man who had been his kinsman but an hour. His sword limned by the light of the setting sun, which had transformed the steel to blood for an instant.

Aye, Tybal was dead. Tybalt, and Mercutio. Rosaline, and Benvolio who had tried to defend her from Romeo's demons. From Romeo's madness that had blazed from Mantua to Verona, fed by his manservant's report that Juliet—sweet, dear Juliet, his wife and his lady—was dead, too.

Another crack of thunder. Juliet didn't seem to hear.

"A monster in red velvet stabbed him through the chest. There was blood. Red, red. Like the raspberries. He fell. He fell," she mumbled, beginning to rock back and forth. "Fell, and wherefore villain did you kill my cousin? Romeo, Romeo—"

"Juliet," he murmured as she rocked and rocked, eyes empty and vague, "Juliet. Mi amore. It's all right. It was only a dream. It is all right. It was only a dream."

"No," she said, "no." She reached up and tugged at a tangled wisp of her hair. Pulled the limp curl straight. "No, it wasn't a dream. Not a dream. Real. It was real. Tybalt fell and his blood stirred the thirst for more, and you…" Thunder cracked violently. She yanked on the lock of hair. "You killed him! Juliet screaming and it's not a dream, Tybalt slew Mercutio, Romeo slew Tybalt, vain vengeance, and you murdered my cousins and my mother and my father and—"

"No, Juliet," Romeo said, fear icing his veins. She rocked faster. "No, that's not what—"

"You killed Tybalt," she gasped the words and it was as if they were fists striking her body. Her voice rose in pitch. The anguish twisted her expression. "You killed Tybalt. You killed everyone. You… you…I remember. I remember! Everyone is dead, Tybalt and Livia and Helena and Rosaline and Sampson and you killed them all, my family, all the Capulets, you Montague wretch—"

"I thought you were dead," he protested. He tightened his grip on her. "Juliet, they told me you were dead—"

She shook her head, keening, struggling feebly against Romeo's hold. Though it felt as if it would kill him to do it, he let her go. She lunged to her feet and scrambled away from him, still making that awful keening wailing sound.

"You murdered my family!" She cried it, sobbed it. A jagged white bolt of lightning struck one of the cypress trees. The mad vague emptiness cleared from her eyes and there was a terrible clarity left in its wake. "You murdered my family!"

He closed his eyes, unable to look into her stricken face. That sin, more than any but Mercutio's death—for was it not Romeo who had come between his friend and his kinsman to part their blades and end their battle? And hadn't Tybalt seized the chance to cut Mercutio down?—weighed on him like a millstone around his neck. To have lost Mercutio and then to have done this to Juliet…

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Monster!" She screamed it. The word slapped him across the face, left him hollow. A single tear carved its way down his cheek. Overhead, the sky ripped open. Rain smashed down on the white canvas of the pavilion. Juliet staggered backward into the downpour. "I hate you! I'll never forgive you!"

She turned and ran back toward the sprawling house. He saw her slip in the fresh mud and fall. She was back on her feet in seconds, mud darkening her skirts, blood running down her legs from where she'd cut her knees on garden stones. Romeo started after her. Called to her above the sheeting roar of the rain. Juliet didn't look back; just ran inside. The door slammed.

Romeo stopped at the door. Braced his hands on the frame and took a shuddering breath. Rested his forehead against the smooth rowan wood. He could hear her words ricocheting around in his skull. Murderer. I hate you. They throbbed in his skull. I hate you. I'll never forgive you.

"I am so sorry," he rasped, though she wasn't there to hear him. The rain plastered his clothes to his body, his hair to his skull. It mingled with the single tear that had escaped his rigid control. "I am so sorry, Juliet. I didn't know. I'm so sorry."

He'd thought they'd killed her. The Capulets. In the haze of pain and grief, the single conviction that Lord Capulet had done this to her had burned in him like hellfire.

She hadn't been dead. Juliet had woken to him, to Romeo, ere he could taste of the apothecary's sweet poison. Woken to gladness and tears and disbelieving hope and his embrace, to tenderness and the breaking of the terrible brittle conviction in him.

She had woken to hellhounds and demons licking up Capulet blood from the flooded streets and feasting on the corpses of her kin.

Romeo swallowed back salt and the sting of tears. Opened the door and strode inside. He knew where to find Juliet.

His lady was in her bedroom. She shivered on her bed, water rolling down her face from the rain, blood from her scraped knees smeared across her legs to stain the ivory and gold rug beneath her feet. Her dress was soaked through. The bedclothes were damp. She'd wiped the mud from her hands on her skirts.

Romeo stepped inside. Closed the door. Juliet looked up. Tears rolled down her cheeks the way the blood spilled down her legs.

The agonizing grief in her eyes flared hot with loathing and betrayal as she lunged off the bed, launched herself at him. He caught one fragile wrist, but not the other as she cracked her palm across his face. Blood flooded his mouth. Then he let her go to allow her to pound against his chest with her fists as she sobbed, "You monster, you monster! I hate you!" Her voice was too weak to scream but it felt as if her words crashed against his ears. "You killed my family! You killed them!"

Juliet collapsed against his chest, exhausted. Romeo ached to hold her, to comfort her, but he knew she wouldn't allow it. Not yet. Instead, he murmured, "I would bring them back if I could. For you."

She wrenched away from him. Stumbled to the bed. When her knees buckled, she sank down onto the mattress. Her eyes found his face. "Tell me it isn't true," she begged. The light of true lucidity was in her eyes now. So was a crushing grief. "Tell me it is a lie. Romeo…tell me it didn't happen."

He drew a breath that hurt. "It happened. It's true." The words were jagged stones that left his tongue bruised and bleeding. "Verona is mine. Your family is dead at the hands of my legion." He watched the silent tears come faster, listened to the first muffled sob. "All of them," he said tonelessly. "By my order."

The last bit of her composure crumbled and she dropped her face into her hands and sobbed as if she would rip apart. Romeo could bear no more. He went to the bed. Sat beside her. When he slid his arms around her again, she twisted and struggled for a moment before collapsing against him. Her tears soaked his shirt. He stroked her hair and fought against weeping as she wept. He had no right to weep. This truth had driven her mad—that by her husband's order, her family had been killed. Vengeance, he'd thought. All blood justified. But no. And now…now…

Juliet lifted her head to look up at him with shattered, tearful eyes. Every tear was a drop of Romeo's heartblood and he felt himself slowly bleeding to death. There was a plea in those eyes—a plea to make it all unreal, to undo it, to turn back the sands of time and bring her family back from oblivion.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. How often had they had this conversation? Too many times. She never remembered. It never stopped hurting. "I'm sorry, Juliet."

She stared at him. He knew what she would do next. What she always did next. She might hate him, might even fear him a little now…but he was also still the man she loved. Even the blood on his hands hadn't been enough to shatter that. So he wasn't surprised when she kissed him, a kiss that begged for some kind of comfort, fleeting though it might have been.

His lady was crying as he shifted to lean her back against her bed. She wept silently even as she pressed close and kissed him with savage desperation, needing something, anything but reality, to hold onto. Tears trailed from the corners of her eyes to wet her temples, soak her hair and the damp pillows, while her shaking hands went to the buttons of his doublet, and the hand Romeo wasn't using to hold himself above her went to the laces of her bodice.

It was the same as it always was when she remembered—a frantic, desperate thing, though it wasn't quick. His submission to her silent plea to give her something to drown her memories in. His mouth on hers, kisses that tasted of grief and salt tears and remorse. His hands on her body, rousing a fire she could never resist, even now. Juliet's own hands in Romeo's damp hair, twisted in his half-open shirt, her ragged nails scraping down his back. Tiny beads of blood welled up.

He welcomed that pain as his lips whispered across Juliet's cheeks and mouth. He welcomed the bite of nails and teeth. Did she welcome the soft blue bruises that would shadow her thighs tomorrow? The marks of pale rose, tender to the touch, that his mouth left on her skin? Was this punishment as well as comfort, for her and for him? How long would she remember this before madness smothered the memories?

In the aftermath of passion, in the heartbroken silence after Juliet cried out his name and he whispered hers, as their eyes met, he saw forgiveness and pain and heartache and fear and love in those beautiful eyes. Romeo saw her love for him, saw that it remained unbroken despite how he'd broken her. Unable to meet her eyes any longer, he drew back from her enough to help her completely out of her wet clothes before she caught a chill. Then he led her to the soft fur rug before the fireplace in an attempt to warm her.

He drew the small knitted blanket from her chair beside her window and draped it around her bare shoulders. She huddled beneath it, shivering anew. Romeo realized he was shivering, too. His clothes half-hung from his frame, and they were soaked by the rain. It was Juliet, eyes vivid with memory and sorrow, who helped him out of his wet clothes and silently offered him a place under the black knitted blanket beside her. She laid her head on his shoulder, and a piercing ache shot through him, red-hot and thin as a burning wire. He made a small sound.

"I never wanted to hurt you," Romeo whispered. His cheek rested on her slowly-drying hair. It was the first time he'd spoken anything but Juliet's name since before their joining. "I never wanted that."

She didn't speak for a long time. Finally, she asked, "Have I ever remembered before?"

"You always remember when I visit you. Always."

"But you keep coming."

He looked down at her. "I love you." It hurt to say the words. They were bitter as poison and sharp as an iron razor. Romeo thought he could feel his heart bleeding anew. "I need you, cara. I miss you…so very much."

Juliet gazed up at him, and her expression softened a little more. She touched his cheek, the scarlet mark she'd left with her slap. "I shan't remember any of this, will I?"

Romeo shook his head. She always asked him that. She had never remembered for more than a few hours.

"You must believe me," he whispered. "I thought your father had murdered you for marrying me. I…I went mad when I heard you had died, I…I'm sorry. I am so very sorry, Juliet—"

She touched her fingers to his lips. He fell silent.

"I forgive you," she whispered. The words lanced him. Sometimes she forgave. Sometimes she didn't. It was the one thing that changed. He could never know which she would choose, so he could never know if she'd truly forgiven him or not. Still, the words were a soothing balm against his raw spirit when she whispered again, "I forgive you, Romeo."

"How could you possibly?"

She cradled his face, turning more fully toward him. "Because no matter what you've done, I love you. I will always love you."

He gazed down at her, stricken. She had never said that before while still lucid. Never whispered her love for him in such a sweet murmur while her eyes drank him in as if she would never seem him again. And she was still lucid. He could see it in her eyes.

Overcome, he brought his mouth down on hers. Tasted her grief in the kiss. Then he laid her down upon the silky fur rug and made love to her twice more—once, gently, trembling more than a little, drowning in her, his face pressed against the warmth of her neck while tendrils of her damp hair clung to his cheek; and again, fiercely, while she clutched at the broad strength of his shoulders and pressed her face into the hollow where his pulse beat at his throat, and he was left gasping and grasping for her as they continued to drown in the torrent of grief and need and love and regret.

And when it was over, he laid his head upon her breast, and as she ran her fingers through his hair he wept like a heartsick child for both the pain that would never leave Juliet's eyes and the broken mind that would never truly heal.

Garnet 5 - Silver Feathers Have Fallen

We were walking home from the bus stop—okay, I'll admit it, I was practically skipping after my amazebeans performance at lunch earlier—when Jack leaned down and whispered, "What are we going to do with Lily?"

I bit back a sigh. Why did we keep having to have this conversation? "We're not doing anything with her," I replied.

"What about when your parents come home? If your parents find out Lily's here without parental consent, they'll just ship her right back to the Whitmoor house."

I bit back a Homer Simpson "d'oh!" and tried not to grind my teeth. I hadn’t even thought of that. I didn’t know how I was supposed to handle the secret about my parentage. I was apparently a Boajuun, a demon from Fayre. Jack had triple-checked by making a tasty snack out of my neck (with my permission) and tasting the starlit demon magic in my blood. Apparently this also made me incredibly tasty. Yay for him, I guess. But the fact that I was a demon meant one of two things: either my parents had lied to me for eighteen years and I was adopted, or my parents had lied to me for eighteen years and they weren’t human, either. At the moment, I wasn’t sure which one I was hoping for.

If my parents were human and I was adopted, they had no clue about the world of faeries and witches I'd stumbled into by punching Lilith Whitmoor in the face on the first day of school. Since they didn’t know about that, they wouldn’t understand why I had to keep Lily at our house. I couldn’t lie and say her dad was molesting her or something, because then the cops would get involved. And who knew? Mr. Whitmoor might try to kill them to get Lily back.

Not that he loved her. I knew that. He wanted her back because someone had taken his property. I still couldn’t believe the creep thought of his own daughter that way. Liars or not, I was so glad my parents were homicidal, über-possessive warlocks like Lily's dad.

Don't even get me started on her mom. I still wanted to take a tire-iron to Gia Whitmoor's supermodel face for all the things she'd done and said to Jack and Lily. The ho-bag needed to die. Like, pronto.

"Well?" Jack demanded, nudging me with his elbow.

Part of me did a happy dance because I loved it whenever he touched me, for a thousand reasons—the two biggest being, he was the hottest thing since the sun had exploded into existence, and because it meant he wasn’t afraid to touch me—but at the same time, I had no idea what to do when my parents arrived.

So I just shrugged. Go, the eloquence of me.

"You'll have to think of something soon," my King reminded me. I bit back the expected retort of no kidding, Sherlock. He added, "When are your parents coming home?"

"No idea," I muttered. "They're still at my grandfather's. They know I've got some friends staying over for pretty much every weekend, but they think you're all girls. I didn’t know how to tell them we had dudes involved without my dad freaking out and telling me to chase after you with his claymore."

Come to think of it, maybe I should've said something to my dad. I'd commit metaphorical murder to get permission to put my hands on the claymore he kept hung up on the wall of his office. I wasn’t allowed to touch it until after I'd had at least a year of sword-fighting lessons, which were not the same thing as fencing. So my fencing lessons apparently didn’t count. Boo.

"They're scheduled to call me again tonight," I added. "I'll ask them when they're coming back then." I scratched the back of my neck and looked around. "This is so weird," I mumbled, eyeing my quiet neighborhood. The only noise came from my Black Court's inner circle trudging and talking behind us.

"What?" Jack asked.

"It's quiet," I complained.

Jack shot me a look and raised a single golden eyebrow. "The proverbial 'too quiet?'"

I nodded. I didn’t like it. Until I'd defeated Lily, I'd pretty much gotten into a fight or had some sort of altercation with someone pretty much every day I'd gone to school. I hadn’t been attacked since Homecoming. It made me itchy, waiting for some assault. Maybe we had a temporary ceasefire with the Red Court, and White Court currently called me Queen of the Universe, but Gavin's psychotic little groupies were still out there, and Gavin wanted me dead. Maybe raped and dead. I wasn’t sure about that.

Why hadn’t Gavin attacked yet? Was he trying to get Lily away from me first? Because he couldn’t possibly be afraid that she would help me if he attacked. Everyone and their dog knew Lily would've rather played a very violent game of cat's cradle with my intestines than help me out. Her one show of support—throwing me her bondline so I could hook into her nexus (the magical hook-up in her chest that controlled her psychic connections to everyone in her Court and Coven)—had been an act of self-preservation. It was either she let me hook into her nexus with my dominant bondline, or I shatter every connection she's ever had with anyone. I'd still broken her connection to her dad, the High Priest of the Coven of White, but somehow I didn’t think Lily minded that so much. She hated her dad almost as much as Jack and I did.

"Whoa," Chantal chimed from behind us. "What's wrong with Bianca?"

I'd been staring at my shoes, a bad habit when I was busy thinking too hard about something I couldn’t figure out. Now my head snapped up in time to see Bianca Rairah, Fiver's fourteen-year-old sister, tripping over her black Vans and the straps on her pink-trimmed bondage pants as she came running down the sidewalk, platinum braids streaming out behind her. Her ice-blue eyes were wide with panic.

Fiver shouldered past us and moved to intercept. Bianca threw herself into his arms, gasping and crying. The crying galvanized me; I was running before my brain had processed the word tears. I snagged Fiver's shirt and swung myself around so I didn't trip and skin my palms on the pavement trying to stop on a dime.

"…don't know where it came from, but it's pulling at me, Hrair, it's horrible, make it go away, I can't make it stop, it shouldn't be here…" Bianca sobbed into her brother's shirt. Chantal got to Bianca and put her arms around the kid, hugging her while Fiver stroked her hair. I noticed a bruise darkening her cheek.

"David," I said sharply, catching my Knave's eyes. I'd learned over the past three months that a Knave's job was to protect his Queen—and anyone else she told him to watch out for. Protecting Lily had been Jack's job until I'd broken his soulbond with her and he'd hooked up with me instead.

David Jacobson wasn’t just my Knave. He was almost seven feet of solid muscle. The phrase "play dodge ball with your head?" David could totally do that to someone. He had a two-inch fro going on, eyes that were normally the color of melting chocolate, and a smile that always promised a good time. Lily had used magic to force Jack to kill David's little brother Larry a couple months ago, but David didn’t blame Jack for it. David had also been the protector and Knave of Julie Frost, the Queen of Spades. My best friend. David had been with Julie all their lives. He probably would've still been with her if Doreen hadn’t killed Julie by shoving her down a flight of stairs. Magic had done the rest.

Now David moved into position on the sidewalk, effectively blocking an attack from the street with his body. Aoife Dodarino and Wilhelmina McGill, two former Red Court girls who'd teamed up with me after I'd had my throat ripped out by the Knave of Diamonds, flanked him. Tacit backup.

Eddie Wong, the guy who'd ripped my throat out, moved to protect our other flank. Eddie didn’t look intimidating unless you got close enough to see his teeth. A therian who should've been able to transform into a giant Moray eel, Eddie spent his days as a scrawny Asian kid with glasses, with perpetual but invisible neon sign overhead blinking the words, Please steal my lunch money. He moonlighted as my second Knave and one of my Chessboard Knights. On the Twilight Chessboard, he scared the jeepers out of people.

Harriet took her place with Eddie, tugging on the hem of her black Happy Bunny shirt so everyone could see the words I have fun when I break stuff written in gold above a corpse-blue rabbit smiling like an axe-murderer. But that pretty much described Harriet. She was quiet most of the time, but when things got crazy, she went right along for the ride.

And of course Darren stayed behind us. Sadie and Mouse stayed with him.

I wasn’t sure if Darren was actually watching our backs or just didn’t feel like dealing with a crying freshman. But since we were pretty much covered, I decided to let it go and focused on Bianca again.

"Hey," I said gently. "Rabbit Ears. Snap out of it, I need you to take a breath." Bianca shoved her face into Fiver's shirt. "Bianca. Rabbit Ears. Hey. I'm right here with you, okay? Whatever just happened, whatever tried to grab you, it's okay. No one is going to hurt you, okay? They have to go through me and everyone else first. It's okay."

Bianca loosened her death-grip on Fiver's Ghostbusters t-shirt. Her shoulders hitched and she gulped loudly, which was kind of icky, but then she swiped at her face with the back of her arm and forced herself to breathe evenly. My overwhelming, panic-induced urge to track down random bad guys and punt their faces with my knee slowly faded. I laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Okay, you okay?" I asked. She nodded. Fiver kept his hand on her head and Chantal kept her arms around the younger girl. "Okay. Can you tell me what happened?"

"There's an ayza hole in your front yard," Bianca whispered.

Fiver stiffened. Chantal gasped and her hair did this weird rustle like it had tried to stand on end but was too heavy. Jack managed to choke on his own spit from sheer surprise.

When he finally stopped coughing, he growled, "What?"

My super awesome spidey-senses told me "ayza holes" were another thing that, as the Black Queen, I should've known about, but somehow had fallen into the Abyss of Stuff Everyone Forgot to Mention Because It Would Never Come Up in Conversation. Except it just had. I was pretty sure everyone needed to rethink this approach.

"What's an ayza hole?" I asked, wondering if I was actually going to get a viable answer. I knew the Ayza were the royal family of Fayre, and they were all demons (apparently, according to Darren, marrying into the royal family involved a transfer of power that turned non-demons into demons somehow).

Jack bit out, "Something that shouldn’t be at your house."

Well, that was a no on viable answers, then.

My King continued, "Did anyone see it?" Bianca shook her head. "Did anything come out?" This time she nodded. Jack's hand flashed out and he gripped her shoulder. "What was it? What came out of the hole?"

"A silver feather," she whispered. Reaching into the massive pocket of her bondage pants, she pulled out a shiny, silvery thing and held it up. It was a huge feather of hammered silver, perfect in every detail. As big as it was, it probably belonged to a harpy eagle. When I looked at it, I smelled rotting honey. Demon magic.

Jack reached for it, then snatched his hand back before he could touch the sharpened silver. Bianca was careful to hold it by the two-inch quill. I had a feeling anyone who touched the feather-part was going to lose a lot of blood. Maybe a finger.

"Is that a Jubei feather?" I asked, possibilities crashing around in my brain. Jack and Fiver both nodded. Chantal and Bianca just stared at it. "Is it Janee's?"

Janee Avix was a Jubei demon who'd come to Tucson just in time for Homecoming. She'd shown up on the Homecoming ballot somehow, and won a slot in the Homecoming Court because for the first time ever, Pillar Prep had been hit with a three-way tie, and Principal Burton was such an idiot that he didn’t know how to break said tie. And any tie for the Homecoming crown should have been between me, Geneva, and Lily. Instead, it was between me, Geneva, and Janee. We'd all been crowned Homecoming queen, and Janee's king had been Gavin Whitmoor. I was pretty sure, after all that, that Janee was out to get me, too.

Pretty much, after the three months I'd had, it was just better to assume everyone was out to get me. I kept an open mind in case they proved me wrong, but except for my inner circle, I didn’t trust anybody.

"I don't know," Fiver mumbled.

Jack stared at it for a long moment. Then he plucked it delicately from Bianca's fingers and brought it to his nose. He sniffed once, gently. Sniffed again, a deep suck of air. He closed his eyes and lines wrinkled his forehead as he seemed to taste the scent of the feather.

He opened his eyes again. They looked gray, black irises and pupils half-bleached by dearg power. He shook his head. "It's not hers. It's someone else's."

I wanted to face-palm. "Are you serious? Someone else trying to kill me?"

"We don't know Janee's after you, Alyssa," Jack reminded me. I gave him my best duh look and didn’t bother arguing. He knew my policy. "And we don't know this Jubei is after you, either."

"Opening an ayza hole in her front yard doesn’t really speak to friendly motives," Fiver muttered.

Jack shot him a savage look. He was doing the protecting-me thing again. It was cute, really, and I understood why he wanted to protect me. I'd nearly died during my fight with Lily at Homecoming. Jack had thought I had died for a minute. That was the closest I'd ever seen him come to crying in the real world. So I got it. And I knew that even though so far I'd survived this little war of the witches, I wasn’t invulnerable if any big bad faeries wanted to bring some smackdown.

But I was the Queen. I needed to protect my people. Bianca wasn’t officially part of our Court yet, but I liked her, and she was Fiver's sister. She counted. So if this ayza hole was so bad, I needed to know why.

"An ayza hole is supposed to be a secret form of travel," Fiver said, literally reading my mind. Jack opened his mouth to protest, got one look at my face, and shut it like a steel trap. Smart guy. The albino dearg continued, "It's supposed to be used only by the Council of Wings or their people. No civilian just throws open an ayza hole willy-nilly. Most of us don't even know how."

"That's why I couldn’t use it to bring you to the Chessboard," Jack added. "It's the easiest and safest way, and you actually go to the Chessboard physically instead of just psychically, but it's almost impossible to do if you haven't been taught by the Wings."

The Council of Wings wanted me dead. They didn’t know it was me, but I was the Alice, the girl from Lewis Carroll's prophecies who was apparently destined to break the famous Treaty of Jubei. According to Jack, the Council of Wings would do anything to stop that from happening because once the treaty broke, the magic that had gone into forging it would be let loose on the world. Not necessarily a bad thing, but the Council didn’t want that to happen. Once it did happen, all the faeries in the human world would get the full complement of their powers back. Even more important, humans everywhere would be able to see the Fayre. They would remember faeries actually existed.

That would be chaos. I knew that. But during all the crazy shenanigans, people screaming about Justin Bieber being the spawn of Satan, and everyone cringing from any sign of the impending apocalypse, one very important thing would happen.

The warlocks and their corrupt, pet witches would go down. So even though trying to break the Treaty—which was an actual magical force—would probably result in me dying, I was totally okay with that. At least I'd bring people like Lewis Whitmoor down with me.

Unfortunately, Jack was not okay with that. He would do anything to protect me. And if I died, he'd probably off himself because he thought I was the only person who really loved him. I knew his parents didn’t care about him, but I wasn’t sure about Lily.

I didn’t get Lily. Everything in me screamed that she loved Jack…but she also loved cutting him open when he made her mad. I just didn’t get it.

"So what's it doing on my front lawn?" I demanded, dropping the thought of Lily for the moment. I worried about the White Queen a lot. I wasn’t sure if that was because I was afraid she'd snap one day and try to kill us all, or if I wanted to fix her.

I jumped a mile high when Darren chimed in from behind me, "There's only one way to find out." I whirled on him.

"Aren't you supposed to be guarding the rear?"

"I left two very competent people in charge," he said, voice dripping acidic sarcasm. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Mouse and Sadie.

Pulling a Spock, my eyebrow popped up. "You left the humans without offensive powers to guard our backs?"

"Gotta let them off your apron strings at some point, Alyssa."

"Shut up." But I agreed with Darren about one thing—I needed to go look at this thing. Agreeing with Darren was probably a harbinger of Armageddon, but whatever. "Let's go."

I marched past Jack before he could do more than say, "Wait—" The others moved into formation around me. Oh, it was nice to have friends. To have backup. To not have to worry that anything might come slamming into me at any second and I'd have to unleash my fantabulous ninja skills because no matter how amazing I was with Alyssa-fu, I still ended up getting hurt. A lot. Backup meant I got hurt a lot less.

When we came to my house, I had to stop. The thing was impossible. It just didn’t make any sense to me. I knew what I was looking at—a hole in my yard—but that thing wasn’t just a hole. It was…I didn’t even know what it was.

Someone nightmare giant had reached down and scooped a huge divot out of my front yard. Darkness swirled inside. The rocks in the front yard closest to the hole sparkled with flecks of gold like someone had dumped glitter all over them. The few green weeds that had sprung up since my parents had been gone—yard-work was another of my enemies, like school dances and those killer I'm-gonna-stab-out-your-eye-when-I-kick-your-face heels—had turned blue. Not been tinged blue. They were neon blue.

The same color as the butterflies that always flocked to me when I went to the Twilight Chessboard; the blue butterflies that were the symbol of the Council of Wings.

Another silver feather, longer than the one Bianca held, jutted up from the dirt between the rocks right at the edge of the hole. A piece of blue paper with familiar, looping scrawl written in glittering, yellow gel-ink fluttered on the wind.

I moved toward it, but Jack grabbed my arm. "Wait, Lyssa-love. It might be a trap." Subtext of that statement: it might be them. They might've found us already. Crud.

"I'll get it, Lady Alyssa," Mouse cried, leaping forward. The kid was human, one of us should've been able to catch him, but he slipped through our collective fingers and frolicked over to the hole like it wasn’t the freakiest thing he'd ever seen.

Then again, his stepmother was an exiled demon from Fayre. Maybe it wasn’t the freakiest thing he'd ever seen.

Mouse knelt next to the paper. Carefully pulling the feather out of the dirt by the quill, he lifted the note and scanned it, a frowning pulling at his freckled face. Then he looked over at us. I could read confusion easily on his face.

"It just says, 'Remember what the doorknob said. The Smoke has been blown away.'" He frowned harder. "What does that even me—"

An arm, pale as ivory, shot out of the hole, grabbed Mouse's sleeve, and yanked him into the hole. With a sharp cry of fear that might've actually been Darren's name, he disappeared into the darkness.

The Man at the Gallows

Originally published in the online Foliate Oak Magazine in early 2008, and reprinted in The Best of Foliate Oak 2007-2008, this poem was my first sold piece. Written my senior year of high school, it would have appeared in the school literary magazine, but the program was cancelled before publication could proceed. No longer available online, here is "The Man at the Gallows."

The Man at the Gallows

　

At 5:00 they took him to the gallows

Shackled by the world

Iron constraints kept his soul in check

Soon the executioner would slip the

Rope around his neck

　

I watched from the sidelines

From the bloodthirsty crowds

The drums began their death rattle

Tears came but I bribed them into hiding

But it was a constant, downhill battle

　

Proud and tall he marched through the crowd

Cobalt eyes gleaming defiant strong

They forced him through the seas of hate

Hands bound tight behind his back

His head remained unbowed in the face of fate

　

His mother and his sister wept for him

His lover wept as well

I did not weep for him until he found my eyes

Then the tears came and stung like glass

And I bit my lip to stifle my cries

　

They took an inferno's hour

To make everything just right for

The pull and the drop into the skeletal crack

And before they would give him peace they

Carved 500 scarlet stripes into his back

　

Not a single cry did he utter

Not a sound of pain passed his lips

He clenched his teeth and searched the human mass

His eyes found mine and saw the truth

That even such agonies as these shall pass

　

At 6:00 they hauled him up onto the gallows

Shackled by the world

Hellish manacles kept his soul in check

As that monster slipped the thirteenth knot and the

Hangman's noose around his neck

　

He stood there trembling but standing proud

No tears…

No pleading…

Just his quiet strength

The blood dripping steadily down his ravaged back

And from the cuts on his face, mingling with dirt

　

He found my eyes again in the crowd

Gentle comfort and a promise sweet

That if God and the Fates allowed

We two again in Heaven would meet

　

Then the hangman pulled

And the platform dropped

　

That skeletal crack as his neck broke would echo like a gunshot in my head forever.

Apathy (A Tool of Coercion in Dystopian Governments - Part 1/4)

In many dystopian novels—indeed, in many novels with any sort of totalitarian or dictatorial government—there are those oppressed individuals known as the masses. The repressed populace. They suffer the indignities of cruel governments and/or rulers, undergo horrific things in the name of "the greater good." But what about their good? What about the welfare of the individual? What stops people from rising up against these terrible things?

I'm going to use six different dystopian series, as well as references from history, as my examples when answering these questions, but it really all boils down to four very simple things: apathy, fear, blame, and hope. This blog will actually be broken up into four separate posts to prevent having to scroll through a lengthy research-paper-length post if anyone wants to look for something specific.

Apathy

The first factor is apathy. According to the dictionary, apathy is defined as indifference, a lack of concern, or a lack of interest. Basically, a state of apathy is a state of just plain not caring. It's a sad truth that most people (in this country, at least) can't be roused to a true state of caring unless something directly affects them or someone they know. The most you'll get is, "Oh, that's horrible." And then they'll move on to something they feel is more relevant to them. I saw this constantly in high school, in students as well as adults. I was even guilty of it myself due to my PTSD, but that's another story for another time. Sadly, a lot of people just don't care about anyone beyond themselves or their sphere of friends and loved ones. How many people ignore a kid being abused by their parents in a parking lot? Or walk by someone being ripped to shreds by their peers? I'm not saying everyone does this. I know they don't. But a lot of people do. And that is often the first thing a lot of people do in different dystopian novels, though for many different reasons.

In Ann Aguire's Enclave, which is actually a horribly written book but with viable and very-well developed characterization of the MC (for the first 2/3 of the novel, anyway), there's a girl named Deuce. Deuce is a fighter for her enclave who lives in a world of kill-or-be-killed, predator-and-prey. She believes she can't afford to care about anyone who can't take care of themselves because that is how she was raised in a world where failure to protect yourself means death for you and countless other people. So though she feels some guilt, when the council of her enclave votes for the death of a blind nine-year-old boy because he's basically a drain on their resources and can't take care of himself or contribute to the welfare of the community, she doesn't protest (even silently).

A similar thing happens later in the novel (in the final third that really just makes me want to know what this author was smoking when she wrote it*, yet sadly this part sort of fits with Deuce's personality) when Deuce meets a guy called Wolf. Wolf is not only a thug and a killer, he's an admitted rapist. But because he can fight and Deuce and her partner are in a dangerous area, she puts aside what he's done in the past—including kidnap and try to rape Deuce and their third member—in order to use his fighting prowess against their enemies. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, but her total acceptance, her attitude of "that was then, this is now" is exactly the sort of "don't care" attitude I'm talking about in this post.

* The thing that just totally throws me isn't that Deuce allows Wolf to live and uses him fight with them; it's that he's the second guy in her little love triangle and she's okay with that. She actually finds him attractive. I'm just like, "What kind of crack-acid do you smoke?" This is near the middle of the final third of the book, so I finished it anyway, but I just could not believe this. And people complain about Stephenie Meyer and The Twilight Saga, and how Edward's abusive. Um, Ann Aguire got optioned for a trilogy, I heard there might be a movie, and she's a best-seller. Not as big as S. Meyer, but still! With an idiot like that for a heroine? Really? Okay, rant over.


In Matched, the main character, Cassia, is one of those rare individuals who has rarely questioned the Society—the totalitarian system in which she lives. Though there are some things about the Society's rules that she doesn't like, she doesn’t really care about them enough to worry. Why? For a very different reason than Deuce: Cassia knows what the Society has provided for her in exchange for these "small unpleasantries."

In the Society, for example, Cassia opts to get married eventually (she can choose to remain single for the rest of her life if she chooses). The boy who will become her husband is dictated by the Officials based on the data they've collected about her personality and other traits compared to the boy's over the course of their lives. That would irritate the crud out of me, but not Cassia, and with valid reason—her parents were Matched by the Society and have a very happy and healthy relationship, a relationship just like the one Cassia wants for herself. She knows other people who've been happily Matched with their spouse by the Society as well. So this lack of choice doesn’t bother her because of the happiness of what is basically a guaranteed outcome. She's seen the process, seen how it works, and seen the results—which are results she wants.

The same applies to most of what's going on in her life: her job, her recreational activities, even her diet. In the beginning of the book, the restriction of her choices doesn't bother her because she's trading the ability to choose for what she believes she wants based on what she's seen from other people.

The one time Cassia almost violently breaks this mold of not caring, of trading her choices for happiness, is when her father dies. In the Society, people die at eighty years old on their birthday, by government mandate. This sounds outrageous. Crazy. Absolutely ridiculous. But even though Cassia is stricken by her grandfather's death, even though she at times thinks that it isn't fair, she still has that mindset of trading choice for happiness.

This also touches a little on fear, so we'll explore that in another segment of this blog series, but again—her desire for a specific outcome that she sees all around her helps Cassia set aside her concerns about the Society (when she has them, which only happens regularly once the plot picks up).

In The Hunger Games, we see apathy in its worst form: people who don't care because they worry too much about themselves to be bothered with other people. Now, let me again stress, not everyone is like that in the series. And those that are have good reason. For the most part, the people in District 12 are barely scraping by. Katniss and her family nearly starved to death after her father died when she was twelve because they are so poor. She basically lives in one of the ghettos of Panem (the country in which this takes place).

Though a few of her neighbors in District 12 help her out a little—this is the starting point for her relationship with Peeta Mellark, the other tribute from District 12, who risked a beating from his mother to give Katniss and her family a few burnt loaves of bread—they can't help very much because they, too, are in dire straits and can't afford to help. Those that aren't in such straits simply don't care. An example is Peeta's (relatively) wealthy mother, who would rather give the burnt bread to their pig than give it to a starving child. And the government of Panem actually actively encourages this attitude towards neighbors as well as between the districts, helping to discourage any teamwork between the different districts against the Capitol.

Specifically with Districts 5-12 in The Hunger Games, the Capitol also encourages another form of apathy: the lethargy/uncaring induced by lack of will/strength. As I mentioned previously, most of these people are not wealthy. They barely scrape by unless they resort to poaching (as Katniss does, which is illegal and is actually a capital offense). When every minute of the day is filled with the efforts to feed yourself and your family, most people don't have the energy to plot political unrest or rebellion (though some do). They are literally too tired to do anything, even care, most of the time.

And onto that, one district could not take out the forces of the entire Capitol, and it is very difficult to travel between the districts. The Capitol has, of course, done this on purpose to keep communication to a minimum between districts, to keep them from banding together. You see a similar concept in detention in schools—teachers keep the kids separate to keep them from talking to each other. In Panem, distrust of the other districts is also pumped up because of the event of the Hunger Games within the story. This helps contribute to the general attitude of, "It's too difficult, too risky, without enough payoff" in regards to rebellion.

In The Iron Codex by Caitlin Kittredge, the apathy comes more from an established class hierarchy than anything else. Example: a well-to-do family doesn’t give a flying rat's buttered carcass if a homeless person labeled as a psychopath and a heretic (similar in this world to being called a Communist) is carted off to prison without a trial, or killed in the street, so long as they don't have to step around the blood puddle.

The same applies to those individuals in this world who contract what is known as the necrovirus, a so-called sickness that turns people into monsters. So long as everyone who "matters" is kept safe from the virus and the inhuman things it breeds, they don't care how those who're infected are dealt with—especially because it has no cure.

You see the same thing in Lauren Oliver's Delirium. In Delirium, the MC Lena doesn’t care about many of the restrictions placed on her: a city-enforced curfew of 9:00pm; rules about fraternizing with males (yeah, you saw that); censored reading, movie, and musical material. She only cares about being kept safe from the "disease" that killed her mother by causing her to commit suicide and nearly killed her sister—amora deliria nervosa (aka intense emotion).

And this really ties into the fear-aspect of the totalitarian government. Without fear—fear of what happens to me, be it from a natural influence such as starvation, or a manmade influence such as government reprisals, or something like a highly contagious illness—most people don't have the "don't care" issue in these novels. Their apathy is heightened by their fear. So long as they are kept safe, they don't care what has to happen to ensure that.

Which leads us to our next blog post: Fear as a Tool of Coercion in Dystopian Governments.

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo is DEATH!

Okay, no it's not. But it was HARD, man! And as a Latter-Day Saint, I couldn't write on Sundays (oh, the humanity!), and I don't have time on Saturdays because those are my editing days with my critique partner. This eliminates 10 days (count them! TEN!) out of the 30 I had for NaNoWriMo.

And yet...I still managed to make it to 52,000 words! WOOT WOOT! Yeah!

Seriously, everybody, I encourage anyone who needs motivation to do NaNoWriMo. I work 40 hours a week, and November is one of those accursed holiday months, but I still managed to make my goal and stay motivated without getting discouraged. Except for the time when my husband deleted 2000 words off my document by accident. Then I broke down into hysterical sobbing for a good 20 minutes because it was 4 AM.

But aside from that, it was actually pretty awesome. Of course I had like, zero time for anything else (including my Booktube subscriptions - cue sad panda) but I definitely intend to do it against next year.

Anyway, it's December now, which makes it NaDeFiMo - National December Finishing Month! Because I've only ever written a 50,000 word manuscript once, and it was my first book, and I was 10. So yeah. I've got at least another 45,000 words to go. Wish me luck!

Laters!

A Coat of Arms!

Someone actually put a coat of arms together for Dylan based on my explanation! I cannot believe this!! How neato is this, you guys?!?!

Projects in the Works

Now the point of this page is to help me keep my projects straight. They come in 4 categories: Currently Working On, ON Back-Burner, Cloud of Nebulous Ideas, and I'll Get to It One Day. So here they are.

CURRENTLY WORKING ON

BLADES OF FIRE & ICE - Mirabehn and her stepbrother Yaksha plot to ruin Lalita, a fellow student at their elite sorcery academy, when Mirabehn learns Lalita's family might be the reason her late mother's reputation as a sorceress was ruined and Mirabehn was passed over for a prestigious magic class. Complications arise when Yaksha becomes fond of Lalita and begins falling in love with Lalita's sister. Dangerous Liaisons meets Mean Girls, with magic and murder, in a high fantasy world inspired by Hindu mythology and Indian history.

NIGHT-DREAMED ROADS (TO THE CITY OF SLEEP) - When their magic teacher falls ill, a group of acolyte witches must journey to a ruined city to save their teacher's foster son as a test to prove they're ready to become full-fledged witches. Genderbent "Sleeping Beauty" in a solarpunk, post-post-apocalyptic world 170 years in the future starring the fairies.



ON THE BACK-BURNE

KATSCHEI - Ayao should have been the princess of the Summer Kingdom, but she was born with witch's magic. Bargained off as the bride to the cruel, immortal tsar of the Winterlands, she will do whatever it takes to end the centuries-long war between their countries. But there is more to Tsar Katschei than Ayao realizes, and the dark forces behind the war won't be stopped by political maneuvers. It will take all of Ayao's skill as a mati wata - a water-witch favored by the magical orishas of the Summer Kingdom - to end the war once and for all. Beauty and the Beast set against a high-fantasy world inspired by Slavic fairytales and Santerian mythology.
 
LACEY AND TIM - Lacey and her twin brother Tim don't mind that their house is full of dead bodies or that they're stuck wearing all black even when they're not in mourning or that their nanny's been undead for a solid decade. They like living in a mortuary and having a dead witch for a babysitter means outtings are never boring affairs. And their parents trust them with the family secret: the mortuary is just a front, a means of providing aid to the otherworldly beings known as midnight immortals that frequent NAN (the Nocturnal Alliance Network) for help quietly faking their deaths and relocating to different parts of the world under new names with new lives without normal humans finding out. One day a midnight immortal that comes to their parents for help is murdered in the mortuary and a strange golden orb is stolen from his pocket. Unable to go to the police, their parents realize someone has uncovered their connection to the Alliance. Then they disappear, too, leaving Tim and Lacey on their own to figure out where they've gone, who killed the immortal, what is so special about the orb, and what to do next -- before they become the next victims. A middle-grade gaslamp fantasy mystery set in city reminiscent of Victorian Hong Kong. 

LADY OF HYAKKI YAKO - American thread-witch and fashion designer Grant Ishida must go to the daimyo of the local yokai clan when his brother is kidnapped by a man-eating spider demon. The daimyo sends Ayame, a yokai kunoichi, to escort Grant through an otherworldly dimension reminiscent of feudal Japan, but Ayame has secrets of her own. The fairytale of "The Snow Queen" set in a magical, feudal Japan populated by Japanese myths and legends.


SAMEDI - An immortal Haitian death-prince must track his wayward brother to America to stop him from combining ghede-magic with Frankenstein's science to create unkillable monsters. In order to succede, he'll need the help of a young aerialist from a strange circus with ties to the late Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. A loose retelling of Hades and Persephone.
 
SAYURI - Hostile aliens attack a starship captain fresh out of the academy. In order to escape, she risks going through a temporal-spatial rift and crashlands on modern-day Earth with her living ship. Chased across space and through time by the aliens, Sayuri and Boreal - an extraterrestrial, sentient starship - have to team up with Eric, a modern guy who happened to be in the wrong place at the right time, in order to discover the aliens plan before they rewrite history.

STONESPEAKER - Avatars of the Chinese Zodiac and masters of Shaolin alchemy, Lia and her brother Demetrius have to decide who to trust when they find out the government and their parents are lying to them. In a near-future world where magic is a common ability and Chinese demons prowl the back alleys of every city, all Lia knows for sure is that the Zodiac have a mission. Now if only she and her brother knew what that was.

TEMPUS PSYCHE - In an alternate world where witches live alongside normal humans and people are born with soul-clocks that count down to the moment you meet your "true love," a blind witch communicates with the deaf boy she loves via sleepwritten letters and enchanted music while trying to protect him from the murderous stalker who's killed off her last six potential soulmates.


TIGRESS SHARK - Ren wakes up with no memory and on the run from the Ningyo Empress's guards in this Southeast-Asian high fantasy steampunk adventure that combines "The Little Mermaid" and "Snow White." Teaming up with the exiled crown princess-turned-smuggler Captain Tigress and her crew of ghost-pirates, Ren must uncover the secrets locked inside his memories in order to depose the Empress and give the princess back her throne.

CLOUD OF NEBULOUS IDEAS

HOLIDAY - sort of a Nightmare Before Christmas meets The Neverending Story with a dash of Rise of the Guardians.

THE GIRL FROM DUNWICH - a contemporary dark fantasy inspired by HP Lovecraft.

I'LL GET TO IT ONE DAY

WHERE THE HEART IS - I'm actually almost done with this, I just have been so wrapped up in YA that I don't have time for adult romance anymore. BUT! An embittered lawyer learns his late sister had a child, but her legal guardian - a woman with some very good reasons to hate his family - refuses to give the child up. A contemporary retelling of Rapunzel.

EIDOLON (Summary)

In the principality of Thule, the young crown princess Madeline Usher has committed suicide; her brother the prince is dead of an illness. With no heirs to succeed them, the royal House of Usher has fallen. In its place rises the House of Prospero with Lady Morella Prospero ascending the Midnight Throne.

Janine Fortunata is a young noble, the heir of her House, groomed since early childhood to one day take the family seat on the Council of the Eight Noble Houses. She was also the late princess's best friend and a member of the Raven Society, a secret vigilante team of nobles organized by Princess Madeline before her death. When a letter from the princess proves her death was no suicide, Janine must uncover secrets going back centuries, a conspiracy of dark magic, murder, and the ravenous specter of a long-dead princess who once ruled all of Thule with an infamous lust for blood and no mercy. A princess whose name was once spoken only in frightened whispers—Ligeia.

In a corrupt city where the police are as cruel as the crime lords, and plagued by strange blackouts, hallucinations, and nightmares that make her question everything she knows, Janine will need help discovering the truth. The only people she can trust are her cousin Berenice—aristocrat horticulturalist by day, lethal swordswoman by night—and Roderick Montresor: fellow Raven, the sworn enemy of Janine's family, and the man she's secretly loved for years. With fealty and forbidden love on her side, the Raven Society at her back, and a bloodthirsty killer calling themselves Red Jack stalking her and the other Ravens, Janine will have to uncover the truth behind what really happened to Princess Madeline and save the people she loves from the ancient evil brewing beneath the city. Unless that evil has already taken root inside her.

SAMEDI (Summary)

There is a world that mixes Victorian and medieval sensibilities and style, sorcery and science, the mythical and the mundane…

When Brigida de Marfil finds a young gentleman beaten unconscious outside the grounds of the traveling Moundshroud Carnival, she and the other members of the carnival take him in and nurse him back to health. Though the young man—who calls himself Mr. Samuel Byron—is courteous and gentle, Brigida knows there's more to him than meets the eye. The roiling mass of darkness posing as his aura is the first clue; the Grim Reaper visage that covered his face when he stopped some drunken audience members from harassing her is another. Whatever he is, Sam has a mission at the Moundshroud Carnival, and Brigida is determined to figure out what it is.

Samuel Byron is no ordinary gentleman of means. He is actually Baron Samedi, a ghede—a prince from the royal family of Haitian death-masters, immortal vodouists with mastery over the dead, dying, and diseased—and he's on the trail of his younger brother and the men who have persuaded him to use the ghede death-magic for evil: Ernest Frankenstein, younger brother of a late and infamous European scientist; and the cruelly beautiful Lord Dorian Gray, who seeks the key to eternal life. Samuel knows these men mean to trick Loraj into mingling death-magic with mortal science to unlock the secrets of immortality and ultimate power of life and death. If Samuel doesn't stop his brother in time, innocent humans could die, and the Ghede royal family will put a stop to Loraj once and for all—by any means necessary.

Torn between protecting his misguided younger brother and stopping Frankenstein and Gray, Samuel finds himself in need of Brigida's help…because Brigida is no ordinary carnival aerialist. The daughter of a Spanish witch and a flesh-eating wendigo—with some fairly powerful magic in her blood, a ravenous darkness burning inside her, and a tame chupacabra as her familiar—Brigida is more than equal to the task of helping Samuel stop Gray, Frankenstein, and their growing army of undead monstrosities. It's Haitian vodoun and Spanish witchcraft against unnatural science; and with the help of the other "unique" individuals of the Moundshroud Carnival, Samuel might just stand a chance of getting through all of this alive.

As long as the ghede royal family never finds out about Brigida and the carnival.