It seemed a quaintly childish thing to do, yet the woman was far from a child. Waiting to check in, behind a line of impatient guests, Cameron Murchison watched the woman drink. She sat beside a table on which a display of dried flowers stood. It was the kind of table found around hotels; people ...
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I am no-one. I am nothing.’ Jadrin found himself pressed against the far wall, one hand to his mouth. He dared not think. He dared not hope. Nothing. Jadalan recovered slowly, but his mind seemed almost empty. He wandered, pale and lovely, through the corridors of his pa...
When he shook me, I shattered. It must have shocked him to suddenly find the young boy in his grasp shaking like a leaf as he sobbed everything out. The demon’s dark eyes, so different yet so alike those of the jade-eyed demon back in the village, were wide in disbelief as the words spilled from ...
She was on holiday with her mother and Owen, and the room around her was the small, rather Spartan bedroom in the boarding house beside the sea, which they visited every year. There was the old, scratched night table beside her bed, covered in a yellowed lace doily. A huge, shapeless wardrobe of ...
It felt stiff from disuse, even though I’d only been away from it for a short time. Now the ingredients had been thrown into the cauldron; I could only wait until the slow fusion was complete, to discover what fascinating result they would produce. Awaking to an autumnal chill, I felt as if I had...
Gesaril was removed to the phylarch’s house, and Ysobi carried on working with Orphie. I knew Orphie was disgusted by the whole affair and shared my views. But that might just have been because he cared for me. I was unaware of public opinion over the Gesaril business, or even how much others in ...
Now that he’d got the Nagini under his belt, as it were, and a visit to Immanion had been scheduled – complete with sedu transport, which must surely impress even the unimpressionable Nagini – he didn’t want to hang around too long. The Nagini made a big gesture to the Sulh too, in that they woul...
Jay noticed Jem dragging her heels. ‘You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.’ Jem’s face was very white in the moonlight. ‘I thought you wanted me to come.’ ‘I do. And I think you want to know the truth, but you mustn’t come if it worries or scares you.’ ‘I’ll come.’ Jem’s voice was low. ...
Its strange fire picked out details in the carvings around the stone door, including more words, although none of them were readable. Lileem had carried the tezarae in the pockets of her skirt; the same ripped skirt she had worn on the day she’d left the gardens of We Dwell in Forever, the home o...