"You're joking ( Read more... )

A single snowflake is a simple, tiny thing. Small and delicate, it is easily ignored, overlooked, destroyed.Like whispers. They started off quiet, just a word here and a nod there. Secrets passed between trusted friends of good deeds done and supplies left behind. Where to leave a message to call upon some helpers who did not seem to understand ( Read more... )

It had taken the army longer than expected to set out to Yllestad; Karla had been surprised (and touched) to hear that the camp had wanted to spend an extra day properly mourning the dead. Not just their own dead, but the landens that had fought and died, their will stripped away and replaced by something much darker. And once the impromptu service ( Read more... )

Karla looked at the heaps of the dead surrounding her camp and blinked back tears. The only "upside" to this--and yes, Karla was thinking of that in quotations--was that most of the dead were not her own ( Read more... )

*INCOMING! YOU'RE ABOUT TO BE UNDER ATTACK! AMBUSH! PREPARE! PREPARE!*Karla's alarm blared through the head of anyone with even the slightest hint of psychic ability. She'd deliberately shielded the landens from her warcry, but anyone else was fair game. She'd used a communication open to all the Blood--who cared if the other side heard her, so ( Read more... )

The further south their great procession had traveled, the more things had changed. Some of that was purely geographical, of course. They'd left the mountains and the great pine forests long behind them, trading them in for fields and rivers made mighty by the runoff from the mountains that only stopped when the weather turned water to ice. They ( Read more... )

A little more than a week ago, Karla had sent the vast majority of her Court away from Haven. One could hardly have a proper processional through one's home Territory without people smoothing the way. There were perspective soldiers to assemble, food to purchase, lodgings to prepare, Province Queens to quietly contact...And so Karla had sent her ( Read more... )

It was almost time for then to catch their portal home, but Morton had cautiously decided that there was enough time to visit one more landen village before they left. Even Julian didn't have much a problem with this, mollified by the five Blood males (and seven females) that Karla had handwavily, because cons are exhausting offered a place in her ( Read more... )

They had met yet another band of rebels today, this time in the deep Glacian hardwood forests. Karla still hadn't met anyone who bonded to her the way Julian had (which might actually might be a blessing in disguise), so while she had met several people who struck her as possible candidates for her Second and Third Circles, she had yet to issue ( Read more... )

The portal had dropped them off in the outskirts of Haven. Portalocity tech was one more thing that Karla could add to the list of information she didn't want most Kaeleerans to have, especially her enemies. But Haven wasn't that far from the Glacian border, which meant it was the ideal staging ground for their reconnaissance missions. They could ( Read more... )