High on Karla's list of things she never knew she never wanted to do was this: knocking at her mother's door, a cup of poison in her hand, waiting execute an innocent woman so her uncle could go free. There were so many things wrong and unfair about what she was doing, it was hard to keep track. She wished she could have taken Dinah up on her offer ( Read more... )

The thirteen Province Queens assembled outside of Yllestad, shrinking against one another regardless of affiliation. Though Yllestad had been cleaned to the best of Karla's army's ability, there was no way to get rid of the psychic scents that were trapped in the wood and stones of the walls and roads and buildings. As far as Karla's Black Widows ( Read more... )

Karla hadn't expected to return to Yllestad after finding the field full of witchblood. But then the storm had blown up, and Yllestad was the only closest city where the entire army could bunk down for the night. There was no question of her people trying to set up tents tonight. The storm had beaten them here and moved northward, but they were ( Read more... )

The stay at Yllestad had really helped. Not only had they had a change to relax and recharge after the debacle with the bespelled landens, but they'd also gotten a chance to bond with the townfolk, who hadn't been entirely keen on an army encamped on their doorstep, especially not one that included landens. But her army had been courteous and ( 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... )

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... )

Karla stood in front of her entire army, expression formal and solemn. Those who had been left behind to train had been recalled, as had those who had gone ahead to scout. It had taken several days, but Karla had not been willing to begin until every person who followed her was in attendance. Behind her were five shrouded boxes; small ones, not ( Read more... )

The last time Karla had been here, she'd been incredibly nervous about how that evening would turn out and affect her future. Standing in the Keep tonight with a crowd of people around her--some of them almost complete strangers--made her almost laugh at how naive her fear had been the last time.

Her Offering was nothing. This was the completely ( Read more... )

Karla wasn't sure why she'd been surprised to discover that, in addition to renting the wonderful Captain Chiba and his yacht, Serenity, Warren had also rented them an island. Okay, so, he hadn't exactly rented the island, he'd rented the villa they were staying in which just happened to be situated on an island, and their exclusive use thereof had ( Read more... )