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One part of Leo's mind was focused on getting Paige out. The other part was gnawing on how everything had gone from bad, to worse, to catastrophic.
Venatori. Here. Now, of all times.
Leo had run into Venatori before. The religious order had been established millennia before he'd gone through his passage to post-mortal. Alder had shared that the Venatori hunted anyone even tangentially associated with post-mortals.
Leo hadn't really understood. Not until they killed the entire human village that had been helping him and Alder.
He'd barely escaped the ambush the Venatori had set. But he’d lost control in his efforts to avoid their trapwires and hidden blades, his wings setting fire to the houses. Somehow the Venatori had been expecting his fire, and had doused the remaining houses with some kind of accelerant. The fleeing people had been...
Leo forced the memory away. His wounds hadn't healed for months, but it was nothing compared to the torture the humans had suffered.

- from NO SKY LIKE MIDNIGHT, by Nora Shear

The word "Ambush" is in bold pink font. There are star decorations in each corner and a meteor decoration above the text.

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“No,” the doctor insisted. “Staying here is suicide. Getting up is trying.”

“Trying to die.”

Nat was back on her knees. Her face was stern, the blue eyes glittering with annoyance. “So what you’re telling me Vola Falone, is that you survived down here for days, killed a full-grown lizard with one eye shut, cracked their map with no resources, still managed to find the exit...and now you’re ready to give up?” Vola shrank at the judgement and disappointment on the normally-kind face. “Get the fuck up.”

“I--”

“Some psycho metal band was playing. Frontwoman was a demon that somehow got past the city wards. They’re saying some fan got alone time with the singer and beat her to death. Once they found the body, the city swarmed in and cracked down on the place hard. Word on the street is they’re still trying to figure out how a demon got past the protection wall. But now Wali’s on extra alert because he’s afraid the Cutting Room crowd is gonna be looking for a new place to hunt.” Leo shook his head. “Never did like that place. Plus they serve Vultures.” He turned his head to spit, then caught Amanda’s death glare and turned it into a cough.

“A mission?”
“You sound surprised.”
“Probably because I am. We’ve never been sent on a mission before. Ever.”
“I heard you saying earlier that you weren’t ready for any of this. I also heard you say that no one cares what you want. Both of those things are true.”
“Yes, sir.”
He set the refolded napkin on the metal tabletop, beside his now-empty plate.
“With our enemy’s communication disabled, now’s our chance to do some damage in the rim territories.”
“Sir?”
“The core worlds will still be too heavily fortified. We’d never be able to raid any of their facilities there. The rim worlds may not be as critical to the function of the kingdom, or whatever our enemies plan on replacing it with, but there are still targets of value, and no way for them to call for help. There’s an armory on the third planet of the Mardon system. We need to make sure that the weapons and supplies they have there aren’t used against our people. Presuming any of our people are still left to fight.”

Silhouette of an oak rtee against a green background.

Text: A Sylvan Tale #WIPSnips "raid" (theft)

Now Nin knew where the missing fifty gold staters from her fortune went, besides the five hundred for Willows dowry. Her gut tensed in nauseous knots; her father, Willow, her cousin, all knowing of the pregnancy. Alan and her own mother, Brer, probably knew as well.

Nin knew she was not truly loved by her own parents, but the duplicity, the lies, the scheming plans behind her back, on top of the theft of her money, made her question her own instincts. She had tried to convince herself over the years that what her parents said and did were always in her best interest, even if she got short shrift.

Life could flow through easily. The Weave was constant through all creation, so the Mirror was no barrier to it, but for Nat? She had broken it once to get in her. Akash tricked her into doing that.

At the center of the restaurant was a smaller octagonal bar and cooking area, lit up from above by a sign bound with light spirits that flashed the name Dockside Bar and Grill. Zephyr frowned at it from their table. “The names here are terribly uncreative, don’t you think?”

Lyriel stopped turning the Paladin symbol they had found over in her hands to look at them. “What?”

“I’m not saying I could come up with anything better, but at least a little wordplay would be nice. Imagine a restaurant in the city being called Beside-the-Sidewalk. No one would eat there.”

“Maybe,” she said, gray eyes unreadable, “they didn’t want to make waves by being too clever.”

Zephyr blinked in surprise. “Was that a pun?”

She shrugged. “I’m shore I don’t know what you’re talking a-boat.”

“Ah. It a-piers I was mistaken then.”

The two of them stared each other down, daring the other to break first. Ultimately, it was Zephyr who laughed first, but it was due to the slight twitch of Lyriel’s scarred lips that said she could barely keep it together. Sure enough, their laughter brought out her own giggle. Suddenly, they were both eighteen again, joking and laughing on the roof of the orphanage as the airships passed by overhead.

The tightness in Zephyr’s chest eased a little.

But the moment faded, as a calm in the middle of a storm was wont to do, and the silence stretched to uncomfortable lengths before Zephyr could stand it no longer.

“What is it, Ahnnie?” Ceres slid her hand in her pocket, missing the cool and heavy grip of her Coraliron blade.

“Dunno yet,” Ahn-Me murmured, and somehow that made Ceres feel even more unsettled. The bar owner had a seltzer with lime sweating on the bar counter, and she took a sip from it. Not her usual red-wine. A quick glance back towards the soundbooth, caught Wali peering over the wooden edge, pretending to keen a long pointed ear towards the stage as they ran another sound check. Something else off. Bad as he was at it sometimes, Wali always got the sound just right after the first try. Even he was on the hunt? What was going on?

“It’s a big change. Are you ready for this?” she asked, giving Izzy one last chance to change her mind.
Izzy caught the woman’s eyes in the mirror. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s time.”
Before she knew it, her hair was pulled into a ponytail, braided, and tied off. A few quick snips later, it was gone, dropped into a resealable bag ready for donation.
“Now,” the hairdresser said, “let’s talk about style. You don’t have much left to work with. Any ideas about what you want?”
Izzy hadn’t thought that far ahead. The plan had always been to cut it off. She never gave any thought to what came after.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Just…make me look cool?”
Mel Waverly - These Words Remain Unsaid, chapter 8

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“Fuck if I know, Zoe. I’m just saying you hardly need foreign money coming in to set barbarians off raiding civilized lands or disaffected warriors to turn their skills to their own profit.”

“Uncivilized’ people are hardly a rampaging horde,” Zoe objected.

“Of course you’d say that, you’re one of them! But we both know for some people, raiding Macedonia or their other neighbors is a way of life. As long as they don’t catch you or they go after some other group, it’s very lucrative. I know you know this.”

“There are no coincidences,” Richard said as he stood. He looked out to the sector. “I made a grave error in thinking I was ensuring Veronica’s safety by keeping her sequestered. She left during the raid because we were all distracted and couldn’t stop her. The Circle picked her up because Decimus wanted to use her against us.” He turned back to Ferris. His expression reflected the weight of their choices. “Don’t you find it odd that Ort’s men attacked Rollan over tainting a vat of cream with dye? Decimus has been messing with Rollan from the shadows for a very long time. Now he can’t. Rollan has caught on. He is gaining power. Decimus is going to strike. It is up to us to be prepared.”
Ferris winced as he pushed away from the wall. The plasma wounds on his back stung with the release of pressure. “It has been astonishing,” Ferris said as he centered his breath. The pain lessened as his muscles relaxed. “Rollan has nearly destroyed everything that Titus created.”

An excerpt from the first draft of my book A Thief's Guide to Happily Ever After: She stands and crosses to Melirin, clasping her shoulder. “Hey, I’m going—”
A fist flies out, and Ness rears back, her face searing with pain, as she cups her tender nose. “What the fuck?!”
Melirin scowls. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“I wasn’t. I was waking you up to tell you I’m going for a walk but you had to go and attack me.”
“You should’ve said my name or something.” She shoves to her feet, raising her voice. “You can’t just touch someone and not expect some sort of reaction.”
“I didn’t want to wake Thias.”

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