XarHD

The Spark

by XarHD

Chapter 614 in Harem Hotel

The Verant did not leave the ash. Andy had half expected them to, once it was said. He didn’t know why. But they stayed where they were, bowed over the place where she had stood, and the thin high cold stayed with them, and the Ring stayed exactly as still as the verdict had left...

Nigredo: Spero Lucem

by XarHD

Chapter 46 in Harem Hotel

Summer’s left hand stayed flat on the shut door a moment longer than it needed to, as if the door might change its mind. Behind them the Bath was warm and empty and quiet. Steam lay low over the water in the basins and moved a little when they breathed, and the stone under her b...

Elegy

by XarHD

Chapter 613 in Harem Hotel

Andy was still on his knees. He didn’t know how long he had been there. The stone under him was bare where the ash had been scuffed away, and cold, and he could feel every grain of it through the knees of his trousers. His right hand was still closed. When he made it open, a litt...

Goodbye

by XarHD

Chapter 612 in Harem Hotel

All three of Laura still had hold of him. One had her face pressed into his shirt, one had both arms locked around his neck, and the third had come in behind him and laid her cheek between his shoulder blades, and none of her showed any sign of letting go. Andy didn’t want her to...

Back to the Story

by XarHD

Chapter 613 in Harem Hotel

Voting on the Sixth Challenge

by XarHD

Chapter 612 in Harem Hotel

Not everyone had the same job. Rate each woman on how well she did the job she had — not on how big or dramatic that job was. Voting is on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being "fell short of her job" and 10 being "beyond anything anyone could have asked". You can vote here: <https...

Halves

by XarHD

Chapter 611 in Harem Hotel

Claire held her notebook shut against her chest with one arm. Her other hand was in Mildred’s. It had lain open on the ash for most of the night, a yard from her hand, and she hadn’t been able to reach it. She had it back now—she didn’t intend to put it down again. Mildred stoo...

Forbidden

by XarHD

Chapter 610 in Harem Hotel

Mildred stopped a little more than an arm’s length from Abi-Eshu, on the bare ash where nothing grew, and folded her hands in front of her. She looked as she always looked: the plain uniform, the hair pinned back, the smooth face. There was no badge at her collar. From where And...

Epiphany

by XarHD

Chapter 609 in Harem Hotel

Laura had seen the scabbard when he came. She had never seen the blade. It came out long and straight and plain, without a sound, and the gold still hanging in the air ran down it from the hilt to the point. He didn’t look at it. He let it hang low at his side as if it had always...

Nigredo: Post Tenebras

by XarHD

Chapter 45 in Harem Hotel

Adrien had been on his back on top of the covers for a long while. The windows glowed red along the bottom and gold higher up, and the light moved on the ceiling so slowly that he could tell it had moved only by looking away and back. The glass held its thin high note. Beyond the...

Unchained, Part 2

by XarHD

Chapter 608 in Harem Hotel

Laura stood in her chains with all three of her, as far up as they would let her, and every one of her eyes was on the fight. She couldn’t look anywhere else. Sam was out there with blood on her chin, and Sumiku with one wing trailing, and Norah, favoring a hip, and Samson Drei,...

Unchained, Part 1

by XarHD

Chapter 607 in Harem Hotel

The whispers had stopped when he came down off the throne. Marissa had spent the quiet since then on her back in the cold, listening to Laura breathe. She could hear it from the rim: three breaths going in together and coming out together, ragged at the top. Nergal stood over he...

Broken Glass

by XarHD

Chapter 606 in Harem Hotel

The letter sat stiff under the mantle against his chest. Caledfwlch hung at his hip. Somewhere on the far side of that arch, a long way up, Laura was holding on, and the bond between them was wider than it had been in days. He turned to Herman. Herman hadn’t moved since the nod....

Nigredo: Nondum Exstinctus

by XarHD

Chapter 44 in Harem Hotel

The Lounge was warmer than the Study, and Autumn was cold anyway. It had started in her hand at the desk and gone up her arm to the shoulder, and now it was in the back of her neck, the old kind of cold that came from inside and didn’t care how warm the room was. Her right hand...

A River of Stars

by XarHD

Chapter 605 in Harem Hotel

The black didn’t lift so much as thin, and then it was gone, as if it had only ever been a hand held over his eyes. Andy was standing. He had been sitting a moment ago. He could still feel the chair in the backs of his legs, the high back against his shoulders, the edge of the t...

The Heart of the Twelve

by XarHD

Chapter 604 in Harem Hotel

The corridor went on through the oldest of this world’s rooms, and for a long time Andy didn’t see any of them. They passed at the edge of his eye on both sides. Mud brick, reed, lamplight. The same few years over and over, in no order he could follow. Scarlet kept appearing in...

Fading Connections

by XarHD

Chapter 603 in Harem Hotel

Greg’s season ran out a little way past the nursery. The rooms went on burning on either side, but the people in them stopped being anyone Andy had grown up next to. Then Horun turned aside. It was another low arch, plain stone, no taller than the door of an ordinary house—the t...

Nigredo: Latet Ignis

by XarHD

Chapter 43 in Harem Hotel

The bell went on tolling somewhere above them, one long note and then the next, and the door of the Axis Mundi stood open with Adrien just inside it. He had opened it himself. Summer understood that a second later than she should have. He stood a step back from the sill with one...

Sarah

by XarHD

Chapter 602 in Harem Hotel

The lamp didn’t come any closer. Andy walked toward it at Horun’s side for a long time, past openings in both walls that were lit and murmuring and that he didn’t look into, past torches burning white and steady one after another until he stopped counting them, and the small war...

Back to the Main Sequence

by XarHD

Chapter 603 in Harem Hotel