Unfettered

Normally I miss deadlines like a storm trooper misses Jedi.

It wasn’t necessary. Wilmer offered his piece of the map in exchange for a fair share. His only condition was to come along.” “And Maribor’s beard, was that ever a mistake,” Wilmer said. “Might have been better if you had killed me.” He looked at the thief. “Would have been quick and painless, right?” Royce shrugged. “Sure, why not.

Hadrian discovered that the most fascinating thing about plummeting in total darkness wasn’t the odd sense of euphoria instilled from the free fall or the abject terror derived from anticipating sudden death, but that he had the opportunity to contemplate both.

Unfettered is an anthology filled with magic, wonderment, and hope. It is more than it's combined stories, though. It is the power of friendship. Of giving. Of a science-fiction and fantasy community that protects its own. Of humanity escaping the ugliness that often plagues it to instead create a testament to the goodness found in every heart.

The effort of going home exhausted him. The effort of being home. Alexander had spent weeks in his nightmare, and all his things waited for him, unchanged. It was like walking into his room in his parents’ house and finding all his books and clothes from high school still where he’d left them. The artifacts of a previous life.

That's when I learned the hardest truth about vengeance: it had no logical end, served no real purpose, except perhaps to delay grief.

That’s when I learned the hardest truth about vengeance: it had no logical end, served no real purpose, except perhaps to delay grief. Vengeance was just an inversion of loss; or maybe its cowardly cousin.

You’re entitled to your opinion either way without me trying to tell you what to think.

Can’t be rid of everything that frightens or troubles us in this world. Some things we simply have to put up with—Dragons and Trolls among them.

Can I be honest here? I don’t read forewords. Can I be painfully honest? I don’t even know what forewords are for.

she had the strongest emotional arc—

Gods looked for such hubris when deciding where to step, and so far good fortune had been scarce.

I have a soft spot for minions. Lackeys. Henchmen. The sycophantic underlings who make a good villain great. Who would the Joker be without his flunkies? Hans Gruber without his crack team of gun-toting criminals? Sauron without his Uruk-hai?

That’s how he knew he wasn’t dead. The pleasures might all be gone, but the pain was exquisite.

So how’d you do it? How did you get to where you aren’t scared all the freaking time?” Erin’s smile drooped a little, tired with the effort.  “You’re making an assumption,” she said. “Just hang in there. It’ll get easier.”  “But not better,” Alexander said.  “But not better.

music, which had been meant for protection. I’d instinctively found the way to make that music a weapon. It was the difference between winning and not losing; between merely drawing breath and gasping it in after a mad dash.

At the top end you had some fairies squeeing at supersonic pitches; fairies thought all this military stuff was pretty silly, but they went along with it for the same reason that fairies ever did anything, namely, for the lulz.

There is no trick beyond sitting your arse in a chair everyday.