I Read Stories: Gray Skies, Red Wings, Blue Lips, Black Hearts by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

Gray Skies, Red Wings, Blue Lips, Black Hearts by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor in Apex Magazine

A girl has lost her soul and Redcap Kestrel agrees to get it back. Once she served the Grey Prince in the Prosperous Above and to be the best she made a deal with a demon. Now she lives down in the city below. She will have to encounter old friends and enemies and perhaps even confront her own past, again.

A tale of loss and finding grace in the ashes of failure, there a double handful of passages of achingly good words.

“As one of the Gray Prince’s guard, she had wings of silk and steel and shadow, etched with scarlet spellwork.”

“Whoever this thief is, she will find it, kill it, and return the girl’s soul. Another day will settle into calendar dust and blur into the palette of time. Nothing changes much in the City.”

“The demon flies at her, a spill of burned oil, once as addicting as poppy and as beautiful as obsidian and as tempting as forgiveness. It ripples with teeth and hook-tipped legs and it smells of decay. She dives down to meet it in mid-air. She has no wings, but she’s never forgotten how to fall in the City.”

Read This: For a fantasy about heroism in the depths of despair, with moments of beauty
Don’t Read This: A fallen city that can never rise is too real