Novels by Good Aldred

The next morning, they moved fast.Not running. Running attracted attention, and drew on reserves they couldn’t afford to burn. The kind of pace that ate distance, that didn’t invite conversation because everyone’s breath was needed for the walking. North had gone back in Ariadne’s arms, where he seemed perfectly content, watching the treeline pass with his usual serious attention. Yonus kept the rear. Eli kept magical sigils rotating. Nobody talked.Then, Archer opened his mouth.“We should make the forest edge by nightfall if we keep this pace,” he said. “Once we’re into the trees we’ve got better cover. The vampire territories start about a day’s walk past that.”“And after that?” Ariadne as

[CW- References to marital abuse and marital rape. Please take care of yourself while reading.]North was asleep.He’d gone down quickly, the way he always did when something big had happened. As if his small body understood that processing took energy, and had simply redirected all of it inward. He was tucked against Peggy’s side, his breathing slow and even, one little fist curled loosely against his cheek.Ariadne sat apart from the others and watched him sleep, and tried not to think.She failed.It started small. A single memory, rising to the surface the way things did when you stopped holding them down.North was three weeks old. She’d been awake for most of those three weeks. Not because he was difficult, he had never been difficult, he had always been so quiet, so still, watching everything with those big, serious eyes… But because she hadn’t been able to stop watching him. And Kurnich had come into the nursery. She hadn’t heard him coming. She never heard him coming. He’d lo

The scaffolding had gone up on the eastern wall overnight.Aurellia stood at the window of the war room and watched the workers move along it, small and purposeful against the pale morning sky. From up here Leviathorp still looked the way it always had,the market stalls setting up below, flower petals drifting across the cobblestones in the warm breeze, children already chasing each other between the legs of adults who were too busy to mind.She turned back to the war room.The table was covered. It had been covered for weeks,maps overlapping maps, pins trailing threads across territories, margins filled with her own handwriting and that of her advisors and, occasionally, the cramped annotated notes that Alice left when she’d been working through the night. The central map was the one she kept coming back to.

Nobody moved.The fire crackled.Ariadne was staring at her son. North looked back at her, serious and very still, the way he got when he’d made a decision and had committed to it entirely.“North,” Ariadne said. Her voice came out strange. Too careful. “What did you say?”“I special,” he said again. Clearer this time, if anything. Making sure she’d heard it properly.Ariadne’s gaze snapped to Peggy.Peggy did not look away.“You knew?” Ariadne whispered.“... Yeah,” Peggy replied.

“Right,” Eli said, spreading the map on the ground. “Now we need to move.”Nobody argued with that.The map was old and imperfect and had been folded and unfolded so many times that the creases had started to wear through. Eli pressed it flat with their palm and anchored the corners with a boot, a waterskin, and the hilt of Archer’s sword, which he’d surrendered without being asked. Peggy sat cross-legged on Yonus’s back. Ariadne had North in her arms and was standing slightly apart, bouncing him gently. Archer was looking at the map with the focused expression of a man trying very hard not to look like he didn’t understand the map.“We’re here,” Eli said, tapping a point in the south. “We need to get here.” They moved their finger a significant distance northwest. “Out of Lycan territory, out of range of Kurnich’s scouts, and preferably somewhere with a bed and a door that locks.”“Agreed on all counts,” Peggy said.“The problem is getting there.” Eli traced the route with one finger

Father Sace-Dote was in his office, as he usually was in the evenings, carefully relabelling a collection of small prayer vessels. He didn’t look up when Thea came in.“I don’t know anything,” he said pleasantly.“I know.” Thea shut the door behind her. “I just want to talk.”He glanced up at her over his spectacles. She watched him take in the expression on her face.“Ah,” he said. He set down the vessel he was holding. “Shut the inner door too, would you?”She did. He waited until she turned back to him before he spoke.“I am… aware that there has been some information,” he said carefully,