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thecityofroses.com
City of Roses
@thecityofroses.com
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The ten thousand things; the one true only.

An urban fantasy epic set in Portland—46 novelettes (so far): paperbacks, ebooks, zines, and on the web.
thecityofroses.com | bookshop.org/shop/thecityofroses
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Included with the ebooks on Bookshop.org are, of course, the omnibus editions collecting each of the seasons so far:

bookshop.org/a/11486/9781...

bookshop.org/a/11486/9781...
The massive boles of concrete pillars rise to the deck of the freeway bridge ceiled above, and here below a sidewalk curls, a lamppost stands, a young but already gnarled and wizened cherry tree, perhaps, in snow-white bloom against the grey poured stone.
February 8, 2026 at 6:30 PM
thecityofroses.com
City of Roses ebooks (DRM free, of course) are now all available on Bookshop.org:

bookshop.org/a/11486/9781...

bookshop.org/a/11486/9781...

bookshop.org/a/11486/9780...

bookshop.org/a/11486/9781...
The covers of the first four volumes of City of Roses, set side by side: “Wake up…” (a fire hydrant, covered with pink blossoms); The Dazzle of Day (a frozen sunrise over the river); In the Reign of Good Queen Dick (a rainbow, over downtown); —or Betty Martin (trees planted in aluminum pots, climbing the side of a building).
February 8, 2026 at 6:27 PM
thecityofroses.com
A sepia duotone of burlesque performers Zero and Zen, the Porcelain Twinz, their hair not so severe, let down, relaxed, painted and dark-lashed eyes closed up, not obviously dressed, pressed together in a kiss but carefully, carefully, so as not to smear the lipstick. Photograph by Ken Marcus.
February 6, 2026 at 5:15 PM
thecityofroses.com
A page from Chochlea & Eustachia, comic strip characters drawn as identical blond women in brief teal chemises and black domino masks with blank white eyes, and the one has taken a hand-cranked drill to a wooden wall, turning it until someone inside the wall cries Ow! and laughing, turns to pick up a fork she uses to pry a panel loose, revealing the other, curled upside down inside the wall, What do you want? she says, I was just falling asleep! Art by Hans Rickheit.
February 6, 2026 at 4:08 PM
thecityofroses.com
The first season omnibus, that collects vols. 1 & 2 in one convenient ebook.

Comprising novelette nos. 1 – 22.

thecityofroses.com/books/season...
A street-corner sign for the City of Roses Motel, red paint peeling from the edges of it, white panels stained with old rain and rust, the M and the L missing from Motel, all beneath an old-fashioned streetlamp that appears to be lit despite the afternoon sun. The sign’s thrust up from a wild profusion of a rosebush, canes sprung every which way bent low by the weight of the heavy red blooms. Vacancy, says the sign just above them.
February 5, 2026 at 10:22 PM
thecityofroses.com
Burlesque performers Zero and Zen, the Porcelain Twinz, on a pale purple stage before a shimmering golden curtain, stand by a stripper pole, both in purple torselettes and black fishnet stockings, black stripper heels and black opera gloves, and purple gaiters about their throats, and their lips are painted the same bright red, and their eyes with the same thick lashes and blue shadows, and their yellow hair is not so severely straight as sometimes, but done up in simple swirls atop their heads, and dangled about their shoulders with a bit of bounce, and the one crouches, knees spread and one hand on her knee, and her other hand reached back to clasp her sister about the thigh. Photographer unknown.
February 4, 2026 at 1:28 PM
thecityofroses.com
And starting next week, appearing Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the 29th novelette, " – shiver & headache – ":

thecityofroses.com/chapbooks/no...

#IndieAuthors #WebSerials #FantasyLit #Montage
No. 29, “ – shiver & headache – ”. Rough pavement stretches away, ruddy with old mud and a bit of dried grass growing there at the verge, and scattered across it dozens if not hundreds of oblong greenish kernels of shattered safety glass, the detritus of a broken car window like so many forgotten gems.
February 1, 2026 at 12:50 AM
thecityofroses.com
" – Hands of an Angry – " is up in its entirety on the website, which means there's now 28 novelettes of the epic up there for you to read, for free:

thecityofroses.com/contents

#FreeBooks #FantasyLit #PDX #GuidNeighbours
No. 28, “ – Hands of an Angry – ”. The sun’s just rising over the horizon back thataway, rays of it striking sharp shadows from the stonework of the lone tower rising before us, the sort of modest skyscraper one might find in any mid-range city, thirteen storeys high, counting the mezzanine. An American flag at the very top of it whips in the wind blowing from the east. The store windows along the sidewalk are dark, and the streets are empty.
February 1, 2026 at 12:36 AM
thecityofroses.com
The second volume, collected: The Dazzle of Day —the City of Portland (ware the guid neighbours).

Comprising novelette nos. 12 – 22.

thecityofroses.com/books/the-da...

"—to explain how this is Emma Bull's War for the Oaks plus Portlandia with a smattering of Little, Big and Chinatown."
Vol. 2, The Dazzle of Day. The sun rises bright but indistinct behind icy clouds over a fog-bound river, girdered bridgework crossing it to the right there, to lose itself in the haze before reaching the other side, and tiny trees lining this side, weirdly sharp against the water gelid and still. Low riverfront buildings below, a hotel, perhaps, some old brick-walled offices, all still bluely dimmed despite the rising brightness.
January 27, 2026 at 11:39 PM
thecityofroses.com
Day 24, a Saturday snippet: here's something from the very first novelette, "Prolegomenon"—right after Jo meets Ysabel for the very first time, and they end up at Robin Goodfellow's ramshackle house—this is how we party in the City of Roses:

thecityofroses.com/story/?c=Pro...

#FantasyIndiesJanuary
“A dreadfully dull evening,” says Ysabel, frowning a little. Looking up at nothing in particular. A set of pipes has begun to drone somewhere further in the house. Coming closer. The fiddle scrapes into a new note and begins to wrap a slow pulsing melody around the unseen pipes. “Is this..?” says Ysabel. The corners of Robin’s mouth turn down, arching his little mustache up and out. “I merely asked them to play. I didn’t tell them what.” The piper, pale, her clotted yellow-white curls swept back from her face, steps a measured march into the front room to the squeezing of her little pipes. The crowd – varied, lycra and fleece, glittered cheeks, khakis and sweaters, army pants and a black sports bra, a floppy mohawk, a tuxedo, a glittering minidress, a bared chest under swirls of bodypaint, pegged jeans and garish T-shirts, Roland’s green and silver tracksuit as he makes his way across the room, sliding through them all standing quietly now, watching, waiting. The singer smiling as the piper slowly picks up the fiddle’s melody over her drone. The drummer wiping sweat out of his face, swigging something from a red plastic cup. “It is,” says Ysabel, grabbing Jo’s hand. “Come on.” “What?” says Jo. “Lady,” says Roland, there beside them, reaching out to almost but not quite take Ysabel’s arm. “It is perhaps time we got you home.” “Not yet,” says Ysabel, turning her back to him, her hands on Jo’s upper arms. Her eyes closing. “Listen,” she says. There’s been a shift in the song, gears changed. The guitar ambling forward now in a rickety rhythm line as the melody takes a breath and repeats itself, strong, assured. The drummer waiting, sticks still. Nodding to someone, hey. The singer looks out over the little crowd there in Robin’s front room and lifts her microphone to her lips and says, half-singing, “Along the shore the cloud waves break, the twin suns sink beneath the lake, the shadows lengthen – in Carcosa…” Jo frowns. “It’s not hooked up.” Ysabel, her head tipped back, hair hanging heavy as she sways left foot to right and back, her hands still on Jo’s arms, smiles. “What?” “The microphone,” says Jo. “Strange is the night where black stars rise and strange moons circle through the skies – but stranger still is lost Carcosa…” The drums pop then, once. Someone whoops. The piper’s playing two lines over the steady heartbeat of her drone, one marching a slowly quickening lockstep with the grinning fiddle, the other skirling after the guitar, each chasing the other, looking for the monstrous beats to come. The whole room tensely waiting, almost, almost. “Songs the Hyades shall sing, where flap the tatters of the King, must die unheard in dim Carcosa…” Jo closes her eyes. Ysabel’s hands fall away. Jo takes a deep breath. “Song of my soul, my voice is dead – die though, unsung, as tears unshed shall dry and die in lost Carcosa…” The fiddle and pipes are pruning, boiling the melody down as the guitar and pipes settle and under it all the drone and the threat of the drums. “In Carcosa… lost Carcosa… dim Carcosa…” A grizzled man pauses his bobbing head to shove his white-taped black-rimmed glasses back up his nose. Robin pinches off a blissful little smile and downs the last of whatever’s in his mug. A dark girl in patched overalls throws wide her arms her hands swallowed by bulky workgloves. Becker catches his breath and looks eyes shining at the singer as the woman in cat’s eye glasses eases a hand into the hip pocket of his jeans. The dervish melody has spun itself tighter and tighter until it’s almost nothing more than two notes pulsing on-off one-oh in-out da-da as the singer wails. The drummer lifts his sticks and hangs there, waiting. “In Carcosa… lost Carcosa… dim Carcosa…” Jo opens her eyes. That first brontolithic beat unleashes something monstrous. The room whirls snaps leaps kicks stomps into motion, heaving as one with the avalanching rhythm. Jo is in the thick of it now arms high above her head yelling, yelling, Ysabel beside her, head down, hair flying, all of it so loud the music is almost lost, the band redundant all of them, madly now chasing some driving jig just barely out of reach. The fiddler’s spinning widdershins in a circle of tossing people dancing about him, the piper’s on her knees, cheeks blimped, pipes jerking; the guitarist still cannot be seen up in the shadows on the stairs but can most definitely be heard. The singer’s head’s thrown back, microphone lifted high above her, howling the wordless melody up into it, a drawn-out hopeless nameless vowel, and the drummer’s making up for lost time. But Ysabel is gone.
January 24, 2026 at 9:23 PM
thecityofroses.com
Two faces, nose to nose, eyes closed, lips parted from a kiss concluded, and lipstick smeared about both mouths, and chins, and even those noses, such a passionate mess. Models unknown, photographed by An. Maiskaya.
January 23, 2026 at 7:00 PM
thecityofroses.com
“Maiestie,” must no less beg than a kingdom. —We pause a moment for an epilogue, of sorts.

thecityofroses.com/story/?c=Mai...

(In which a contract's signed, work is awful, fortune's made, blood—and wine—are spilled, and two funerals are held.)
No. 22: “Maiestie.” A street-corner sign for the City of Roses Motel, red paint peeling from the edges of it, white panels stained with old rain and rust, the M and the L missing from Motel, all beneath an old-fashioned streetlamp that appears to be lit despite the afternoon sun. The sign’s thrust up from a wild profusion of a rosebush, canes sprung every which way bent low by the weight of the heavy red blooms. Vacancy, says the sign just above them.
January 20, 2026 at 9:11 PM
thecityofroses.com
Day 17, a Saturday snippet. Let's go with something from the 28th novelette, " – Hands of an Angry – ", which will be appearing on the website over the next two weeks. Those of you who've read your Delany and your Russ might well recognize the game that's being played, here...

#FantasyIndiesJanuary
“A cool head,” he says, and then from his knobbled fingers that tiny scarlet figure trembling drops, straight to the tiny frozen waves of the sea below, clack and tumble. “Though a steady hand,” he says, “is also of some use,” and he reaches down to pluck it up again. Frowning over the board spread out upon the low table, the ocean before him, the mountains rising a rumple of snowy grey on the other side, the forest, the desert, the river between, and all stitched together by a dusty road. “Clothilde,” he says. Two cities, each made up of cunningly joined hexagonal tiles of tiny palaces, temples, arcades, favelas, the one there scarlet, where the river flows down from the mountains, the other a soapy viridian, spread along the margins of the bay. “Read me again, his last move?” “The Poet, Grandfather,” says the woman curled in the brown leather armchair opposite, peering at the sheet of onionskin in her hand, “to one eight nine point nine, thirty-seven aught, north by east.” Her feet tucked under her thighs, and a lacey shawl about her shoulders. “Blasted Rufer notation,” he says, reaching along the thick wooden frame of the board, carved with obscure characters, a sentence, or an equation, twining through a repeated pattern of egg-and-dart. He flips a switch with a hefty thunk, and tiny white lights blink on, a grid spread across the board, shining in the blue, the yellow, the green, the grey and the brown, though here and there a point is dimly amber or entirely dark, and one of them there by the red city’s winking, on and off. “Umf,” he says, his hand, that little scarlet figure, hovering over a yellowing ridge, dithering between two pinpricks of light, “there,” he says, setting it down amid other figures red and green and Ah, me, sighs a scratchy voice from the speakers set in the board’s frame, the only Emperor doesn’t glitter. “What were his rolls, again?” Wrapped about in a dark blue dressing gown, and his curls are stiffly grey, swept back from his forehead. Five dice are laid on the table by the board, three of them glossily black with white pips, one glassily clear, the pips but chiseled notches, and the last is larger, an angular icosahedron, bright red, its triangular faces printed with astrological symbols. “Three, one, four, a six, and Ninurta,” she says, reading from the onionskin. “Then I do have it right,” he says, looking them over. “Now: we must formulate our response. And I must admit, the temptation to reply in kind to such a cheeky provocation,” his hand trembling over that grouping of red figures, a Tinker-Prince, a Hedgewych, a couple of Jugglers and leading them all the red Poet, there on the slope of the ridge held by a lone green Beast, “is overwhelming, but one must be wary of the pitfalls of intemperate overreaction. Thus, the cool head,” but off back that way somewhere a simple descending chime rings out, and he frowns. “I wonder who that could be,” he says, as Clothilde gets up out of her chair, “at this hour?”
January 18, 2026 at 1:20 AM
thecityofroses.com
Quote with your purple art.
No. 17, “Deliverance.” Sunset, of lavenders deepening as night falls into violet and indigo. A reservoir mirrors the astonishing colors of the sky, the silhouettes of the trees lining the straight edges of it, and behind them, among them, the lights of houses and street corners can be made out, reaching away to the far hills off behind a scrim of haze. One lone streetlight shines over the sidewalk edging the water, above a neat wrought-iron railing.
January 16, 2026 at 3:15 PM
thecityofroses.com
The 27th novelette is almost done, which means starting next week, appearing Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, no. 28, " – Hands of an Angry – "

(In which a window is broken, an indulgence curtailed, a sermon delivered, swords are swung, and a match is struck.)

thecityofroses.com/chapbooks/no...
No. 28, “ – Hands of an Angry – ”. The sun’s just rising over the horizon back thataway, rays of it striking sharp shadows from the stonework of the lone tower rising before us, the sort of modest skyscraper one might find in any mid-range city, thirteen storeys high, counting the mezzanine. An American flag at the very top of it whips in the wind blowing from the east. The store windows along the sidewalk are dark, and the streets are empty.
January 16, 2026 at 1:03 AM
thecityofroses.com
“Gallowglas,” neither good against horsemen, nor able to endure an encounter with pikes. —Our season has its climax.

thecityofroses.com/story/?c=Gal...

(In which a mirror is broken, a story's told, somethings fall, a cigarette is offered, and a fire burns.)
No. 21: “Gallowglas.” Looking up and up the sharp corner of a vaulting skyscraper, too sharp by far to be regularly squared, and narrow windows set one atop another all the way up the edge of it, climbing into an unearthly violet sky. There is, perhaps, in what color the leached light can strike from glass and from the framing stone, just a hint of pink.
January 15, 2026 at 11:09 PM
thecityofroses.com
Day 10, Saturday snippet: Here’s the opening from novelette no. 30, " – on pretending that – ", detailing how a relatively recent and real bit of Portland history might've actually gone down, featuring Ysabel's brother, King Lymond, and the Soames of the Mechanicals Local 235.

#FantasyIndiesJanuary
The locomotive stubby, boxy, there between brick-walled warehouses, an idling rumble so large and full they step around, move through it, a dozen or so in coveralls, toward the lone boxcar coupled to the end. A couple clamber up on the walkway running back up the side of the locomotive to knock the panels of it, peer in the vents, wreathed in the streetlight tangled on steaming exhaust. The rest cluster about a sliding door in the side of the boxcar, splashed with graffiti. A lever’s thrown, latches undone with booms that echo under the rumble, that door slides open even as an overhead door grates up on the warehouse there, snort a forklift pulling out onto the loading dock, and shouts, arms waving, someone in coveralls leaping up on the dock to confer heatedly with a man in shirtsleeves. The woman behind the wheel of the forklift holds up a clipboard. The rest of them all in coveralls form up a line across the street, from boxcar to loading dock, hup! a shout as swung from the boxcar comes an enormous burlap sack, hup! as it’s caught and passed to the next, and the next, even as a second swings out, a third, as the first’s heaved up on the dock, neatly dropped on the forklift’s waiting pallet, and the next, with grunts and whups of bags passed hand to hand down the line. I’m the man, someone chants, the publican man, and others join in, that waters the workers’ beer! Yes I’m the man, the middlin’ man, that waters the workers’ beer! What do I care if it makes them ill, or it makes them terrible queer, I’ve a car and a yacht and an æroplane, and I waters the workers’ beer! Past the warehouse, deep shadows of an overpass, a cast-iron streetlight stands sentinel on high. Two men beside the balustrade up there, couple-three yards above the snoring loco- motive, watching them unload the boxcar, another hup! and a hitch in the line, someone slaps the fender of the forklift, the load lurches, lifts, the motor whines as it backs away. From the boxcar tumbles a fresh pallet, grey scraps of lumber nailed ruthlessly square, falling edge-on into the waiting hands of the line to be caught and awkwardly rolled like a cornered wheel up to the loading dock tipped, falling, bang! into place. In its wake the heavy sacks resume their swinging, tossing progress, I reaches my hand for the water-tap, and I waters the workers’ beer! “Boys wanted to put on a show,” says one of the men up there. “Send it off in style.” His suit a greyly green, his black meshback cap that says ftz-45 over the bill. “Last delivery by rail to a factory in the Triangle. End of an era.” “Triangle?” says the other man, sweater the color of oats, shock of hair gone dull in the streetlight. “The Northwest Industrial Triangle, sire? This vitiated district of your demesne, that we have faithfully served so many years?” “It’s called the Pearl District, Tommy Tom,” says the King. “Has been since Nu Shooz had a hit.”
January 11, 2026 at 12:06 AM
thecityofroses.com
Day 9, a free Friday: I think I'll point you to the gallery of character art that the Spouse organized as a birthday surprise some years ago, with drawings of major players in the epic by some talented cartoonists you may well be familiar with…

pixelfed.social/c/7017637072...

#FantasyIndiesJanuary
Jo, glumly determined in a Ramones T-shirt, and Ysabel, gleefully shushing in a brick-red blouse, stealthily secret themselves in a manhole, just out of sight of two watchful knights, Roland in his green tracksuit, sword in hand, and Gaveston, red hair flopping from a high widow's peak, rumpled linen suit over an untucked white shirt, a portfolio tube slung from one shoulder; they're both on the lookout for our protagonists, and behind them all Detour and Caution Working and Danger signs, and the backdrop is a single ghostly rose. Art by Dylan Meconis.
January 9, 2026 at 10:27 PM
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“Sun,” fit for so joyfull day. —Ysabel prepares herself for loss, and Jo sets out to save her.

thecityofroses.com/story/?c=Sun

(In which keys are lost, a plan is lost, an answer's lost, a house is lost, a duel is lost, and all is lost.)
No. 20: “Sun.” Cloudless sky a seamless blue above, and at the bottom of the frame a utilitarian silver orb atop, perhaps, a pole, and reflected within the buildings about, the brick-lined plaza below. Rising from that orb a stylized golden sun, a simple profile, looking up in something like wonder, and shining rays like wind-tossed locks.
January 8, 2026 at 11:39 PM
thecityofroses.com
“Moon,” up above. —Three Kings contend, on planes mere mortals miss.

thecityofroses.com/story/?c=Moon

(In which a door's unlocked, a sword left behind, a coat is given, a light's turned on, and a Throne is sat.)
No. 19: “Moon.” A single naked looping fluorescent bulb set to one side lights a small dark-painted portico about a nondescript side door, but only the edges and the thick line of an electrical cable and close by that bulb the gleams struck from the near-black paint. Otherwise, the rest of whatever might be there is utterly lost in shadow.
January 6, 2026 at 6:32 PM
thecityofroses.com
Day 3, a snippet from the work: we'll go with this, from the 3rd volume, in which Bruno, Shrieve of the court, takes it upon himself to teach Chilli, the Harper, something of how it is value works, in a room full of, well, let him tell you:

thecityofroses.com/books/in-the...

#FantasyIndiesJanuary
the Worth of a Thing “Uprights, spinnets, pianos droits;” says Bruno, “I began by buying up office furniture, but in every city and many of the sizable towns, rows of old terrace houses were being demolished to make way for modern council estates. And in the front parlors of these terrace houses, gathering dust since the days before television, before the wireless, before electricity,” he reaches across the front of the piano, sliding the central panel to one side. The man within snorts himself startled awake, white-haired head laid back against the rows of hammers poised against tautly angled strings. “Spruce!” he blurts, and coughs, patting the pockets of his crisp white shirt, arms tucked close within the cabinet’s confines. “Spruce,” he says again, “from the forests about Old Tjikko, long may he reign,” and fits a monocle to his eye, “chilled in the hold of an old steamer down through the Baltic and the cold North Sea. Mahogany from Brazil, that baked in breathless heat across the Atlantic, between the Pillars of Hercules and up the Balearic to Marseille. Iron,” his smile is beatific, “scraped from Erzberg’s slopes, spun to wire in Vienna and brought by rail across Venetia and Sardinia. Sugar pine from the very wilds of Northwest America about us now,” reaching out of the cabinet to gently stroke the keys below, “stacked for a harrowing, storm-wracked voyage all the way around the Horn, only to end up a century later right back where it began. The ebony veneer from too many different pieces of wood, some of them once keys from other instruments, but not an ounce of ivory to be found: the natural keys are topped with porcelain, which has left them with the occasional chip and crack, though not a piece is missing.” Chilli’s stepped back, pressed against the draped piano behind him. Bruno’s tugging something from another pocket of his vest, a tiny glassine envelope. “I’ve kept in tune as best I can,” says the man within the piano, with a gesture to the strings arrayed behind him. “Shall I play you something? In a rag-time, perhaps?” Bruno steps close, holds up a fingertip glimmering gold, which the man in the piano seizes and brings it to his lips for a kiss, and a slow and savoring lick.
January 3, 2026 at 2:46 PM
thecityofroses.com
With the 26th novelette done, next week will see the launch of the 27th, " – tends to crumble – ", the way out of most antinomies. Fits appearing Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays:

thecityofroses.com/chapbooks/no...

#Zines #WebSerials #FantasyLit #RobotFightinBoots
No. 27, “ – tends to crumble – ”. Across the street stretches the mostly empty wall of some warehouse at least a couple storeys tall, blandly grey but with patches where underlying coats of white paint and peachly orange paint show through. A couple-three shallow steps lift off the sidewalk to the ghost of a doorway, long since walled over. In the middle of that wall, the threshold of it six feet up at least, a single blue door with a nondescript knob, and no way to get to it. A tree, leaves just folding, grows from the sidewalk before it.
January 2, 2026 at 7:43 PM
thecityofroses.com
“Dazzle,” the glittering prize. Jo becomes the Huntsman, and Ysabel becomes.

thecityofroses.com/story/?c=Daz...

(In which way is made, debts are negotiated, something is spilled, villains are dueled, and snow begins to fall.)
No. 18: “Dazzle.” Two signs at an angle, brightly shining against the night. The lit sign above, jutting out from the storefront, says Mary’s Club, All Nude Review, Cocktails. The neon sign beneath, along the front of the store itself, says Mary’s in pale blue and pink swirls of light, over a lit panel with removable letters that currently say Girls Full Bar And Food Lottery Games ATM Open 365 Days 11AM Dancers From 1130 We Miss You Roy 1915 2006.
December 30, 2025 at 7:23 PM
thecityofroses.com
The 26th novelette, “ – only borders lie – ”, is halfway done: a challenge has been issued, and Jo must answer for it.

thecityofroses.com/story/?c=onl...

(In which a sleeper on a threshold wakes, knights aren’t dubbed, fine points of etiquette are debated, and love proclaimed, after a fashion.)
No. 26, “ – only borders lie – ”. A narrow but grand arch of stone in the stone wall of a building long since given up to the elements, seams and edges roughened and blurred by rain and sun and wind and time, slathered with moss, sprinkled with greenery growing wherever it might find purchase. Through the arch the far wall of what was once a room’s revealed, and sprayed in white paint across the stone and moss huge handwritten letters that say, What if I kissed you there in the midnight without warning.
December 27, 2025 at 5:23 PM
thecityofroses.com
“Deliverance,” is only perfect for a very short time. Ysabel tries to save her mother, and Jo buys a gun.

thecityofroses.com/story/?c=Del...

(In which the chase is on, sureties are demanded, a briefcase is opened, horror brought up, and the King comes back.)
No. 17, “Deliverance.” Sunset, of lavenders deepening as night falls into violet and indigo. A reservoir mirrors the astonishing colors of the sky, the silhouettes of the trees lining the straight edges of it, and behind them, among them, the lights of houses and street corners can be made out, reaching away to the far hills off behind a scrim of haze. One lone streetlight shines over the sidewalk edging the water, above a neat wrought-iron railing.
December 24, 2025 at 1:03 AM