ファンタジーの物語
ショートドラマ、連載小説、オーディオブック。数分で夢中に、何日も忘れられない。
The Rider's Second Flame
Sunniva Marrowlark tends the Emberwell, the great communal hearth whose flame keeps the cliff-city of Cindral Vault from freezing, and she coaxes the last dragon egg in the Reaches into hatching. The hatchling, Vyrrenne, does something no dragon has done in four hundred years: it splits its bond, taking its heat from Sunniva and its sky-sense from Kestrian Vohl, the grim Dragon-Rider whose first flame died in the Ashfall — which means the two of them must live, sleep, and fly inside a tether of two hundred paces or the hatchling guts out. As they discover that split bonds only ever fall on fated pairs, they also discover why the Emberwell has burned so long: the Vault has been siphoning dead dragons' flame into it, Kestrian's first dragon included, and the Ledgerwarden intends to make Vyrrenne the next fuel. The finale ends the siphon for good: the Emberwell is broken open into a hundred common hearths, the Sundering Nail is destroyed, and Kestrian and Sunniva choose each other out loud, with no fate required.
A Bargain Made in Thorns
Ashenmarch is walled by the Briar, a living thorn hedge grown from a bargain struck three centuries ago, and Idonea Brackwater is one of the briarwrights licensed to prune it. When her shears bleed a Heartthorn that shouldn't exist, the Thorn Court sends its Debt-Keeper, Ossian Thray, to audit a balance the city has never once been asked to pay — and Ida buys herself forty-one days with a counter-bargain that binds her wrist to his in living thorn. What they find in the Registry of Bargains is a forged page, a tithe paid in Brackwater women, and a debt that was settled two hundred years ago; what they find in each other is the one thing the Ledger cannot price, and only one of them can pay to close the account.
Snowbound with the Grumpy Alpha: A Forty-Day Claim
Sunniva 'Nivi' Halloran is smuggling her newly presented brother out of Concord territory when black ice puts her truck in a ravine on Vondrak land, and the alpha who digs her out — Rurik Vondrak, grief-locked, scent-blind, universally feared — discovers she is the only living thing he can smell. With a census rider three days out and Toby's name already inked into the Ledger of Assigned Names, Rurik declares a false courtship, binding them to forty days under one roof and one set of watching eyes. What starts as performance becomes a real bond, and the bond becomes evidence — because the poison that stole Rurik's scent came from Nivi's mother's formula, and the Magistrate who used it is coming to take the pack, the boy, and her, lawfully.
Burn Scar: The Alpha I Was Sent to Destroy
Thessaly Ardaugh comes to Ashfall Ridge to explain three impossible uphill burns and leaves with a secret that ends careers: the Kettleback Pack runs the hotshot crew, and their alpha, Malachy Deverow, walked into a flame front to keep her alive. The scar on her palm turns out to be a tether laid by a dying wolf twenty-two years ago, a half-bond that is now eating her from the inside and that, by Concord law, is a capital crime for the man on the other end of it. To survive it she has to choose between a lawful Warden who can make her legal, an alpha who will die before he claims her, and the truth that the fires burning the West's packlands have been signed off by the same institution that promised to protect them.
Burn Me Cold
In Hallowmere, a city stacked on top of its own graveyard, Kindlers burn the dead clean and Wardens of the Quiet walk them home — and the Accord forbids the two orders from so much as brushing hands, because a bonded pair can crack the veil. When four hundred souls go missing from the ledgers, hearth-witch Thessaly Ndukwe is chained to Warden Ozren Vasilek, a man who hasn't felt warm in nine years and would prefer to keep it that way. What they find under the city is not a thief but a leash: the Accord was forged by unmaking a pair exactly like them, and the Provost intends to do it again — which leaves Thess and Ozren one impossible choice, break the Seal or be it.