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Contains the following stories (plus a deleted scene from Last Among Equals)
The Serpent’s Spine
Bandits took his brother’s life. Slavers took his niece. And all Iver the Bard has to fight with is his flute, a dead man’s charm, and the sharp-tongued sister-in-law who blames him for it all.
Climbing the mist-shrouded Serpent’s Spine toward a fortress of cutthroats, Iver and Maryena must set aside grief and grudges to survive what’s coming: armed sentries, a bandit warlord with buyers to please, and a tribe of raiders who don’t deal in coin. Between her poisons and his wits, they might just have a chance—if they don’t kill each other first.
A tale of found courage, uneasy alliance, and the family you fight for even when you can’t stand them.
Deathsmith
The Deathsmith sells murder the way other men sell bread — a spell here, a curse there, payment in sovereigns. Aris has no conscience, no friends, and no need for either. Then a scrawny, grubby girl arrives with one copper and a hundred questions, and refuses to leave.
She cooks his meals. She drums up business. However slightly, she warms a heart he swore did not exist. And for all his protective charms, Aris never thought to guard against life’s greatest surprise: that a young girl might actually earn his trust.
Hard Landing
In the year 2129, the settlement of other star systems has begun in earnest.
Unfettered by Earth’s laws, the colonizing corporations build their military in response to separatist rumblings throughout their fledgling colonies—and to the threat of Chinese competition out among the stars.
On a remote island in the Castoran ocean, former Australian rifleman Craig Darlow competes with three other candidates for acceptance into the Corporate Union’s elite Blackcaps unit.
The going is tough. Damned tough. But when a freighter mysteriously crash-lands on their island testing grounds, the trial of their lives becomes a contest for their survival.
Caught between corporation-created horrors and an unreliable truce with his fellow candidates, Darlow must decide if his redemption lies in becoming the perfect soldier—or in daring to define courage and leadership on his own terms.
This all-new action-adventure sci-fi novelette is set in CUSET’s foundational period, 16 years before EVENTIDE.
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