Elliot Howell is a rising star in the Seafall painting community. He has a promising career as a portrait artist, good friends, and a fabulously wealthy patroness. In other words, he has everything to lose. Queen Nyx rules the Gentry court in Valwode, the magic country between the mortal world and Bana the Bone Kingdom where goblins dwell. She is powerful, and beautiful, and wise beyond all imagining, but she has no heir to wear the Antler Crown when she is gone. Elliot and Nyx meet at Breaker House, a building anchored in all three worlds: mortal, Gentry, and goblin. For Elliot, it is love at first sight. For Nyx, loving a mortal man may mean giving up her crown, her country, and her eternal life. But some things are worth any price.
Author
C.S.E. Cooney lives and writes in Queens, whose borders are water. She is an audiobook narrator, the singer/songwriter Brimstone Rhine, and author of World Fantasy Award-winning Bone Swans: Stories (Mythic Delirium 2015). Her work includes the novella Desdemona and the Deep (Tor.com 2019), three albums: Alecto! Alecto!, The Headless Bride, and Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir, and a poetry collection: How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes. The latter features her 2011 Rhysling Award-winning “The Sea King’s Second Bride.” Her short fiction can be found in Ellen Datlow’s Mad Hatters and March Hares: All-New Stories from the World of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the Sword and Sonnet anthology, edited by Aidan Doyle, Rachael K Jones, E. Catherine Tobler, Mike Allen’s Clockwork Phoenix 3 and 5, Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018), Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 12, Lightspeed Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, Apex, Uncanny Magazine, Black Gate, Papaveria Press, GigaNotoSaurus, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, and elsewhere.
