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UPDATE 7 Lucien paused for a moment as if considering something. He opened his mouth twice before shaking his head. “Peasants,” was all he said in the end. “Is that all for today?” Severin asked, glancing outside the dusty lodge window. It was almost dark, and it was still an hour’s ride home...

Chapter 2 UPDATE 6 A Holiday It was pouring rain when Crown Prince Lucien arrived at the hunting lodge. Severin, having arrived an hour earlier, escaped the downpour entirely and had the privilege of watching his half brother leap from his carriage and splash to the lodge door. By...

UPDATE 5 “Enter,” Severin said, setting down the papers. Duval stepped inside Severin’s study, a smile twitching on his plump face as he passed his slate to Severin. Mademoiselle Elle is resting. She has been informed that she will be bedridden for two to three weeks. “She can go then?”...

Update 4 “Fabulous,” Elle muttered. The ladies maid was trying to teach her how to read. Emele selected a left over turnip and held up the slate, which was now inscribed with the word turnip. “Turnip,” Elle said. Emele nodded and proceeded to slowly gesture her way through the word...

Update 3 “I will not waste my time again by acting as a translator. Although I will suffer this girl’s presence in my chateau I do not want to see her again,” the voice growled before a beast entered the room. He was a horrifying combination of cat and canine, all death and wildness although...

Update 2 The pain woke Elle like a starved animal. She remembered chasing after the villagers who were poking around the castle and stomping through the gardens. She had just followed them out of the rose garden and had leaped from one piece of the castle’s sloping roof to the next. But it was...

Chapter 1 UPDATE 1 Once Upon a Time The servants of Chanceux Chateau would have screamed if they could when the stain glass skylight in the little hall shattered and a young woman fell through the ceiling with the broken glass. She dropped like a twisting cat and landed with an...

Prologue Once upon a time Elle made a mistake. A small miscalculation sends her through the roof of an enchanted chateau. Stranded until her broken leg mends, Elle is unwillingly forced to rely on the good will of the sour chateau owner —the cursed Prince Severin. Prince Severin—the...

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UPDATE 21 I open my eyes. I am lying on my back, arms folded behind my head, looking up at a flawless summer sky. 'Yes?' Julie stirs on the red blanket, scooting a little closer to me. 'Do you think we'll ever see jets up there again?' I think for a moment. I watch the little molecules swim...

UPDATE 20 Nora Greene is in the square by the Stadium's main gate, standing with General Rosso in front of a huge crowd. She is a little nervous. She wishes she had smoked before coming out today, but it seemed inappropriate somehow. She wanted a clear head for this occasion. 'Okay, folks,'...

UPDATE 19 He cocks the gun and presses it against my forehead, directly onto Julie's Band-Aid. Here it comes. Here is M's ever-present irony. My inevitable death, ignoring me all those years when I wished for it daily, arriving only after I've decided I want to live for ever. I close my eyes and...

UPDATE 18 'Julie,' I say, bracing to confess my final sin. 'I need . . . to tell you . . .' BANG. The Stadium's field halogens flare like suns and midnight becomes daylight. I can see every pore in Julie's face. 'What the hell?' she gasps, whipping her head around. A piercing alarm further...

UPDATE 17 The Orchard, as it turns out, is not part of the Stadium's farming system. It's their one and only pub, or at least the closest thing they have to a pub in this new bastion of prohibition. Reaching its entrance requires an arduous vertical journey through the Stadium's Escheresque...

UPDATE 16 I am Perry Kelvin, and this is my last day alive. What a strange feeling, waking up to that awareness. All my life I have battled the alarm clock, pummelling the snooze button over and over with mounting self-loathing until the shame is finally strong enough to lever me upright. It...

UPDATE 15 In my old days of scavenging the city I often gazed up at the Stadium walls and imagined a paradise inside. I assumed it was perfect, that everyone was happy and beautiful and wanted for nothing, and in my numb, limited way I felt envy and wanted to eat them all the more. But look at...

UPDATE 14 Slow steps. Mud under boots. Look nowhere else. Strange mantras loop through my head. Old bearded mutterings from dark alleys. Where are you going, Perry? Foolish child. Brainless boy. Where? Every day the universe grows larger, darker, colder. I stop in front of a black door. A girl...

UPDATE 13 The sports arena Julie calls home is unaccountably large, perhaps one of those dual-event 'super-venues' built for an era when the greatest quandary facing the world was where to put all the parties. From the outside there is nothing to see but a mammoth oval of featureless walls, a...

UPDATE 12 I am young. I am a teenage boy aflame with health, strong and virile and pounding with energy. But I get older. Every second ages me. My cells spread themselves thinner, stiffening, cooling, darkening. I am fifteen, but each death around me adds a decade. Each atrocity, each tragedy...

UPDATE 11 'Nurse Nora,' Julie says with a smile. 'Sounds like a kids' TV show.' 'Why a nurse?' I ask. 'Why not go for doctor?' Nora scoffs. 'Oh, yeah, seven years of college? I doubt civilisation's even gonna last that long.' 'Yes it will,' Julie says. 'Don't talk like that. But there's...