The Last Breath of the Drowned Queen
by Lorvoker
Fantasy
Beneath the salt city of Gravemarch, hush-warden Tomasz Wyre seals the last breaths of the dead in wax jars, until he cracks one and hears the drowned queen whisper that her son, the boy-king he has guarded since birth, held her under the brine. At dawn the jar goes before the Salt Council, where its words will hang the boy, and Tomasz must deliver it, forge a new breath from a dying beggar, or smuggle the king out through the brine tunnels and become the fugitive he has spent his life hunting.