“But why would Davey back up her story? Or why would she back up his, if it’s not true? I’m having a hard time believing it, but I’m having an even harder time figuring out why they would both tell such a far-fetched lie.”

I'm walking along a trail through the woods. There are two people behind me, walking together holding hands. I know it's a man and woman, but I can't see their faces, but the woman has the most beautiful violet eyes I have ever seen. I'm anxious to get to where we are going so I run ahead. I hear a woman's voice call out to me but I can't make out what she said. I'm not paying attention to where I'm going and I trip over something on the trail. Now I'm falling. All the light has gone. I hear a woman screaming for me. I try to call out but I can't speak.

Devi woke to find Tashni shaking him gently. “I’ve got your breakfast ready, miss,” she said. She couldn’t seem to understand that Devi was a boy... and today, anyway, Devi needed to be a girl for Zindla’s ceremony.

I stood there dumbfounded for a few minutes before I realised that I still had chores to do. I hid my letter and the quill in my secret place in my room, and then started on the dishes. When those were all dried and put away I headed out to the garden to finish pulling weeds for Aunt Petunia's new flower garden she wants me to plant. It was at that time my only friend came up to me. It's sad that at almost 11 years old my only friend is a small garden snake, but she (at least I think it's a she) has been very cuddly since the first time I found her almost three years ago.

Gabriel is a survivor.
In the falling apart and sinking city of Verrencia, you have to be.
Especially if you are an orphan living on the streets and channels of this once great city.
His lucky break comes while hunting for treasure in an abandoned shop.
Not knowing that it will transform not just his life and set things in motion outside of his control.

(This story in the "undesirable classes" universe can be read without reading previous stories.)

“The winner of the auction must promise to allow Devi to go home through the portal as soon as they figure out how the cabinet works.”

Zindla liked having a little girl around, even if she was older than she looked, and used to be a boy. Seeing her cousins and other children who lived in the neighborhood, she’d sometimes regretted being an only child, and now she felt like she almost knew what it was like to have a little sister. Devi was so enthusiastic and curious about everything; having her around was like seeing everything for the first time.

The Trial of Clay

In the stories, kids who go through portals to other worlds need to learn something from it. Maybe there’s something I’m supposed to learn from being a little girl. And there’s definitely got to be something I’m supposed to do here, but I don’t know what yet.”

The Black Kestrel: A Witcher Tale

Kade is apprenticed to be a Witcher

The moonlight from the window was falling directly on the gateway in the mural. But he couldn’t see the road and horse and buggy and the distant hills. Instead, he saw — a chair. A high-backed wooden chair, with red velvet cushions on the back and seat and arms, and to the left of that, part of what looked like a sofa or armchair.

Keira De Leitz, a Witcher of the Kestrel School woke to the screams of a damsel in distress.