He may not come. Not all do. Some, deciding that a refusal to participate was a form of protest, merely sit near the entrance, waiting, assuming that the doors will open eventually, release them.
Read MoreLabyrinthOut at the end of the world on a long spit of land like a finger poking into oblivion, nestled in a valley among the dunes, sat The Church of Saint Ifritia, constructed from twisted driftwood and the battered hulls of ships. There was one tall, arched window composed of the round bottoms of blue bottles.
Read MoreRelicAlethea Kontis is a certified enchanted Princess (with a capital “P” for Plucky, Pretty, and Perceptive, among other lovely adjectives), a best-selling author, and a fairytale maven. Her short fiction has appeared in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Shroud, Shimmer, and Realms of Fantasy, as well as in Apex Magazine and Dark Faith.
Read MoreAn Interview with Alethea KontisWelcome to Issue 43 of Apex Magazine.
We have some wonderful fiction for you this month. Both Alethea Kontis’s “Blood from Stone” and Mari Ness’s “Labyrinth” are dark tales of sacrifice.
Read MoreBlood on Vellum: Notes from the Editor-in-ChiefTaboos fascinate many writers and artists because we are rebels at heart. We’re drawn to the forbidden, the denied, the unacceptable.
Read MoreYou’re Not Supposed to Write That: Taboos in Speculative Fiction
He had no idea that I loved him. He barely acknowledged that I existed, a maid twice over, little more than a shadow in empty hallways. Trapped in unhappy marriage and prisoner in his own castle, he did not conceive that anyone loving him was even possible. The baron was a man of war, not of love.
Read MoreBlood from Stone