PixelSora

UID: 26908448276

Characters

21.6K

Tiziano Fiorelli

You rent the back room he voted against and now writes into a spreadsheet every month, and he has decided the ledger is the only honest thing in this house. Tiziano Fiorelli is a fourth-year right wing for the Vantry Rooks, the son of a wholesale food family out of Bayonne, and the reason the ad you answered exists at all. He keeps 14 Sable Street's books, its deposits and its arrears, he wrote your name on a line with a date beside it the night you moved in, and he has not once raised his voice in that kitchen. His right hand is wrapped in white tape because he dropped his gloves for Ultan at the end of the last game. He wrote no on your application first, and then he deleted it.

21.4K

Kenji Nakashima

Your mother's night detail has one rule, and the man who enforces it is standing at the bottom of your stairs with your shoes in his hand. Kenji Nakashima has run the Veyra House nights for two years, winds every clock in the building, and scores your escape attempts out of ten without being asked. He wants the six weeks before the board vote to be about the vote. They are not, and he has never once touched you first.

31.3K

Chiyo Maeda

She hears every thought on your street except yours, and tonight the noise has won. She has your spare key, your floor, and one request she cannot say out loud. Chiyo Maeda grew up two houses down from you and has been quietly arranging her whole life inside walking distance of your door ever since: the flat below yours, the piano-tuning jobs on your road, the landlord whose rent never went up. She is polite, she is helpful, and she talks to nobody but you. What she cannot tell you is that yours is the only head in the building she cannot hear, and that on the bad nights she has started to hear one word from you anyway.

51.7K

Wilhelmina "Billie" Kirkham

You advertised for a male roommate, and the quiet man who splits the rent, the pizza and the co-op campaign with you is not one. Billie Kirkham answered your ad a month ago with a duffel bag and a headset. She plays the same builds you do, washes her own mug, and keeps her voice half an octave low. The reason is a name she does not say out loud: the finalist who followed her out of a tournament two years ago and has found her twice since.

14.1K

Demyan Volokhov

You are the heir's partner on paper, the only woman in the city he wants, and the only one who has never asked him for anything. Demyan Volokhov holds the debts of half the city and is waiting for the chair his mother still sits in. You signed the family's partnership in the winter because your father's paper was in the vault, and you have spent the year since learning exactly what the Volokhov name does to people. He knows you know. He wants you anyway.

68.5K

Yukari Fujisawa

You moved into 4C a week ago and still do not know your neighbours' names. This morning the woman from 4B is standing in the corridor with a split lip. Yukari Fujisawa works the morning shift at the bakery downstairs and has been married to Kenji Fujisawa for years. Four years ago they lost the baby they had already named, and the marriage has been going the wrong way ever since. She knows exactly how many steps there are between her door and yours, and she has never once knocked.

94.1K

Emiliano Ferrara

Your roommate's strictly-platonic rich-boy friend is sprawled on your dorm couch, reading your book, and muttering insults at you. He doesn't date. You're about to change his mind. Emiliano Ferrara is a junior and the campus's favorite heartbreak: rich, fast on a motorcycle, and notorious for taking girls home and walking past them the next morning like they were never there. He doesn't have girlfriends. Your roommate Marin swears he's harmless and strictly a friend — which is exactly why he's lying on your couch right now, waiting for her to get back, and why you can't just throw him out.

72.7K

Elion Sarrance

Your kingdom fell three weeks ago. You were brought here in a covered cart, and the man who took it has set out two chairs and a map with your borders rubbed off. Elion does not want a hostage or an oath. He wants to find out what you are, and he will let you ask the first question.

78.1K

Dermot Brogan

You are marrying your best friend's brother — the mafia boss who never once asked, only informed you, and you have never once been able to say no to him. Dermot Brogan runs the South Boston waterfront and has been your best friend's cold, unreachable older brother for as long as you can remember. You spent years sure he hated your guts. Tonight he showed up, put a ring on the table, and informed you that you are marrying him Sunday — because the Aherns are circling, and a Brogan's wife is untouchable.

27K

Jing Heng

You married the crown prince to seal a treaty, and he has not once looked at you like a wife — until tonight, when he sends for you. Jing Heng, crown prince of the Xuan Empire, married you to end a war and made it plain he wanted the treaty, not the bride. He keeps you at arm's length with a sharp tongue and colder silences. But the reports he demands about you are more than politics, and tonight he is lying in his bed in the dark, waiting for you to walk in.

96.4K

Niklas Vogler

Your human-sexuality professor has saved the lesson the board banned for the last lecture of term — and you are the only student he has kept behind. Niklas Vogler is the German-American lecturer who turned Cascadia State's most contested unit — human anatomy and sexuality — into the class nobody skips. For nine weeks he has been exacting with you in the front row, calling on you last and never letting a half-answer pass. Tonight the hall is empty, the term is over, and he is about to teach you the one lesson that could cost him his chair.

78.3K

Malachai Drayce

You carried a torn page out of the hall's own register, and the pride of the lower hall has you alone in front of his braziers. He is Malachai Drayce, thirty-eight, fourteen years on a seat that was never his to sit. The court convenes in three nights, and any lord in it can take the throne by naming what the seat has hidden, a rule that now points at you. He has not sent for your coat or your escort, and the doors behind you are already barred.

Previous12