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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

In Chantara, queens are not buried to rest. They are prepared to guide those who inherit the coming tides. Even in death, an anointed monarch has duties. She does not leave the world empty-handed. From QUEEN FOR A DAY #MythicFantasy #DarkFantasy #FantasyBooks #BookSky #WriteSky

The Clepsydra had readied Disaya’s body for eternity. A breathtaking slab of water-smoothed stone to bear her. Her body wrapped head to toe in fabric cut from an ancient corsair sail and tied with dozens of seawater-preserved sailor’s ropes. A replica of The Mother’s Crown resting on her sail-shrouded brow. Ancient coins and cut gems scattered across her body and the slab beneath. A preserved leather scroll fastened to her right hand, naming every monarch they knew of before her. In her left, they had secured a book containing brief accounts of Chantaran history and its hardest lessons. In death, Disaya held everything she needed to guide the rulers who came after.

Mourners sobbed as the Clepsydra carried Disaya through the room and past the throne. The sound of the entire crowd dropping to their knees at once was a single, thunderous impact, like the last hammering beats of a racing heart. It cracked something in Cobeah’s chest. Even in doing what she must, she still despised herself for killing Disaya.

From the throne, Cobeah dipped her head in acknowledgement, one monarch to another. The only time she could ever bow to another as queen.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

In Chantara, a crown can make a queen, but it cannot make The Water Thief kneel. Highest among the Clepsydra, he wears the remnants of drowned ships as his mantle and meets Cobeah’s gaze with disappointment in his eyes. From QUEEN FOR A DAY. #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #FantasyBooks #BookSky

The natural stone throne waited ahead, water-hewn by centuries of rushing rivers and bubbling streams. Its surface glistened with a perpetual dampness, a cold, continuous reminder of all the ages that came before. Cobeah sat where the queen had ruled for decades as the most cherished monarch in Chantaran history. The lunar crown rested upon Cobeah’s head.

Stillness held the chamber. Murmurs rose in little eddies of grief, fear, and anger as the crowd knelt as one into the shallow current. Holy waters soaked their garments from the knee down.

The Water Thief alone remained standing. His face held no grief. Only disappointment. Highest among the Clepsydra, he slipped along the crowd’s edge without once looking away from Cobeah. His stout body parted the silent supplicants like water. The sailcloth robes, stained by sea brine, hung heavy upon him. Ancient ropes bound them, once belonging to a vessel long vanished beneath the waves. His cloak of fishnet and kelp trailed through the shallows, a relic of older seas.

He moved without haste, but with the quiet certainty of a man convinced the Goddesses themselves favored his cause.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

If you’ve enjoyed my #Sustember posts, QUEEN FOR A DAY begins its weekly release in January 2027. After a lawful killing makes Cobeah queen, she has one day before moonrise to keep Chantara from breaking apart. The first 3 chapters will be free. #BookSky #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #AmWriting

Chapter 1
Twenty-Second Ring
(Two hours before Moonrise)

Blood sprayed from the slice across the queen’s throat as Cobeah’s round-bladed quoit completed its arc. The circular weapons were common throughout the Chantaran realm, but Cobeah’s were ancient, honed through generations of warfare at sea.

Queen Disaya staggered. Her knees folded. Liquid crimson drenched the pale silk of her combat raiment, ceremonial garb that mirrored, with bitter cruelty, the gown she had once worn to her wedding. The distant memories refused to sink. Neither did the emotions rising with them.

The queen’s body fell to the water-covered stone floor with a splash that sounded far too loud in the throne room’s hush. She betrayed Disaya. By rite and law, the act was just, but Cobeah couldn’t shake how wrong it felt. To the watching realm, to the Goddesses above, it could only look like high treason.

With her magickal abilities, Queen Disaya held an absolute advantage over her. She could have boiled Cobeah’s blood before the fight ever started or used the very waters in her body to drown her while standing in place. Offensive magicks were punishable crimes but Cobeah had expected Disaya to break those laws to preserve her life.

She hadn’t. In the face of death, she kept her hands clean of forbidden magicks. For reasons lost with her death the queen had refused to turn them against Cobeah. The trial by combat had ended with an outcome no one in Chantara could have predicted.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Cobeah is too haunted by the blood she spilled to sleep. It will never feel necessary, even though it was. Tomorrow will show her what winning the crown has already cost: the realm, her family, and most of all, herself. #WIPSnip from QUEEN FOR A DAY #AmWriting #DarkFantasy #WriteSky #MythicFantasy

Now alone before the doors of the royal suite, Cobeah laid her umber hands, cerulean-hued at the edges, upon the silver handles. Her body resisted, as though her own limbs remembered The Water Thief’s defiance an hour past. Yet even he had bent, in the end. Together, they had borne Disaya’s corpse to the inner Royal Sanctum beneath the throne. Come the morrow, the Clepsydra would consecrate her in glory, even if they hated Cobeah for forcing the rite before moonrise. Disaya had known the cost of that too.

I have laid my dark deeds bare. Storms without end will come, but we must keep rowing onward, and I can only continue forward.

Her dour thoughts circled like sharks sniffing for blood in the shallows. She pushed the doors wide and stepped inside. The palace staff had already scoured the chamber clean since the last time she had seen it. The massive four-post bed, built piece by piece inside the suite, loomed like a throne of rest, and drew her toward sleep.

Never had a day stretched so long, nor seemed so dark. Not even her years at sea chasing Shione Lahiri aboard her infamous Tanim, nor the bloody eradication of corsairs from the Chantaran coast, had felt as long or as dark as this one. Her mind craved respite, and her body ached for a hot bath, but she forwent both and fell upon the bed still in her light seafaring armor. The miniature water clock beside the bed dripped on. Each drop represented a precious second of rest she needed, but sleep would not come easy, not tonight. For tomorrow would decide Chantara’s fate.

Tomorrow will show me if Disaya’s last request, her final wish, was ever within reach.
---

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Brishon is fighting to avenge the queen he called mother. His opponent is fighting the queen’s nightmares that refuse to stay buried. As rain turns the courtyard to mud, neither can find a way past grief. #WIPSnip Tumble. #AmWriting #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #BookSky

She was dismantling him; piece by piece.

Brishon couldn’t let her. He launched himself into a wild, desperate tackle. They tumbled through mud and blood. Weapons clattered across the courtyard at their sides. Fists hammered open new wounds. They were too close for honed techniques. Just two grieving, furious creatures clawing for their own causes.

“I won’t let you kill me again. Not in life nor in my dreams,” she hissed in his ear as she climbed onto his back.

He had no time to parse the words. Pain ripped up his spine as she drove a quoit beneath the edge of his armor. He elbowed backward, smashing her face. She rolled away. Blood poured from the fresh gash across his back.

“It ends here, Brishon,” she said, swaying on her feet in the pouring rain. “Even if the mud takes us both.”

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

In QUEEN FOR A DAY, water sets the scene: palace streams, water-hewn stone, and water clocks that measure time with every single drop. Chantara feels cool, damp, and pressurized, as though its history clings to the walls and something may give at any moment. #Sustember #AmWriting #FantasyBooks

Cobeah rose. Numbed. Duty turned her toward the throne. Her footsteps splashed through the shallow waters covering the throne room. For millennia, the holy order of the Clepsydra claimed the babbling current mimicked the sound of Mother Altalune’s Lunar Realm.

The natural stone throne waited ahead, water-hewn by centuries of rushing rivers and bubbling streams. Its surface glistened with a perpetual dampness any monarch could feel: a cold, continuous reminder of all the ages that came before.

Stillness held the chamber. Only The Water Thief, highest member of the Clepsydra, dared move. He circled the chamber’s edge, weaving his broad body through the press like a lone fish slipping the school to avoid the net. His face held no grief; only disappointment.

Murmurs rose. Little eddies in the silence: grief, fear, and anger. Many remained kneeling and sobbing, but others elbowed their neighbors, whispering their doubts.

Nearby, the great water clock dripped on. Indifferent. As if it, too, had witnessed events like this before.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

My favorite forms of foreshadowing look like texture: an heirloom, a ritual, a line about busy paperwork. Then, the story circles back and reveals it was evidence all along. I like giving readers the pieces early and letting the meaning arrive later A WIPSnip example #Sustember #AmWriting #WriteSky

Requiem Five
(Four years before Cobeah’s act of High Treason)

In her study, Disaya watched the blazing sun begin its descent through one window, while another on the far wall framed the crescent of Luna breaking the horizon. This time of year, the lunar realm was eager, pressing into the day’s last light. In other months it lingered, letting the sun die fully before showing its moonlit face.

Beyond the glass, Pelagica prepared for night the way it always did. Doors opened. Voices rose. Meals were shared, bread broken, cups filled again and again with wine, water, and ale. The city’s joy reached her as muffled sound, softened by distance, a celebration heard through stone-thick walls.

As much as she took pride in her work, it left her with a familiar irritation when duty pinned her to the desk well after moonrise. The burden came with her mantle, and she had accepted it with an open heart. Still, she would rather have been at a table with her children, and sometimes even Aulay, laughing over food while the night cooled the house.

Not tonight. Tonight required another hour, maybe two. Seals waited. Signatures. Documents that could not be delayed simply because the moon had risen. Calder’s promotion to Admiral. Revisions to the Fishers’ Guild charter. Schedules for court and ceremony, all of them threaded around the Clepsydra’s lunar rites, because the holy calendars did not bend for mortal convenience. Disputes needed judgment. Legislation needed shaping. Qualms with neighboring realms needed addressing before they became raids and corpses. The pile on her desk had the quiet weight of a flood.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

After a lawful killing puts Cobeah on the throne, Brodny refuses to accept that the law can justify their beloved queen’s death. Premier Derya warns him that some truths are best kept to himself. #WIPSnip with “stream” from QUEEN FOR A DAY #AmWriting #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #WriteSky

Brodny grunted. “Cobeah has never been one for pomp, always preferring action over talk. Still, she might have considered all the good Disaya did before murdering her in cold blood.”

“Meter your words,” Derya said, hissing while closing the distance and glaring with their sharp green eyes. “By the letter of the law, Cobeah’s act was just. She has always had an even-keeled head on her shoulders. Do not provoke her into making an example of you because you cannot tame your tongue.”

“Subjects should not live in fear of the crown, but the crown should fear its subjects.”

“You of all people know sharp philosophy makes a poor shield against sharper steel,” Derya said. “Cobeah is a soldier. She’s pragmatic. She will not waste time debating your ethics.”
“Disaya would.”

“Disaya is dead, Brodny.” Derya’s words came flat, as if spoken to a child. “Get that through your skull. If you want to dream of improbable outcomes, then hope Aulay descends those water-hewn stairs to announce Cobeah abdicated over breakfast.”

“She should abdicate.”

Derya’s eyes narrowed. “Why do I get the sense you think you are the one to make her?”

“Someone must try—”

“Listen, old man,” Derya said, eyebrows angled, lips sneering as they brought their face close to his. “You and I can stand here agreeing on everything until hatchlings find their way downstream, but once Cobeah’s bony arse is on that throne and I am standing beside her, I cannot help you.”

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Absolutely. In QUEEN FOR A DAY, most Chantarans believe their realm lost the craft of forging magickal Water Gates centuries ago. Admiral Calder suspects the crown only lets that rumor survive, because no nation would misplace a power like that. #Sustember #AmWriting #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy

Calder detested dry land. It lacked rhythm and held no sense of flow. It remained resolute. Unmoving. A beautiful kind of wrong. Nothing compared to the ocean’s rocking, the familiar argument between hull and wave. Nothing beat the feel of waterlogged timbers beneath his bare feet at sea, boards breathing up through his soles as if the ship itself had a pulse.

Like countless seafarers before him, Admiral Calder had always been enamored with the stars glittering overhead, indifferent beacons to those upon land who kept their gaze transfixed on one foot in front of the other. Now here he was, dragged ashore and summoned to meet with the queen no less. He wanted nothing more than to turn around and chase salt wind back to open water.

Even sailors, who’ve weathered the worst the world can imagine, know there’s no good reason to remain upon the shore.

He had come through Chantara’s Water Gates in haste, less than a full ring from the coast to the palace. He emerged with cold spray still on his skin and the taste of minerals on his tongue. The Gates were miracles of ingenuity and magickal power, allowing travel from one point in the realm to another, so long as a continuous flow of water bound the path between.

Rumor claimed Chantara had lost the craft of forging new Gates long ago. No one, neither the Royal Alchemist nor the late Queen Disaya herself, knew how to build them anymore. Calder had always suspected that was a story the crown allowed to breathe, the sort of lie told to discourage sabotage and vandalism. A nation would not misplace a power like that.

Not if it intended to survive.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

As head of the Royal Guard, Leola serves the crown, not whoever wears it. When danger floods the throne room, they rush into it rather than let it reach Cobeah on the throne behind them. A #WIPSnip from QUEEN FOR A DAY #AmWriting #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #BookSky #IndieAuthor

An attacker’s sudden shout stole Leila’s attention. The oncoming man saw what remained of his dying companion, but didn’t make it far. One of Cobeah’s quoits sank into his shoulder and spun him sideways. He staggered to his knees, then forced himself upright. Magickal fire poured from his uninjured hand in a searing sheet, driving Leola back towards the throne. With the other hand, he created a small, focused shield and knocked aside a second quoit from Cobeah that would have found his head.

Sweat ran down the man’s face. Not from the fire heating his skin, but the effort of maintaining such magicks in quick succession. Leola knew any weak user of offensive magicks could unleash powerful acts with the quickest of outbursts, thoughts, and emotions. However, even the strongest of mages needed time, intention, and focus to form durable defensive magicks.

“For Disaya!”

Resignation burned in the man’s eyes as he screamed. He knew he was almost spent and meant to take everyone with him. Leola leapt through the wall of flame. Heat clawed at their armor and slipped through in waves, cooking their body within. Their short hair fused to their helm. Leola squeezed their eyes shut against the blast. Sight no longer mattered; Mother Altalune guided them now. They burst out of the flames and brought the scimitar around in one savage stroke, taking the man’s head mid-incantation.

The half-formed spell detonated.

Fire erupted in all directions. Leola crashed down, smothering the worst of the blast with their body. Agony tore through them, every nerve alight. It still paled beside the pain they would have carried if they had failed to protect the crown, no matter who wore it.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

QUEEN FOR A DAY opens with Queen Disaya’s death at Cobeah’s hands. Between its chapters, Requiems return to the years before: the responsibilities, compromises, and choices made that led to the first-page tragedy. #WIPSnip #AmWriting #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #WriteSky

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I prefer hidden motives less as a trick and more as a source of pressure. In QUEEN FOR A DAY, silence can protect people, preserve an ally’s judgment, or keep a frightened realm from tearing itself apart. We see the cost of Cobeah’s choices before they know why she made them. #Sustember #AmWriting

“I sense you hunger for something other than food?” she asked, breaking the silence.

Aulay exhaled, a clear display of his frustrations. “I’m afraid to ask, but can’t stay silent.”

“So you too join the questioning ranks?” Her voice cracked with bitterness. “It’s no surprise. Everyone else wants their turn.”

“Can you blame me?” he replied, quick on the heels of her words.

“We have our duties, Aulay,” she tried. “Chantara needs us—”

“Spare me the pretense.” His midsentence interruption was far out of his character. “Neither of us are any good at it. What are you working toward? I know it’s not what others whisper.”

“There are things only a queen can know,” she replied, disgusted for echoing the same words Disaya spoke to her a few nights ago.

“Even you must hear how hollow that sounds.”

“I’m not asking for blind obedience; only a modicum of trust. You think my actions were without reason?”

“Oh, I know you have your reasons.” His laugh was mirthless as he replied with an ostentatious wave of his hand. “That’s what scares me. Nevertheless, I’m here to support our children. Besides, who else have you left to trust?”

The words hit like salt in a fresh wound. Crude, as always, but not wrong. She kept her face still, kept the crown from tilting with the weight of it, and swallowed down the sharp impulse to snap back what her grief wanted to say.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

History can make a fine distraction until you realize you’re about to become part of it. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, a finished dark fantasy novel. #WIPSnip #AmWriting #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy

Cobeah walked the stone halls, her grief locked below deck. Each hollow step pressed her closer to losing control, but promises bound her. So she held strong. Ready to retire to the royal chambers for the night, she turned her gaze to the walls at her side and let their welcome distractions take her.

The stone was older than any throne, its first shapes carved not by human hand, but by water’s patience. Settlers had later squared the halls and hewn their mark into what had once been wild, yet the bones of those ancient water-flows remained, if one knew where to look.

Countless monarchs had roamed these halls. Queens, kings, and rulers unbound by gender. Before them all, Chantara had been corsair water, lawless and greedy, until one woman rose from plunder and bent the realm toward order. From her fleet came Pelagica. From Pelagica came empire. The Naiads and Nereids guided her sail and Mother Altalune sanctified her course.

Now Cobeah, in her own turn, threatened to bring it all toppling down. Her foul actions would be written in the same water-hewn stone as the monarchs of old. She had no choice, not that anyone would care. Their belief in her wasn’t necessary. She only needed the crown long enough to finish what Disaya’s death had begun. Long enough to protect her bloodline, her grandchild, and the future of the throne.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I finally succeeded in pulling myself away from #FieldsOfMistria to start the next book on my ever-growing TBR!

Platform Decay by Martha Wells - Murderbot Diaries

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

After poison, an assassination attempt, political confrontations at every hour, and no sleep, Cobeah wanders the palace alone. Its halls have become too large, and every echo belongs to someone she has failed. From QUEEN FOR A DAY. #Sustember #AmWriting #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy

For the first time in her life, Cobeah felt alone.

Even in her adolescent years, sailing coastal shoals and open seas, there had always been a crew at her back, ship-timbers creaking in rough harmony with her orders.

In the years that followed, as Admiral, she had a support system to brace her. Now there was nothing. One of the last souls she could trust without question was her daughter, Taliah. The most recent reports claimed the queen-to-be still struggled through labor, and it would be weeks before Cobeah could rely on Taliah again. Her daughter was suffering in the palace halls above, and Cobeah wasn’t there for her.

What kind of mother leaves her child to labor alone? Yet how can I be there?

Disaya had asked her to endure. So Cobeah wandered the water-hewn halls, lost, searching for her daughter, whom she could no longer reach, and the single other person she could trust.
“Leola?” she called as she stumbled down an empty corridor. “Are you here? Where is everyone? Aulay? Do you have news of Taliah? Where has she gone? I can’t find her.”

The ghosts of those she had failed answered from the darkness behind her, but Cobeah refused to look back into the shadowed passage. Her footsteps splashed through thin sheets of water that veiled the floor; the echoes behind her did not always match her stride as they clamored for justice and their chance at restitution.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

This might be illegal, but I reworked a scene from QUEEN FOR A DAY for today’s #Sustember prompt. Cobeah goes to the Royal Orchards seeking silence and fresh air. Instead, she finds sharp blades and dark magicks in the shadows. #AmWriting #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy

Less than a day after being crowned queen, Cobeah found herself hunted for her deeds. With her back pressed to an apple tree within the royal orchards, she held her breath as a twig snapped nearby.

Something small and fast hummed through the air. Cobeah turned as a quoit punched into the tree beside her head with a wet, wooden thud.

Silence dropped over the glade like a hood. The birds vanished mid-song. Insects stopped their buzzing as if someone had pinched the world shut. Even her own breath sounded wrong, muffled inside her skull. A magickal shroud of stillness settled around the orchard row, and her ears popped with the pressure of it.

Another quoit came, a dark disc spinning out of the shadows. Cobeah ripped one of her own from behind her back and snapped it up, knocking the hurled blade aside. The clash rang once, flat and ugly. The silence swallowed even that.

A figure stepped out from the darker-than-usual gaps between trees. An assassin, wielding blades and magicks. A deep hood hid their face; the cloth shimmered with warding, ensuring nothing beneath would catch light. Black-dyed boiled leather lay over a loose shirt and trousers, obscuring form and gender.

A scream for help would only get her killed before anyone arrived, if they could arrive at all. The magickal silence dampened everything. Nothing left this row of trees. No cries. No clash. No dying noises to draw the royal guard back in.

“I’ll wait here while you run off for reinforcements,” Cobeah said, and her voice sounded wrong inside the bubble, like it belonged to someone else. Only a snort answered her. “I hate easy fights. You know even if you succeed, I’m taking you to the abyss with me.”

A blade flashed on her left. She turned aside, quoit snapping up to knock the dagger away. The attacker rushed in; she pivoted and checked them with her offhand quoit, a sharp clack on leather and bone. They were testing her, learning tempo and searching for hesitation.

They would find none.

To fight with quoits on land differed from a ship’s deck that bucked and rolled beneath you. She had trained for both. At sea, she favored fast jabs and jerking cuts, ending things quickly no matter the cost. Here she kept low, longer arcs, feet sliding over loam and using trunks as cover and constraint. She kept her vitals on the move and out of harm’s way, herding her attacker into angles where they could only reach her head-on.

A sudden trunk met her back with thick, rough bark. Low branches hung above. Nowhere to roll. Nowhere to dodge.
An apple hung at the edge of her vision, fat and bright; calm.
Cobeah snatched it from the tender branch and hurled it point-blank into the hood where a face should have been. It burst. Chunks sprayed. Juice splattered across warded cloth.

Before the assassin could react, Cobeah threw a quoit after the apple.

The disc flew true and buried itself deep in the shrouded hood. Blood poured from the darkness before the body crumpled to the ground.

Her survival instincts eased, just enough for fury to flood in behind them. Pure rage at being hunted like a wild animal by anyone willing to jeopardize the realm in an attempt to remove her when it could least afford weakness.

“Who are you?” she asked the corpse, and her voice sounded like it belonged to a different kind of storm. “And which of the many assholes trying to disrupt my reign sent you after me?”

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

#WIPSnip Exhaust Her attendants leave, but the blood stains do not. Even alone, Cobeah feels the weight of every Chantaran judgment upon her. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, a finished mythic fantasy novel soon to serialize Jan 2027. #BookSky #MythicFantasy #DarkFantasy #AmWriting #IndieAuthor

Attendants added a final armful of logs to the hearth beneath the copper tub before retreating to the edges of the room. They did an admirable job pretending not to notice the tears streaming down Cobeah’s face. She ignored their worried glances as they obeyed her orders to make the water scalding hot. It was hotter than she could bear, but the pain anchored her. It proved she was still alive and that none of this was another hallucination or dream-shiver from exhaustion.

Her diary lay open on the small table near the tub, ink drying where her hand had last shaken across the page. May Mother Altalune judge my soul, for Chantara could only judge the blood upon my hands. She had meant to leave the line behind once written, but it would not leave her. It followed her into the steam, into the heat, into every place where judgment waited.

The attendants drifted out in ones and twos. Only a few remained to help her with her bath. Silence rushed in, heavy as wet cloth, broken only by the hiss of the hearth and the low churn of water as she lowered herself into the tub. The room smelled of steam and lye soap and blood that no scrubbing could lift from stone.

Even after everyone left, there were still far too many people in the room.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Even at the edge of damnation, Cobeah has one final glimpse of hope. She only has to survive long enough to reach it. QUEEN FOR A DAY is a finished mythic fantasy novel starting its weekly release Jan 2027. #WIPSnips #AmWriting #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #IndieAuthor

Lost in a flood of silent prayer, Cobeah felt Leviathan’s pull take her. Darkness closed in. Her limbs turned to stone as she fell downward. Then light pierced the black. A shaft of pure moonlight speared through the depths and fell across her. In its glow, a figure walked toward her, impossibly slow, as if the distance between them spanned an age.

At last, it drew close enough for her to see Taliah. Her daughter. The future queen of Chantara.

The crescent-moon crown rested upon Taliah’s brow. Thin rivulets of blood ran down from its points, tracking along her temples and cheeks. In her arms lay a swaddled bundle: a newborn, Cobeah’s grandchild. She tried to blink the vision into reality, tried to reach for it. Instead, the vast jaws of Leviathan rose from the shadowed depths and closed around her.

Stone teeth, brine, and darkness swallowed Cobeah whole, dragging her down into its hellish domain.
---

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Is guilt evidence that you chose wrongly? Or merely proof you understood the cost? Cobeah has one day as queen to learn whether the difference matters. QUEEN FOR A DAY is a finished dark fantasy novel soon to release weekly starting Jan 2027. #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #AmWriting #BookSky

“I don’t deny the path you chose for that seat,” The Water Thief said at last, not addressing her as queen. “Yet we Chantarans have long struggled with our tumultuous past. Your ill deeds return us to times of despair. To our corsair days when we were nothing but disparate groups pillaging and raping the coastlines of anything of worth, always taking what we wanted and leaving nothing behind that our victims needed to survive. Other nations will smell our weakness, sense our lacking unity, and see ripe opportunities to sow dissent among our ranks. Cymbeline will encroach even more upon our lands, further spreading their faith like sparks on dry wood. Raaz and their Nightkillers will grow bolder in every shadow. Do you not see it?”

“I was aware of the consequences before I made my decisions,” Cobeah said, her gaze unwavering. “Neither avarice nor shortsightedness taint my actions.”

“Then lay before us your motives, oh queen.”

“I cannot,” she replied, and no one in the audience dared to breathe in response.

“Cannot?” he pressed. “Or will not?”

“The distinction changes nothing,” she replied, and flinched at the acid in her own voice. Disaya had always kept hers clean.

“You leave us only one conclusion; that your act was borne of greed and jealousy. Even worse, it was reginacide. You murdered the sitting queen.”

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

A murder mystery often asks who did it. QUEEN FOR A DAY tells you in the first sentence and asks a more dangerous question: Once you know why, will you still call it murder? #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #BookSky #AmWriting

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Cobeah has killed the queen that the water-hewn realm of Chantara loved most. QUEEN FOR A DAY is a sapphic dark-fantasy tragedy about grief and the choices people make when every path leaves blood in the water. Here is Cobeah through another’s eyes. #SapphicSeptember #AmWriting #MythicFantasy

The realm had now been handed a different kind of war. Brishon had turned his back on the capital city for no more than a few weeks, never believing he would return to a realm shaken by his mother’s death. Not this. Not Disaya butchered by the very same woman now sitting upon the throne.

For his entire life, Cobeah had been as present as Disaya. Two poles of the same world. They supported him in every endeavor, celebrated his love for Lembit, and made space for him to thrive inside a holy mantle no child should have to inherit.

He and Cobeah had often worked in tandem. He held the land. She held the sea. They fought over details, clashed over strategies, but always came back to the same shared premise: Chantara must hold.

Brishon never imagined she would take the throne over Disaya’s dead body. Cobeah was an absolute barbarian in a fight, worse at sea where the deck moved and the waves argued with every stance. Her mind, when it came to vessels and naval tactics, was sharp as a keel. She was also just. Sympathetic.

Until she killed Disaya.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

#Sustember prompt: mystery At the royal funeral procession, a beacon of light burns through the pouring rain. It offers no hope or relief, yet Queen Disaya cannot look away. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, a finished mythic fantasy novel. #AmWriting #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #BookSky #IndieAuthor

Disaya forced herself to lift her gaze beyond the royal retinue, to the mass of denizens lining the streets. Almost as soon as she looked, she wished she hadn’t.

Bright columns of light speared up through the rain, so sharp they hurt to look at. They cut straight from the cobblestones to the low, storm-choked clouds. No one else seemed to notice them; the Chantaran crowd flinched from the wind, from the cold, but not from that radiance. In the center of the beams of light, a lone figure walked toward the procession. Less than a heartbeat passed before she understood that this was no mortal denizen of the living plane.

A deity walked the streets of her city. Worse, his gaze was fixed on hers, and she found she could not look away. He moved through the crowd without ever needing to step around anyone, without jostling a single shoulder. He kept a steady, unhurried pace, trailing half a block behind the funeral procession. Rain sheeted off his shoulders without touching him. With every step he drew nearer, the flames kindling from each exposed pore became clearer, licking along his skin even as he breathed like any man.

His knowing smirk never shifted as he crossed in front of Disaya, the royal family, and their attendants. His body passed by, but like an owl, his head continued to turn, neck twisting so he could hold her gaze. Only when the procession rounded a corner and he slipped out of sight did that terrible eye contact break.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Today’s #WIPSnips is collapse. After a lawful killing of the queen, the realm holds its breath. Only the Water Thief remains composed, tallying a cost no one else yet understands. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, a finished adult mythic dark fantasy novel. #BookSky #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #AmWriting

Cobeah’s chest still heaved. Her muscles strained from the exertion of combat. The metal torques about her arms bit until her bones ached. They felt tighter than ever before. Warm blood dripped from a vicious slice along her left forearm, and a shallow gouge in her side still burned with pain.

She surveyed the mortified audience. Hundreds stared in stunned silence. Some wept. Others clung to those beside them as if the room itself might collapse around them. Only The Water Thief looked composed. His eyes tracked her not with grief, but with calculating measure, tallying a cost only he understood.

Within this holy place, beneath the eyes of their patron Goddesses, Cobeah felt certain she had damned herself. Mother Altalune might never welcome her soul to the Lunar Realm in her safe embrace. Nor would She guide her back for rebirth upon the mortal plane. Only Leviathan’s black deep awaited her, an eternity of pressure and icy silence at the bottom of the saltiest seas.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

In Chantara, even the relics bear the scars of passing ages. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, a completed adult mythic dark fantasy novel. #BookSky #AmWriting #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #IndieAuthor

From beneath the altar, The Water Thief drew two earthen carafes, both older than Chantara itself. He set them down with the care one used for relics. One was so dark a blue it almost appeared black; chips and cracks obscured some of the painted stars and constellations upon its surface. It represented the seas and was filled with saltwater. The sky blue surface of the other had faded long ago. Scuffs and scrapes covered its deep, curving grooves. It represented the rivers and lakes and was filled with freshwater.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Aaaaaand done! I adore this series, and this was a wonderful addition to it. Don’t skip the author’s note. Reading it right after finishing the novel genuinely moved me. A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett 📖🤝🩸🔎🏳️‍🌈❤️⚔️🐄🍄 #AmReading #BookSky #FantasyBooks

Three-panel reading collage showing the cover of A Trade of Blood, a blurred final page marked ‘The End,’ and the book’s author’s note.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

When the palace begins to turn away from its queen, even lunch becomes an act of improvisation. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, an adult mythic dark fantasy. #BookSky #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #AmWriting #IndieAuthor

“Do you want bad news first, or the even worse news?”
Aulay’s voice stole Cobeah away from her thoughts. He had risen to investigate their meal’s delay and now poked his head back through the swinging kitchen doors, hair slightly mussed, expression bright with the kind of cheer that usually meant trouble.
“Waiting a bit longer isn’t bad news, Aulay, even less so if it buys me a few more minutes of silence.”
“Well,” he replied, pushing through with a few meager plates balanced in his hands, “I hope you’re good with a kitchen knife. I fear we’ll dishonor the staff by breaking for lunch early and making it ourselves. Who knows how the Royal Chef will take such sacrilege.”
“As premier, ensure they understand we meant no insult. I was in desperate need of a moment without an audience and I’m starving. What did you find?”
“None of your favorites,” Aulay said, setting the plates down with the care of a man handling evidence. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you eat anything like this. There’s, well, soup, I suppose. Not hot, nor cold, yet somehow congealed. Bread that might break your teeth, and something that could be a foreign delicacy of aged meats. Or it could be rotten. Hard to say.”
He placed a half-filled decanter near her. The wine inside was the color of old bruises. “Last, and least of all, ambient temperature wine. Don’t mind the lip marks around the rim. I’m sure they’re there by design.”

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

A quiet tea with uneasy guests. Trusted agents outside the door. Somewhere, a noose has begun to tighten. #BookSky #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #IndieAuthor #AmWriting

The last of Radella’s guests had arrived and settled into one of the plush chairs flanking the low tea table. Steam curled from untouched cups between them, mingling with the faint damp chill that seeped from the palace stone.
In the corridor beyond, several of her most trusted agents stood guard, ready to warn her if anyone uninvited tried to intrude on the gathering.
For the first time, Radella felt she had edged ahead of Cobeah and her designs. Their new queen proved far more adept at the games of the Royal Court than Radella had imagined possible. Regardless, her final plans were in motion. She had given Aulay everything needed to tie a noose around his own handsome neck, and hoped he could not yet feel it tighten.
Not yet, at least, but soon.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

To push through the weight of darkness takes its toll. A heavy price to pay for which recompense can feel impossible. For hope, there is little more than what can be done without it. So much of what we are is built upon that solitary flame, for better or for worse. #AmWriting #WritingCommunity

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Well, since you’re curious to know what happens next… (Slightly edited for spoilers. CW Assault)

The first blow caught her under the ribs. Blunt force burst against her gut. The air in her lungs tore free in a rush of bubbles. She wouldn’t last long now. With her off hand, she clawed backward, trying to land a strike on her attacker’s face or find an eye to gouge.
Another fist hammered into her midsection, then another. Her lungs burned. Her chest screamed. Each strangled cough dragged more of the basin’s water down her throat. Everything narrowed to pressure and darkness and the roar of blood in her ears.
Then the world jolted. Cobeah blinked spots from her eyes and found herself flat on her back on the cold stone. Her body convulsed and shuddered, trying to force water from her lungs. Weight settled upon her as the attacker slid over her body. Now she saw him. His body was ruined; skin split and leaking blood from jagged wounds, limbs bent at angles no joint should allow.
“Look what you did to me,” he said, and water sprayed from his mangled mouth with every word, raining down on her face.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

A queen can survive many things, but not every danger comes wielding a blade. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, an adult mythic dark fantasy. CW: Attempted Drowning #BookSky #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #IndieAuthor

Cobeah bent over the basin and splashed her face. Even clouded, the water felt refreshing. She looked up to the fine mirror fixed behind it and, through narrowed eyes, met her own reflection. She hated what stared back, but the tide left no room to turn except keep moving forward and try to set things right, even if she had to do it alone.
She wiped the droplets from her lashes, stepped away from the basin, and realized she was no longer alone. For the space of a heartbeat, the thin daylight from the tall windows dimmed; something moved at the edge of her vision. Fatigue dulled her reactions. By the time she registered the figure, it was already too late.
A strong hand clamped on the back of her neck.
The world swung. The basin rushed up to fill her vision, and then her face hit the water. A second hand grabbed her dominant arm, twisted it up and back, and drove her farther down. She had no leverage, only pain and rising panic, but she fought the urge to thrash and flail. She was a lifelong sailor. They had not accounted for how long she could hold her breath underwater.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Cobeah has little patience for pageantry, praise, or the symbols that turn a person into myth. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, an adult mythic dark fantasy. #BookSky #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #IndieAuthor #FantasyBooks

Cobeah despised pageantry, but the people needed myth. The realm needed symbols and such rare unions demanded spectacle, whether she liked it or not. She believed her rough exterior kept the world at bay, even though it did the opposite. That hard mask drew people closer, made them bolder, turned them into fawning denizens who wanted a scrap of her attention.
Cobeah would die for any Chantaran but she loathed being thanked for it. Her medals and braids of command lay locked away in an armoire, hidden from public sight, but always there if she needed them.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Sunday evening’s about to get great! 📖 Been waiting to crack open A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett. Let’s get fungal!🍄‍🟫 #AmReading #BookSky #FantasyBooks

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

A queen can carry the realm with an open heart and still long for a familiar table and a glass of wine with the people she loves. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, an adult mythic dark fantasy. #BookSky #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #IndieAuthor

In her study, Disaya watched the blazing sun begin its descent through one window, while another on the far wall framed the crescent of Luna breaking the horizon. This time of year, the lunar realm was eager, pressing into the day’s last light. In other months it lingered, letting the sun die fully before showing its moonlit face.
Beyond the glass, Pelagica prepared for night the way it always did. Doors opened. Voices rose. Meals were shared, bread broken, cups filled again and again with wine, water, and ale. The city’s joy reached her, muffled by distance and stone-thick walls.
As much as she took pride in her work, it left her with a familiar irritation when duty pinned her to the desk well after moonrise. The burden came with her mantle, and she had accepted it with an open heart. Still, she would rather have been at a table with Cobeah, their children, and sometimes even Aulay, laughing over food while the night cooled the house.
Not tonight.
Tonight required another hour, maybe two. Seals waited. Signatures. Documents that could not be delayed simply because the moon had risen. Calder’s promotion to Admiral. Revisions to the Fishers’ Guild charter. Schedules for court and ceremony, all of them threaded around the Clepsydra’s lunar rites, because the holy calendars did not bend for mortal convenience. Disputes needed judgment. Legislation needed shaping. Tensions with neighboring realms needed addressing before they became raids and corpses. The pile on her desk had the quiet weight of a flood.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Admiral Calder has always believed sailors have no good reason to remain ashore. The new queen has other ideas. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, an adult mythic dark fantasy. #BookSky #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #IndieAuthor

Like countless seafarers before him, Admiral Calder had always been enamored with the stars glittering overhead, indifferent beacons to those upon land who kept their gaze transfixed on one foot in front of the other. Now here he was, dragged ashore and summoned to meet with the queen no less. He admired Cobeah, had even taken private pride in her rise, yet wanted nothing more than to turn around and chase salt wind back to open water.
Even sailors, who’ve weathered the worst the world can imagine, know there’s no good reason to remain upon the shore.
He had come through Chantara’s Water Gates in haste, crossing from coast to palace in less than a full ring. He emerged with cold spray still on his skin and the taste of minerals on his tongue. The Gates were miracles of ingenuity and magickal power, allowing travel from one point in the realm to another, so long as a continuous flow of water bound the path between.
Rumor claimed Chantara had lost the craft of forging new Gates long ago. Neither Lord Bolivar nor the late Queen Disaya herself knew how to build them anymore. Calder had always suspected that was a story the crown allowed to breathe, the sort of lie told to discourage sabotage and vandalism. A nation would not misplace a power like that.
Not if it intended to survive.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

In Chantara, a crown can be as light as a feather and still draw blood. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, an adult mythic dark fantasy. #BookSky #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #IndieAuthor

The Royal Premier rose above Cobeah, the only time they could, and placed the lunar crown upon her head. Derya’s lapis-tipped fingers slid across her head before slipping free from beneath the crown as it nestled into place. The sharp crescents along the circlet pressed just enough to threaten blood; a private reminder hidden beneath the metal. The crown was light as a feather and yet uncomfortable. For over twenty years, Disaya wore it without complaint and never faltered. The people of Chantara had loved her for it.
“Queen Cobeah,” Derya said, calling out to the soaked and shaken masses, unable to mask a slight edge in their voice. “We kneel before thee and drink of The Mother’s waters of life.”
As one, Derya and the crowd knelt in the shallow current covering the chamber. Holy waters soaked their garments from the knees down. Cobeah lowered herself, cupped her cerulean-tinted hand, and drank the realm’s most precious waters. The people followed, mouths full of silence and ritual.
All save one: The Water Thief.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Sometimes a difficult test for Cobeah comes in the form of learning to accept a kindness she doesn’t feel she deserves. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, an adult mythic dark fantasy. #BookSky #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #IndieAuthor

From the fatigue in the woman’s eyes, Cobeah realized she had come straight to attend her after caring for her daughter. “Please retire for the night. You’ve done more than enough. Rest now.”
The woman bowed. “Thank you, my queen.”
“I already miss being called Cobeah. Even my old title of admiral sounds kinder to my ears than queen.”
“It will grow familiar, Your Highness.”
“Disaya never grew into it either,” Cobeah said, uncertain why she remained in the hallway reminiscing about the former queen with the palace staff. “Not that it matters anymore.”
“I do not pity you, Your Highness. Disaya was a rare river gem, yes. So are you. The days ahead will test you. This much is true.”
“I value your candor.” Cobeah said, and managed a grim smile. “As difficult as it is to hear.”

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

When a necessary betrayal turns the Chantaran court against itself, Queen Cobeah can’t admit the certainty which saved her life came from something far less reliable. From QUEEN FOR A DAY, an adult mythic dark fantasy. #BookSky #MythicFantasy #WIPSnips #IndieAuthor

“Deniza knew better,” The Water Thief said, his gaze still fixed on the poisoned borrelglass. “No one profanes holy water without a hidden current at their back.”
Aulay shook his head as if disbelief alone could change who lay dead upon the water-hewn stone. “When did you suspect Deniza was capable of this?”
“There are some things only a queen can know,” Cobeah replied.
“Convenient,” Aulay said, but there wasn’t true venom in it, only grief and the reflexive anger of a man whose world kept collapsing around him. “Deniza would never try to kill you.”
“Less than a minute ago, I would’ve agreed with you,” Cobeah said, and let her gaze sweep the three still standing. “Now look where we are.”

Deniza had made strangers of them all. The Water Thief, she believed, cared most for succession and the Clepsydra’s grip on the realm’s major arteries. Aulay cared for comfort, his children, and his own skin. Leola was life-sworn to the crown, apolitical by design and loyal by oath. Structures existed to keep the Royal Guard and their Tidewardens from being bent by any one ruler’s secret hand. Yet structures could be circumvented. Clever people always found cracks in the system.
“How did you realize your borrelglass was tainted, my liege?” The Water Thief asked, taking the glass from her hand and turning it. “I detect no smell. No resin.”
“I have my methods,” she replied.
Cobeah could never admit how exhaustion was making her see shimmers where none existed. Not with Deniza’s blood still draining into holy waters at her feet.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Traveling out of town for a funeral and decided to end the trip at Fables & Fur in Orlando. It has assembled many of my weaknesses all in one place: cats, cool furniture, gothic little reading corners, and shelves full of fantasy and more. A genuinely lovely spot. #booksky #Fables&Fur #BookStores

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

“Handle” takes us to a polyamorous wedding in Chantara. Queen Disaya is eager for the future it promises—yet, even admits to herself she’s a little afraid of the change it will bring. #WIPSnips #BookSky #DarkFantasy #MythicFantasy #IndieAuthor #QueenForADay

“Prepare ye selves, oh, Chantara,” said The Water Thief, and though Disaya loved a good ceremony, she found herself hoping he’d soon bring it to a close. “For tonight we honor the Primordials Hydrus and Nerus. The gods themselves conjoin these four souls in union and this night will earn its own detailed chapter in the annals of our long history.”

The Water Thief drew a deep breath. His words rolled like waves through the chamber from the base of the water-hewn steps leading to the throne.

“With the grace of The Mother and the approval of the Sisters Twain, we shall begin. Upon this auspicious night we gather, and I’m reminded of another, over a quarter-century ago. The night when two of our nation’s most beloved figures entered a pact of marriage before this throne. It warms my heart to see the sweet fruits of those labors kneeling before us now. Taliah and Triveni, please remove your veils. Mensah and Mitsuo, prepare The Nahla. Your assistance is needed with so many borrelglasses. Now I ask, with the full authority of the holy order of the Clepsydra: do all parties agree, of their own free will, to partake in this antiquated yet sacred tradition and pact of marriage?”

Opportunities for The Water Thief to wax poetic were never rare, but occasions like this were. In almost fifty years in Mother Altalune’s blessed realm, Disaya had never seen four individuals joined in marriage; not when one of them belonged to the royal line.

The denizens of Chantara would have to adapt to serious changes once she relinquished the throne and Taliah took it up. The chroniclers of Chantaran history said little about how to handle monarchs with several spouses. Disaya was eager to see how the realm would write those chapters. Eager for that societal change, yet a little afraid.

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CJ Mann III 🏳️‍🌈✍️📖 @cjmann3.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Queen For A Day by CJ Mann III The word “box” has taken us to Chantara’s Royal Orchards, where Cobeah finds no reprieve from the weight of her actions. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #DarkFantasy #IndieAuthor

Were she in any other mood, Cobeah would have enjoyed the royal orchards. The rows of trees ran like disciplined ranks, and the wind pushed warm seaside air through leaves heavy with fruit. The scent of ripening apples and pears sweetened the breeze. It mixed with the sharp musk of soil and manure. She found it almost intoxicating. Near the trunks, planter boxes full of rosemary and mint were set out as cheap wards against insects.

The orchards had been one of her favorite walking grounds during breaks from duty. Now, with the palace in upheaval and the nation balanced on a knife’s edge, she found little warmth in any of it.

Cobeah didn’t mind the apple’s juices running down her chin. It was the first real food she’d had all day, longer still if she counted what her stomach had rejected earlier that morning. She craved a rod and line, bait on hook, and the honest heft of a fish hauled up and killed and eaten for what it was. Fuel.

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