This story was first published in the anthology Ghost in the Cogs, a collection of steampunk ghost stories from Broken Eye Books, and was later included in my collection Learning How To Drown, from NewCon Press. I am putting it up online for Pride 2022. It is winter in Pal-em-Rasha and all the roosters have been strangled. We are in mourning. The prince was born white and strange, his dead

I’m going to put it out there: I’m a writer who has struggled with depression, anxiety, and possible ADHD. I’ve grown up always expecting the worst to happen. When things go wrong I am drowned under an ocean of deep and utter despair. I’ve given up writing more times than I’ve killed house plants. (It’s a skill, okay.) And while I’m joking about it at the moment, there is nothing