Drive-by reviews of romantic-ish fantasy short stories

These don't always leave you feeling bubbly and happy about the couple, the way a strict romance would; but they all feature wonderfully engaging relationships, and the stories themselves, I think, will provide their own satisfaction.

"The Dead Girl's Wedding March" by Cat Rambo, published in Fantasy Magazine

A rat and a zombie in a city of the dead. If you are intrigued at all, try it; this falls under the realm of "so weird it wraps around to being good."

Her name was Zuleika, and she was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and smelled only faintly of the grave, because every evening she bathed in the river that flowed silently beneath her window.

"A Fairy Tale Princess" by Shweta Narayan, published in the Cabinet des Fées

A sly yet charming look at the prototypical fairy tale princess. I can slip this in here, even though the focus isn't on the romance, because it technically does have a HEA!

"If only we had a daughter," the king said to his queen one day, with the smile that had heated her blood after the first gruelling pregnancy was over, warmed it to a sense of Oh why not after the second, and now after the third sent entirely the wrong shivers down her spine.

"The Third Wish" by Joan Aiken, reprinted in Strange Horizons

This is another in the fairy tale vein, but it's moving rather than clever, for all its simplicity.

"Yes, I do, I do love you," she said, and there were tears in her eyes again. "But I miss the old life in the forest, the cool grass and the mist rising off the river at sunrise and the feel of the water sliding over my feathers as my sister and I drifted along the stream."

"Waiting" by Eilis O'Neal, published by Strange Horizons

I'll throw in an original piece in SH. It's a bit predictable plot-wise, but I liked the language.

"She was a swordsman," he said finally. "The best of her time. She served the Emperor Janken, led his warriors into battle. Won the battles, all of them. They say she was like a blade herself, as sharp and keen-edged and quick, as if she were made of steel and lightning. She disappeared. They looked, but they never found her."

"Throwing Stones" by Mishell Baker, published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies

This is lovely and thoughtful. A teahouse worker with ambitions and a goblin.

In the city of Jiun-Shi the third shift was known as the goblin watch, but some of us were not very watchful. I, for one, was so absorbed in the daily details of living a lie that it took me three months to learn that one of the regulars at the Silver Fish Teahouse was a goblin. By the time our paths collided three years later, I had been promoted to third-shift manager, and my lie had been promoted to widely established fact.

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