The question came so casually, the attendant might have thought it was meant for nothing more than idle conversation were it not for who it was asking. Bastien knew the footman, though. Knew what the sly smile behind those full lips probably meant, and that was trouble.
So, having secured the parcel of post with the other deliverables, Bastien turned away. “It would seem so.”
“How many is that now?”
“This week?” He hummed. “I’d say just shy of two dozen, but I haven’t been keeping track of the precise numbers.”
The footman gave a snort, but when Bastien looked his way, it was only Christophe’s back that he saw as the man tended to the horses— no doubt thinking to hide his amusement behind the pawing of hooves.
He wasn’t one to give into baiting, though. Not for a footman.
With a snort of his own, Bastien straightened his suit coat. “I try not to meddle with the business of the house. It would be wise for you to keep that in mind.”
“Oui, of course, sir. I meant no offense. It’s just…”
It was too hard to resist those eyes peeking out beneath the long, dark lashes that made Christophe look so innocent, even though Bastien knew everything to the contrary. Everything about him was disarming. Dangerous. Intoxicating.
“Yes?”
“These mystery letters… the parties… one has to wonder what your benefactor is up to, non? Searching for someone… a lover, perhaps?”
Bastien knew how to keep secrets, both in word and expression. He gave a pleasant smile, but that was all. “Alas, it doesn’t seem as though any of the letters were addressed to you, so the chances of you finding out are highly unlikely.”
But instead of being discouraged, Christophe’s smile only grew, gaze getting darker. Hungry. “Oh dear. Your master certainly is working you hard, isn’t he?”
It was unfair just how effective that was.
Or how true.
——————————–
This is a promotion piece for YOI Regency week. Don’t miss your chance to vote for the prompts. Last day 1st of March.
There’s less than a week until issue 3 of the @yoilitmag drops… So here’s a little sneak peek of my illustrated piece.
Some of you might be familiar with this story… 🙂 ;;;
Text version:
Little Matchstick Vitya (preview)
“Why would little Vitya be out in the cold if he had no ushanka?” you ask. “He’ll catch a cold if he doesn’t freeze to death!”
You would be right, of course. This is what little Vitya tried to explain to his aunt and uncle, too, before they pushed him out onto the front step that night.
“It’s New Year’s Eve!” they said. “You must take advantage of the holiday, there are so many people out! Take these matchbooks; they have the company’s ad printed on the back. Give them out to the professionals you see, and get their business cards in return. You can come home when you’re all done.”
So he went, taking the matchbooks with him into the dark, wintry night. But he didn’t go alone, at least. While Vitya had no love for matchbooks, advertisements, or for herring, he did have lots of love for his most loyal companion, Makkachin. The little poodle stayed close on the bus ride to the heart of the city, and closer still when they reached downtown. The parties were all in full swing, and they would easily get stepped on or separated if they weren’t careful.
“Excuse me, would you like a free matchbook? No? But it has really nice printing on it! Wait, where are you going?”
The boy and his dog were kicked out of parties and restaurants,theaters and hotels. They were pushed away in the crowds, and ignored on the ice rinks. A few people took matchbooks out of pity, but most of those ended up in the trash right before his eyes.
It wasn’t as though he hadn’t thought about throwing all of them away, himself. He’d wanted to throw the whole sack in the garbage the moment they’d been given to him! But… they were his family, and somehow, they always knew how to catch him in a lie. Coming back with no business cards or contacts wouldn’t help his case at all.
Besides, the punishment should they find out…
He shuddered to think of it. No; it would be better to stay out all night if he had to.
Three great options in our store for this all-digital zine project:
❄️
ICE SPECULATION Digital Zine $15 USD – 52 works of art & 16 stories on a movie-inspired journey from Viktor & Yuuri’s youth all the way through the future beyond the GPF.
❄️
DOODLE DELUXE Digital Zine Pack (Most Popular! Thank you all!) $20 USD – For just $5 more, you get ICE SPECULATION Zine AND our bonus DOODLE Zine with extra adorable content around the Yuri on Ice cast + ANIMALS.
❄️
Pay-What-You-Want Edition For those who would love to enjoy the zine with a little help, get ICE SPECULATION zine starting at just $5 USD.
🎁 PLUS you’ll get your zine on Dec. 25 as a birthday present to Viktor!
Our zine is raising money for a collection of great animal charities and the medical fund for our artist Princess Harumi. With each goal we hit of 50 more sales, we’ll unlock an extra charity and raise money for more animals.
BLUE FRIDAY SPECIAL Extended –
We have a few sales left to go to unlock our next charity tier for kitties, so you can still make it into the penguin raffle! Pre-order your zine now and enter to win our penguin plush~.
🐧
Mod Dancing is recovering from another surgery so we’re giving our zine sales a little extra time. 🏥 Pre-order now and get your zine on Viktor’s birthday! We’re raising money for penguins and kitties – help us reach our next goal and we can raise money for tigers too, in honor of Yurio🐯
The penguin plush raffle is closed and we have a winner! Congratulations to @yoishipper17!! 🐧🎁
A special Yuri On Ice Movie Zine BONUS for our Victuuri fans & penguin lovers on BLUE Friday~?
As a special bonus for BLUE Friday, pre-order your copy of the zine today and YOU can win a Penguin Plush! We’ll enter you into a raffle to get your very own plush to hug and cuddle while you wait for the Yuri on Ice movie.
When we donate to one of our great charities the World Wildlife Fund, our zine will get a penguin adoption kit which includes this beautiful 12″ plush pictured above. ONE lucky winner of this raffle gets to be the forever-home for the plushie our whole zine family adopts!
We’ll keep raffle entries going until Nov. 23 (today USA time) 11:59
PM EST. If we still need a few sales to unlock our next charity tier and start raising funds for needy kitties, we’ll keep it going until we hit the new tier!
Early Adopters
Did you already pre-order your copy of ICE SPECULATION zine? Great news – You are automatically entered into the raffle for the Penguin Plush! We <3 you and thank you for your fast and amazing support.
After zine sales are complete and we make our charitable contributions, we’ll receive the plush, then ship it out to you. And the shipping’s on us – we want as much of our zine sales to go to our charities as possible.
A special Yuri On Ice Movie Zine BONUS for our Victuuri fans & penguin lovers on BLUE Friday~🎁
As a special bonus for BLUE Friday, pre-order your copy of the zine today and YOU can win a Penguin Plush! We’ll enter you into a raffle to get your very own plush to hug and cuddle while you wait for the Yuri on Ice movie.
When we donate to one of our great charities the World Wildlife Fund, our zine will get a penguin adoption kit which includes this beautiful 12″ plush pictured above. ONE lucky winner of this raffle gets to be the forever-home for the plushie our whole zine family adopts!
We’ll keep raffle entries going until Nov. 23 (today USA time) 11:59
PM EST. If we still need a few sales to unlock our next charity tier and start raising funds for needy kitties, we’ll keep it going until we hit the new tier!
Early Adopters
Did you already pre-order your copy of ICE SPECULATION zine? Great news – You are automatically entered into the raffle for the Penguin Plush! We <3 you and thank you for your fast and amazing support.
After zine sales are complete and we make our charitable contributions, we’ll receive the plush, then ship it out to you. And the shipping’s on us – we want as much of our zine sales to go to our charities as possible.
Kazakhstani figure skater and 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Bronze Medalist, Denis Ten, was the main inspiration for the creation of the character of Otabek Altin. He passed away on 19 July 2018. The Denis Ten Foundation was founded by his parents, Oxana and Yurii Ten, in order to preserve his legacy and continue to develop the many projects which Denis had begun during his life, including the establishment of the Denis Ten International Figure Skating Academy.
If you do not intend to purchase from this sale but still wish to donate to the Foundation, please visit this page. All help is highly appreciated.
The Dark Horse Zine donation sale will be hosted on darkhorsezine.bigcartel.com and will go live on 31 October 2018, 12:00 PM (EST). Stocks are very limited and each product will be sold individually so you can fill your carts with whichever items you want. You can find out more about the zine and merch items here. Shipments will be processed in the USA. For any concerns, please contact us at darkhorsezine@gmail.com.
It has been more than a year since we launched this zine project and we continue to be deeply touched by all the support it has received. We hope you can support us one last time on this final ride.
Kazakhstani figure skater and 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Bronze Medalist, Denis Ten, was the main inspiration for the creation of the character of Otabek Altin. He passed away on 19 July 2018. The Denis Ten Foundation was founded by his parents, Oxana and Yurii Ten, in order to preserve his legacy and continue to develop the many projects which Denis had begun during his life, including the establishment of the Denis Ten International Figure Skating Academy.
If you do not intend to purchase from this sale but still wish to donate to the Foundation, please visit this page. All help is highly appreciated.
The Dark Horse Zine donation sale will be hosted on darkhorsezine.bigcartel.com and will go live on 31 October 2018, 12:00 PM (EST). Stocks are very limited and each product will be sold individually so you can fill your carts with whichever items you want. You can find out more about the zine and merch items here. Shipments will be processed in the USA. For any concerns, please contact us at darkhorsezine@gmail.com.
It has been more than a year since we launched this zine project and we continue to be deeply touched by all the support it has received. We hope you can support us one last time on this final ride.
These towels, instead of being cotton, will be printed on microfiber for 2 reasons:
1. There was some miscommunication between us and our manufacturer as to the exact materials we would be able to print on and cotton turned out to be about 8x what we had budgeted for
2. Cotton towels would lose a lot of the beautiful details that @gabapple put into her design which we really didn’t want
So instead of a “towel”, this will be more like a ShamWow. And since this is YOI, we’re gonna call it the ShamWowAmazing!
WORRY NOT! Mod Limix has also thoroughly tested the absorbency of the ShamWowAmazing. A single one, fresh from the package, can absorb about 1.5 Tbsp/22 mL of water.
Assuming a single human tear holds 0.05 mL of water, that means the ShamWowAmazing can mop up 440 tears before needing to be wrung out, more than enough for a single read-through of the zine (we hope).
This is going in my iPad bag 100% for sure OMG microfiber is the best!!!
These towels, instead of being cotton, will be printed on microfiber for 2 reasons:
1. There was some miscommunication between us and our manufacturer as to the exact materials we would be able to print on and cotton turned out to be about 8x what we had budgeted for
2. Cotton towels would lose a lot of the beautiful details that @gabapple put into her design which we really didn’t want
So instead of a “towel”, this will be more like a ShamWow. And since this is YOI, we’re gonna call it the ShamWowAmazing!
WORRY NOT! Mod Limix has also thoroughly tested the absorbency of the ShamWowAmazing. A single one, fresh from the package, can absorb about 1.5 Tbsp/22 mL of water.
Assuming a single human tear holds 0.05 mL of water, that means the ShamWowAmazing can mop up 440 tears before needing to be wrung out, more than enough for a single read-through of the zine (we hope).
This is going in my iPad bag 100% for sure OMG microfiber is the best!!!
Don’t forget that @yoiscifizine pre-orders end tomorrow!
