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Chapters (64)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  6. Pronunciation Guide
  7. Prologue
  8. Part One
  9. One
  10. Two
  11. Three
  12. Four
  13. Five
  14. Six
  15. Seven
  16. Eight
  17. Nine
  18. Ten
  19. Eleven
  20. Twelve
  21. Thirteen
  22. Part Two
  23. Fourteen
  24. Fifteen
  25. Sixteen
  26. Seventeen
  27. Eighteen
  28. Nineteen
  29. Twenty
  30. Twenty-One
  31. Twenty-Two
  32. Twenty-Three
  33. Part Three
  34. Twenty-Four
  35. Twenty-Five
  36. Twenty-Six
  37. Twenty-Seven
  38. Twenty-Eight
  39. Twenty-Nine
  40. Thirty
  41. Thirty-One
  42. Thirty-Two
  43. Thirty-Three
  44. Thirty-Four
  45. Thirty-Five
  46. Part Four
  47. Thirty-Six
  48. Thirty-Seven
  49. Thirty-Eight
  50. Thirty-Nine
  51. Forty
  52. Forty-One
  53. Forty-Two
  54. Forty-Three
  55. Forty-Four
  56. Forty-Five
  57. Forty-Six
  58. Forty-Seven
  59. Epilogue
  60. Excerpt from The Sun and Its Shade
  61. The Night and Its Moon Playlist
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. About the Author
  64. Back Cover

Ash either hadn’t noticed her growing physical discomfort or hadn’t cared. Still entertained by the presence of the reev’s newest member, he asked, “Do you have a nickname?”

She blinked, leaving her thoughts and coming back into her body. She chafed her arms for warmth. “No, not really,” she answered.

“Come on,” he pushed. “Everyone’s friends give them a nickname.”

“I didn’t really have friends where I was,” she said. And she definitely wasn’t going to win any this way. Her awkward answers were garnering her no favors. She wished she could relax, but every gust of wind and chill of the weather only underlined how poor she was at communication. She couldn’t even advocate for herself enough to tell her soon-to-be sparring partner that she was freezing. Amaris caught a glance at her fingers long enough to see the shades of red and pinks they were turning around the tips and knuckles.

Ash wasn’t truly looking at her. He seemed to be eyeing the late-autumn sky as he chewed on an idea, unfazed. “Well, Amaris is a bit of a mouthful, but give me enough time and I’ll think of something to shout at you while I’m crushing you in the ring.”

“Ash?”

“Mmm?” He perked up at the use of his name.

“If we continue talking outside, you’ll win all of our fights, because I’m about to lose my limbs. I’m freezing.”

His smile sparkled at her frankness as he jerked his head toward the corridor. She returned the smile. The heat flooded into her the moment the door closed behind them. They parted ways as soon as they’d eased into the door to the keep, but she knew she wouldn’t feel truly warm again until she had the chance to soak her bones in the hot bath of her quarters.

It took a while for her to find her way through the corridors, but Amaris returned to her rooms and took her dinner from the boy, Brel, in her chamber. Presumably, she would one day join the men where they ate, but she was grateful for the chance to be alone with her thoughts. She flipped through the books on her shelf and found one that was nothing but a genealogy of kings and their heirs, and she began to scratch in her own history with strokes of a quill. She wrote her name and an arrow from her to Nox, connecting them with a parallel line. She wrote the names she had learned from the reevers—Samael, Odrin, Ash, Malik, Grem, and somewhere below them she wrote Brel’s name as well. She made a column for the matrons, one for her peers at the orphanage, one for Queen Moirai, and then, with a big black X to the side, she wrote Madame Millicent.

Eighteen

Torture took on a new name, and that name was training.