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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

The road to becoming a reever was agonizing.

Every pain she thought she’d felt, every muscle ache, every embarrassment she’d experienced leading up to this moment had been a grain of sand on a frothy beach compared to the endless desert of daily misery that was exercise and practice with the reevers. True to her testimony, she would be offered no special treatment. She was given no grace as she was thrown into the ring.

Amaris woke at dawn for her first morning of training and followed the others as they walked up and over the many-tiered training ring to a trail she hadn’t noticed on her tour the day before. It was just as thin as the one that had led up from Stone, though this particular pathway wound its way down the opposite mountain. The men took off in a pack, and her eyes widened.

“We’re meant to run down?” she gasped. She hadn’t meant for it to come with horror, but it didn’t seem safe to sprint down such a steep trail. The one with the golden hair had patted her once on the back as he passed, responding with cheery levity.

“And back up again!” he said. The young man began his run, and she watched after the men as they began what would be a daily exercise in suffering.

For weeks, the distance between Amaris and the men was so great during their runs up and down the mountain that most of them would reach the base of the mountain, turn around, and pass her on their climb before she’d even completed her initial descent. If it weren’t miserable enough to feel every muscle in her body scream in protest, the added humiliation of needing to avoid their eyes as they surpassed her was an entirely separate layer of excruciation. Even Grem, for his advanced age, never missed the morning run. The daily runs fostered community and maintained stamina essential to their survival on the job, or so the men had claimed.

The particularly agile reevers could finish the exercise in two hours. Others required three or four for their round trip. Amaris was lucky if she could finish her run in six.

The reevers kept this particular mountain to themselves. The mountains existed in neutral territory, belonging to no one but Uaimh Reev, a scattering of marmots, and the surrounding bighorn sheep. Precipitous trail running was as much about psychological torment and learning to control your fear and channel your adrenaline as it was a practice in stamina.

The steep switchbacks offered no forgiveness if a single foot slipped out of place.