Chapters (64)
- Front Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Pronunciation Guide
- Prologue
- Part One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Part Two
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Part Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Part Four
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Epilogue
- Excerpt from The Sun and Its Shade
- The Night and Its Moon Playlist
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Back Cover
She stood naked and trembling, clutching the brass doorknob. She looked at the Madame with wild desperation.
“Did he hurt you?”
Nox shook her head wordlessly, still shaking. She covered her breasts with her arms as she melted into the wall, sinking slowly into a seated fetal position on the floor.
Millicent took one look at her, then over her shoulder to the man who remained facedown on the bed. The Madame pushed into the room and shut the door behind her. Millicent rolled Theo onto his side with a grunt of gargantuan effort. She lowered her ear to his mouth, checking for the telltale heat, sound, or moisture of breathing. The Madame lifted a hand to feel for the artery on his throat.
She shrugged slightly. “Don’t worry, dear,” she said. “He paid in advance. You can take the rest of the night off, of course. I’ll handle things here.”
Nox’s eyes bulged. She felt like a fish snatched from the water as the calloused Madame brushed her hands, sniffing dismissively.
“He’s dead,” Nox said, her voice choking. “He’s dead.”
Millicent began to leave when her eyes fixed on Nox’s huddled form. The stunned look that flashed across the Madame’s face was an expression Nox had never seen. The woman looked as if she’d seen a true phantom, jaw dropping and eyes practically doubling as they widened. She remained frozen a moment, the same shock stuck to her features.
Nox raised a hand to her face to see if perhaps there was blood, or perhaps something horrible on her that she hadn’t noticed, patting at her hair and cheeks before looking back at the Madame in confusion.
Millicent closed the space between them. She knelt on the ground in front of the young woman. The Madame grabbed Nox by the chin and tilted it up, peering down into her eyes at an unknown revelation. At first, she shook her head in amazement. Then, a slow, delectable smile spread across Millicent’s lips.
“Well, well, well. What have we here?”
Twenty-Two
To her credit, Millicent handled the nightmarish events swiftly, quietly, and efficiently. The woman knew exactly which men of disrepute to summon to discard of the corpse of a middle-class barrister with no family or title. A perk of being the city’s most elite Madame was doubtlessly the blackmail she had been able to compile against its patrons. The things she knew could topple kingdoms, and when she needed to call in favors, they were done without question.
“I killed him.” Nox remained somewhere between her conscious attempt to detach and the numb horror of a corpse freshly dragged from her bed. “He’s dead. I killed him. I killed him.”
“Hush, dear,” Millicent said. The Madame apparently didn’t have time to deal with Nox’s feelings at the moment. She was busy orchestrating extraction and disposal.
“Will the constabulary come for me?” Nox managed to ask.