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

Was this why they had bathed her? In seeing her nakedness and combing through her hair, there was truly nothing she could hide. There was a cleverness to the seemingly perfunctory acts of the servants that she both admired and feared. She wondered if Ash and Malik had been set to the same shameful stripping and scrubbing, rendering them weaponless.

A distant memory recalled a time when Odrin had been forced to remove his weapons before he could shelter for the night in the kitchens of Farleigh. While the servant tugged brutally at Amaris’s hair, she felt a surge of sympathy for Odrin at the memory. Removing a reever’s sword was like removing a limb. Still, the knowledge that this was somewhat common practice comforted her. If the man she called her father could be gutted of his weaponry for a night in Farleigh, so could she.

The door to her room opened, which annoyed her. Would there be no end to the disturbances before she met Queen Moirai? Would she have no time to process her thoughts or plan?

A new servant popped in her head through a crack in the door. They informed her that the queen was in the middle of a previous engagement and Amaris was to take dinner in her rooms until Moirai called upon her later that night. She fidgeted uncomfortably at the knowledge that she was not to be reunited with her brothers.

“My companions?”

“—are also being served in their rooms.”

At least Malik would be fed, she thought. She inquired as to the whereabouts of her friends and debated whether or not to slip from her rooms and go to them. Though she knew they’d be in the same room soon when reunited before the queen, she hadn’t been separated from the reevers more than a handful of times over the past three years. It felt unnatural to be unable to access her brothers. Perhaps it was more than just the unfamiliarity that was disquieting.

An anomalous instinct filled her stomach with stones. She ignored it, certain it was just anxiety over the unknown. She was afraid of doing something new, and if she was to succeed, she would need to learn to adapt. Of course, the castle was unfamiliar. Of course, being bathed by servants and dressed by attendants was new. How would she survive in this world if she felt a surge of fear every time she faced a unique situation?

“Will you be needing anything else, miss?” the attendant asked. She pulled her fingers from Amaris’s hair, finally finished with the ornate braids.

Amaris stared at herself in the perfect, glassy mirror. She soaked in the snow-white hair that disappeared against the milk of her skin. She regarded the charcoal they’d smudged around her lids and gazed into the lilac eyes staring back at her. Even when she’d been up for auction at Farleigh, she hadn’t felt as dressed and stuffed like a pig off to market as she did now in Moirai’s castle.