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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 conversation should have concluded, but she had one more question. His answer may have been irrelevant, but she pondered it nonetheless.

“What is a witch, do you think?”

He had an easy wisdom about him. Zaccai always seemed thoughtful without being arrogant. He looked off as he considered her question, then answered, “Perhaps ‘gift’ is just the favorable term for when we see a talent we can appreciate. For the others, perhaps people needed a word like ‘witch’ for the magics they neither liked nor understood.”

She was exhausted. The only truth Amaris had learned was that the more she studied, the more lands she visited, the more people she met, the more faiths she uncovered and things she read, the more she realized how profoundly little she actually knew.

Part Four

What Must Be Done

Thirty-Six

Nox was dying.

She’d felt mortality’s talons grip her for days now. Here she was on silk sheets she’d sworn she’d never feel again, surrounded by the gauzy curtains she’d never intended to see. She had refused to return to the Selkie, yet now it would be her tomb. She remained immobilized on the bed of her room in the brothel as girls had been filtered in and out, their faces plastered with worry.

The Madame had done this, and Nox had nothing but time to put the pieces together.

Once the wake of fretting girls became overwhelming, Millicent forbade anyone from visiting her. Not only were the other young women afraid for Nox, but they also feared that whatever mysterious illness she’d contracted might be contagious. Millicent leaned into this fear as an excuse to lock them out. The only people allowed into Nox’s chamber was the healer whom the Millicent had summoned, and the Madame herself. Much to everyone’s dismay, the healer had no answers for them. The unhelpful healer stayed under the roof of the Selkie at the coin of the Madame, if only to clean up after the soporose young woman.

Nox was too weak to speak.

Trapped as she was inside the comatose illness of her own body, her eyes could only flutter open to blink yes or no to answer the simplest of questions. They didn’t seem to understand her rapid “no” blinks anytime the vanilla cloud of the Madame drew near. The healer would dab a damp cloth to her forehead and her chapped lips, urging small dribbles of water or broth into her throat and holding her head and neck aloft, allowing her to swallow without choking. Nox had scanned for the telltale freckles of Emily in the faces that had come and gone, but she was a shell of a woman. She’d become little more than sentient eyes caged behind a withering body.