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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

Love had shown its face every day as the three of them lived their contented, simple lives. Love had taught her how to bake, and love had urged them to encourage their daughter to stretch herself and grow, not limited by what others perceived. Love had caused her father to throw his daughter to the ground and cradle his wife on the floor of their cottage. Love made a child kill its mother with its embrace. Love forced the man to sneak off into the night to have tailor-made gloves for the child that would run to the length of her elbow. Love protected her as the baker ardently defended her against the bishops of the church when they came for her, insisting that he had it under control. Love kept her sequestered in her home as the months stretched into years, as the seed of fear planted in her father grew into a weed, its roots deep and tangled. Love put her on a three-week carriage ride at the age of fourteen with a strange crew of westbound men with a letter begging the university to accept her and train her to master her gift. Love wrote her a farewell letter before she was able to graduate, telling her she’d always be in his heart as his spirit went to join her mother. Love broke her heart time and time again until there was nothing left but death.

It brought her to the present, where the bridge between her past and her future withered before her.

Millicent knew of love and of death. Over the decades, her heart may have grown to be as grotesque as the talons at the end of her left hand, but when she saw Nox glowing with the light of her gift in her office those years ago, Millicent’s own light had ignited. Love may not be something that would grace her doorsteps, but perhaps it could be something she could control and possess. Its embodiment had crossed her threshold. Nox was the perfect complement to complete her puzzle, the missing link between love, death, and power. If Nox died, the bridge would die with it.

Millicent knelt at her side, her words hurried and manic. “I will heal you. You just have to feed.”

She’d twiddled her thumbs for days. She’d fidgeted. She’d contemplated. And ultimately, she found herself at a crossroads of evil.

There were many horrible things in this world.

She knew of the malicious horrors of hate, of enslavement, of torture. She knew the horrors of nature, from the plagues that swept through the villages, and winters so cold that they froze whole families in their beds as they huddled for warmth, to the curses of magic decided well within or before the womb. She knew the common horrors of the ravages of time, and the unspeakable horrors of the cruelties of mad kings and their violent delights.