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Back The Night and Its Moon Save as PDF
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

“Shh, shh.” Nox pulled her into the tightest embrace she could manage through the bars that separated them. She continued stroking the girl’s hair too fast, with too much built-up intensity as love and the need to comfort overwhelmed her, even if Nox was the one who needed shushing, given the shudders of her tears. These were the throttled, hysterical, gagged sobs of years of separation. Any emotion that had jarred and stunned her upon initially seeing Amaris had broken into countless painful shards, now the powder of a million fragments of broken glass that tinkled around them like the falling snow. She had spent fifteen years at Farleigh protecting and comforting Amaris—dedicating her life to shielding, loving, and looking out for her snowflake. What could she do now that she played the role of the wicked whore on the wrong side of the bars? It should be her locked up, not gentle Amaris.

Nox’s shushes were useless. They were more for herself than for the reever, as Nox’s shoulders shook and her sobs were louder than any other noise in the room. Her snowflake had never seen her tremble or shake as she did now.

“Can you—”

Amaris didn’t have to finish her sentence before Nox’s eyes widened in understanding.

“Goddess, oh goddess yes, turn around, turn around,” she said, each word punctuated with a sob.

Amaris offered Nox her rope-bound hands. Nox immediately began to cut and slice at them using the tiny blade. She broke through one coil, then another. The rope’s tendrils fell away, and with the tangled ropes fell their last tethers to sanity. They clutched each other as if they were about to lose hold on gravity and float from the other. Their arms wrapped through the bars, each gripping at the back of the other. Hair and clothes and skin and bodies gripped and pushed and held with unrelenting intensity. They couldn’t be close enough, couldn’t clutch hard enough.

“Nox, I’m so sorry” was all Amaris said.

“What?” Nox wiped her tears with the back of her hand, her smile a ragged, half-wild thing. “What could you possibly be sorry for? Oh goddess, Amaris…”