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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

No. Amaris’s calm was too much. It stirred a renewed sense of panic and urgency within her. She began to search for solutions, eyes scanning her surroundings. She tried to understand the bizarre makeup of Amaris’s cell juxtaposed against the surrounding cages, but she couldn’t figure out why Amaris had been put in such an unusual holding room. Her eyes kept snagging on the silvery slice of moonlight, too bright, too pure, too lovely for the hopeless grime of her fate.

“I’m going to get you out,” Nox said again. Amaris may have been feeling peace in her resolution, but for every passing moment of calm and acceptance the reever felt, Nox’s hysteria only grew. After all this time, they were mere inches from one another. The iron bars sent a clear message: they may as well have been a continent apart.

A sword composed of sound and light cut through their efforts. Its lurching noise jolted them from their moment, causing everyone in the room to flinch in surprise.

A golden, piercing beam cut into the prison, blinding everyone. Over her shoulders, the two jailed men who’d been watching with unhinged jaws raised their arms to shield their eyes. Eramus did the same, holding his hands up in front of his face like a child playing a hiding game. Nox and Amaris squinted against the bar of light as it grew wider, stretching from where the wooden wall of Amaris’s cell was beginning to split open.

It was an effort not to keep from scrambling backward in horror as Nox realized precisely what she was seeing.

Amaris’s cell was not three bars and a fourth wooden barrier. Amaris had been jailed against a great and terrible door into the coliseum. She wished she’d understood it sooner. She should have made the connection the moment Eramus was summoned to the coliseum.

Nox had no doubt that she looked every bit as unhinged as she felt. She saw the intruders before their hands were on Amaris. Nox reached through the bars and balled fists tightly in Amaris’s clothes, hands tearing to maintain a hold on Amaris as they tugged her into the arena. Amaris twisted against the hands that held her, not to release herself from Nox but to free herself from their grip. Angered shouts and the metallic banging of fists on iron carried from the opposite cell, but Nox only watched as Amaris drove an elbow into one guard and flung a fist toward the other. The scuffle was tough but brief. The moment they caught her arms in their grasp, it was over. She continued thrashing, but their hold had separated her arms so fully that she had no room for an advantageous position. The men grunted as they began to move.