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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 queen continued her impassioned address to the bestial crowd, announcing, “We throw them to the monsters they worship, and we let hell reclaim them!”

Her sentence was punctuated by the cranking, metallic sound of gears. Wood groaned and chains strained. The audience lost its mind as the noise washed over the sand. Amaris turned her body to face its source, a blackened, rectangular shadow slowly spreading before her. The enormous door on the far side of the stadium began to open. The aching screeches of the mechanisms used to pry the door apart echoed throughout the coliseum. The ripping, ear-shredding roar of a monster tore from the inky darkness as the door continued its slow, mechanical opening. Amaris took a backward step, fighting off the dread that threatened her.

Her jaw dropped and, with it, her heart.

As she stared into the foreboding shadows and the monstrous screams that emerged from its darkened cage, she felt true fear.

Gadriel and Amaris moved their feet deftly, positioning themselves side by side, as they backed from the center of the stadium. They moved on instinct, putting as much space between themselves and the shadow as possible. Their eyes remained glued on the darkness of the enormous door’s open mouth. Another thundering, unholy shriek pierced the eardrums of everyone in the stadium, causing the two to flinch. They remained on guard as they moved, Amaris with her blade held before her. Gadriel had no weapons, nor did he have his wings.

She comprehended the three syllables the people had been chanting the moment the black, four-legged obsidian snake tore from the dungeons. Its jaw unhinged, revealing layer upon layer of needlelike teeth, jagged and wildly strewn about its horrible maw. Its serpentine neck, unnaturally long and horribly flexible, wriggled skyward as it cried its terrible, hungry call to every unholy beast of the continent. The scarred wings, nearly large enough to fill the coliseum, beat in such a forceful, singular blast that it blew Gadriel and Amaris backward, almost knocking them from their feet. They remained firm though the sharp bites of sand and dirt assaulted their skin as they winced against its force. They stared as the beast adjusted its front feet, planting itself onto the sand and eyeing them with hunger in its demonic, soulless eyes. The crowd invoked the three sadistic syllables of its name over and over as they begged to see the justice of its wrath.

Ag’drurath.

Forty-Six

“Any ideas?” Gadriel exhaled slowly beside her. His empty hands were raised to fight.

“Yeah,” Amaris hissed. “Don’t die.”

In the tumultuous events following her confrontation with Moirai and her reunion with Nox in the jail cell, she’d forgotten an important detail. She remembered the hard point of metal between her breasts. Amaris fished the thin dagger Gadriel had given to her after he’d landed on her balcony from where she had stashed it in her bustier.