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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

Amaris had barely registered their upset before a new shape shot into the hall from the older girls’ dorm. Ever the light sleeper, Nox was through the door in a heartbeat. She shushed the girls frantically, eyes wide with an alarm Amaris couldn’t comprehend. Amaris moved toward Nox, but Nox didn’t look at her. She focused all of her attention on the crying girls as low, hurried commands burbled over her lips.

“Shut up! Shut up! Go back to bed!” she begged, her voice strangled urgency.

The youngest of them had taken to pitiful sobbing.

“Stop it! Be quiet!” Nox pleaded. Amaris continued to blink at her in confusion. She didn’t understand why, but it sounded like Nox might cry herself.

The other young girls began to stir, lighting the candles by their beds as they woke. The younger ones were fussing louder and louder, and the more Nox urged them to quiet, the more distressed their murmurs became.

As the yellow glow of candles filled the room, one of the girls closest to the door pointed at Amaris, face pale with terror.

“She’s dying!”

* * *

Minutes before, Nox had been staring sleeplessly at the ceiling, tracing the crown molding with her eyes while the peers around her slumbered. It was as if some quiet part of her mind had known she would be needed. The sound had pierced through the night, and she’d tripped on her twisted sheets in an adrenaline-fueled sprint to the younger dorm.

Of course, Nox understood exactly what had happened the moment she’d entered the room. It had proven impossible to silence the idiot children with no education about their bodies. Amaris was the oldest in their room, and as such, this was the first time they’d borne witness to the curse of womanhood. While her exact birthday was unknown, her moonlit friend was between her fourteenth and fifteenth year. Amaris’s curse had been blessedly belated, as these things went. While some of the women and girls suffered relatively little during their moon time, this had been an especially crimson sight for Amaris. The horror was appropriate, as this was the moment that officially marked her as a sacrificial lamb.

Amaris’s time had come.

The bed linens would be scrubbed and boiled of the telltale blood. Amaris’s nightdress would be soaked, salted, and washed until it shined once more as if this gruesome event had never happened. Letters would be sent and the Madame alerted. Amaris’s first blood had come, and it was too late to hide it.

She looked at Nox and shook her head slightly, and Nox knew what it meant.

Amaris was not going.

No matter what.

Ten

They were out of time.