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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

From her hiding space several paces away, she straightened her legs and stepped out from where she’d been crouching. The man noticed her immediately. He smiled, his face a bit soft, a bit sad. For the first time that night, Nox thought his expression held no wickedness. Now that the matron was absent, he was able to drop whatever hardness he’d needed for negotiations. Nox saw how droplets of water caught in his beard and reflected in the torchlight, giving him something of a shimmer. The sparkle seemed reassuring somehow.

The man knelt on one knee and placed the wicker basket on the floor between them.

“Do you want to see?” he asked. His voice lowered with a paternal gentleness, though he framed his question like a conspiratorial temptation.

She did indeed. Nox had no desire to draw closer to a strange man, but the basket called to her. She took a few careful steps across the cold stones of the corridor onto the carpet of the threshold. Her bare feet paused on the fibers of the scratchy rug. Her eyes felt too large as she gazed at the man and his treasure. A renewed rush of rain and earth greeted her with every step she took.

He looked at her expectantly. She remained several cautious arms’ lengths away from him. He chuckled quietly, as though he knew she wasn’t permitted to be awake past bed and had no interest in getting her in trouble.

He motioned her toward the basket. Nox took the opening. She moved forward on the tips of her toes, hands extended. She folded her fingers around the wicker edge of the basket and looked. She stared down at the baby inside, her glossy hair creating a shadowed curtain around them while she peered. A rush of something other than rain—something more like cold and pine—drifted up from the swaddled little one. Nox peered at the infant wrapped in furs, sleeping soundly despite the turmoil raging outside.

“It’s a baby,” she whispered. She did not look back up to the man. For all she cared, he had ceased existing. She was transfixed.

Nox had seen babies before. The matrons let all the children play together, often with the older ones looking after the younger ones. Infants never lasted long in the manor, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. The orphans who survived their first year of life were taken off the matrons’ hands more quickly than the rest of the children. Babies came and went, creating fairy tales amongst the children built on hopes of escape and wishful thinking.