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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

And then something had gone terribly wrong. Though she didn’t know what, the sensation had torn through her as if she’d been made of little more than paper. Now hours later, her body was in a carriage headed for the southwestern coast, but her mind stayed at Farleigh, listening to the screams that permeated her memories. Her heart was somewhere far stranger as it continued to travel further and further from her, tugging the tether that bound them like a rope uncoiling as one end fell to the deepest bottom of a well. Nox had heard muffled cries, a protest, and the whinnying of a horse. The angry screams of women from somewhere beyond the courtyard punctured the air. She had felt them then—the hot tears that erupted from her carving salted lines down her cheeks. She hadn’t known she was going to cry until it was already happening. Her face had contorted, her chest tightened, and she’d been unable to properly breathe.

Nox couldn’t explain how she knew, but Amaris was gone.

The separation was a physical void, its presence a shadowy, terrible companion. The absence poured into her, flooding her as if she’d been little more than an empty glass before its black waters filled her.

Nox had willed her knees to bend. She begged her feet to take her into the woods, to break away from the mill. If she took off for the woods, it would be less than a three-minute run until she was out of the yard and into the forest. She could be between the browns and grays of their trunks and hidden within the underbrush in moments. She had the supplies she needed. She had the food, the clothes, and the provisions to run. She could do it. She could leave.

She’d pleaded with herself, begged herself, commanded her body to do anything. It could carry her back into her house, return her to her bed, sprint for the forest, it could do anything other than stand like a statue. It could transport her into the kitchen for seventeen loaves of fresh bread. It could drown her in the cold waters of an early-winter river where the waves would wash her away, carry her on their icy rapids until she drifted into nothingness, her lovely corpse making it to the coast she had dreamed of one day seeing. How poetic would it be, to drift into the sea. Instead, she would bring the sea to her, as all the salt in her body poured out from its bottomless well in her eyes.

Then hands had been on her. Nox hadn’t even heard the kitchen door open.

“Nox!”

Her eyes had snapped to see that it was Flora who had found her. The matron looked her over for wounds, searching for the source of Nox’s tears. She found nothing.