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Back The Night and Its Moon Save as PDF
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 books, like the meals, were something with which she’d forced herself to pace her consumption. If she devoured everything too quickly, she’d be alone with nothing to read. Her first book had been a much more interesting choice, though poorly written and sickly sweet. It was some four-hundred-page ballad about a king of the night and the princess of the sun and the romance that had divided the world in its misguided attempt at unity. Their love story had been a tragedy, ending in murder. The sister of the slain princess had been offered as a replacement in marriage before the continent fell into anarchy. The prose was both sloppy and dreadfully unbelievable, but it was better than hours spent staring at the stones of an empty bedroom. Amaris vastly preferred the romantic nonsense to a list of the names of dead warriors and had already read the love tale three times.

Each night was spent in the bathtub in her en suite bathing room until her pale fingers shriveled into prunes, trying to see how far she could flick beads of water and making a competition with herself to see if any of the droplets would land on the ceiling.

Late into the second night, Amaris wrote I’m bored 652 times on a single piece of paper. She was just beginning to write it for the 653rd time when a loud thud sounded at her door. The only two knocks were those of the small boy at mealtime and the heavy fists of her lone ally. She perked as Odrin eased open the door.

“Anything?”

He nodded, dark brows lowered in seriousness. “They’re going to meet with you.”

Her heart skipped as she asked, “Tonight?”

He eyed her paper and how she’d perched against the desk but decided not to ask her about her very important written masterpiece.

“No, not yet. It’s taken this long just to agree to give you an audience.”

“When?”

Odrin hadn’t fully entered the room, which made it clear he didn’t intend to stay.

“Sometime tomorrow,” he said. “I assumed you might have finished whatever books are in your room and brought you one on geography and another on the five kingdoms, given, you know…” He waved a hand in general reference to how she’d already managed to disappoint him regarding her knowledge of the continent. Before leaving, he said, “Keep your chin up. It’s never the wrong time to study.”

Odrin closed the door behind him.

Amaris was left staring up at the desk. She wished he hadn’t said anything. Knowing was fruitless if there was nothing she could do about it.