Read the Opening of Book Three — 'What the Moon Keeps'

Chapter One — What the Moon Keeps Miraleth lay broken against the cavern floor, blood spreading beneath her in a dark pool that caught the faint mineral light along the walls. Kael stood over her with one scimitar still in his hand. The fury inside him had burned past anything wild or uncontrolled. What remained was colder than rage, stripped of confusion and sharpened by the kind of clarity the Crimson Veil had spent most of his life teaching him to find. He knew exactly how far he stood from Miraleth. He knew the condition of her arm, the weakness in her breathing, the angle at which the blade would have to enter beneath the jaw to end her life before she felt more than the first instant of pain. Ghost knew all of it. Salunia was lying behind him. Miraleth forced her head upward. The effort brought a tremor through her shoulders, and fresh blood slipped from the corner of her mouth. One eye had swollen nearly shut, but the other found Kael and held him. He had known that gaze since childhood. There had been a time when Miraleth had been the closest thing he understood as friendship. Before either of them possessed words for what the Veil was doing to them, before pain became instruction and obedience became survival, they had been two children learning to exist inside the same darkness. The memory surfaced against his will. He buried it. His blade rose. Miraleth watched it come without reaching for a weapon. Perhaps she knew there would be no point. Perhaps she believed she deserved it. Kael almost wished she would fight. It would have been easier if she gave him something to answer. Her lips parted. "Kael." The name came weakly, barely louder than the water dripping somewhere deeper in the cave. His blade stopped. — Continue reading in The Crimson Veil, available now in paperback.