title: A Dark Devotion
author: Clare Francis
description: Clare Francis is the author of the bestselling novels Night Sky, Red Crystal, and Wolf Winter as well as the nonfiction bestsellers Come Hell or High Water, Come Wind or Weather, and The Commanding Sea. A Dark Devotion is the third Clare Francis novel to be published by Soho, after Deceit and Betrayal. She lives in London.
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  ## book I
  
  
  A CITY OF STONE AND LIGHT
  
  
  
  
  
  ## prologue
  
  
  DEATH BELONGED to her now. She must sit with it for one turning of the moon
  like her mother had before her. As Copi drew closer to the fire, she heard the
  music that haunted her dreams. It wasn’t real music, not heartbeats, not drums
  or chanting, not the wind in your ears as you danced. It chirped like a bird,
  tinkled like silver beads.
  
  
  In one month Copi would be a woman. Her family would give her a young stallion
  to call her own. When the colt grew strong she would ride across the Vastness
  and find a man with many mares to breed with her stallion. And that man would
  give her many children to ride on the backs of those horses. But first, she
  must endure one month with the child.
  
  
  She stepped out of the darkness into the light of the fire. Her sister sat
  upon a log in front of the flames. Nili’s eyes were red and sunken like an old
  woman dying of the fever, but she offered a weak smile at the sight of her
  sist