Mixed-blood Beta Luna is offered up by her family as a sacrifice, sent to the Shadow Lord Kale — a monster whose mates never survive three years. In the castle hall she witnesses the curse-veins devouring him in agony, and by sheer touch she makes the dark markings crack and fade. She is the "living cure" he has sought for three hundred years. He takes her against her will, then throws her into the Moon Hunt selection as the lowest-born candidate before all the nobles. When her sister publicly shatters her token and sneers "counterfeit," the masked High Lord steps out of the crowd: "The token I gave with my own hand — you call that a fake?"
