As the surgeon huffs his rag, Everlyn looks out the window. Gray makes another circuit of the tower. The new rider waves. To check her feelings, she concentrates on the placket of Jeryon’s captain’s blouse. She slides her arm slowly between a strap and her belly to run her thumbnail along one edge of the placket until it catches on a tiny hard surface inside. She presses. Having taken a cue from the pant cuffs of Jeryon’s uniform, she pokes a long, needle-thin, but single-edged dragonbone blade through the cloth.
Also released, or maybe it’s just her mind playing tricks, is the last faint whisper of how he smelled. Her hands shake. She thinks of his beard and how nice it made him look, how rough it felt at first, then how soft. Her hands settle.
Everlyn slides the blade free one finger push at a time and palms it.
She will escape this monster, escape this place, and then she will get their dragon back.
In the highest room of her compound, the White Widow looks up through tall windows at the dragon circling the tower. The flames on the dome are dying down. The cheers are not. She gongs for one of her maids.
The young woman has rough hands like most maids, but her calluses didn’t come from churning a lye pot. She’s better fed too, and her arms and legs are taut as drumheads.
“Dress like a trade rider this time,” Asper tells her, “and bring word to my father immediately. They may close the gates. Hanosh has a dragon.” It swoops low over the compound, and Asper realizes who the rider is. “No, tell him Herse has a dragon. And whether or not we’re at war already, Ayden must take it. Or kill it.”
Acknowledgments
Nobody makes a book alone.
I’d like to thank:
My first readers: David Fantini, Brian Hopper, Eric B. Lass, and Nathan Ophardt, for their excellent advice and much-appreciated encouragement.
My team at Simon451, especially my editor, Brit Hvide. Her editorial vision and enthusiasm is why I signed with them. Her pointed notes and unflagging desire to get the book right demonstrated that I’d made a good decision. Elina Vaysbeyn, my online marketer, gave me extensive notes on my website. Tornstein Nordstrand painted the perfect cover image. Jonathan Evans and Dominick Montalto made sure that every comma was in its place.
My former employer, John Wiley & Sons, which, by laying me off and giving me a generous severance package, thereby provided both the impetus and the means to write this book.
My wife, Chris Condry, and our daughter, Alice Hope Condry-Power, for many things, but in particular for their forgiveness. I can get testy when I’m writing. The same is true when I’m hungry, but that’s not important here.
And finally my agent, Eric Nelson, who found the book a wonderful home, who gave me critical advice along the way, and who inspired it in the first place. One day he said, “Why would someone write a book for kids without a dragon?” and I thought, “Why would someone write a book for anyone without a dragon?”