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 Contents  Title Page Dedication Contents Prologue Part One  Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11   Part Two  Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18   Part Three  Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24   Part Four  Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32   About the Author Copyright    Guide  Cover Title Page Dedication Contents Part One Chapter 1 Copyright    Pagebreaks of the print version  Cover Page iii v 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 141 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 265 iv            FOR MADDIE, GROWING FASTERTHAN A BABY WYVERN          Title Page Dedication Prologue Part One Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Part Two Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Part Three Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Part Four Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 About the Author Copyright    THE MOON HUNG OVER GLASSBLOWER’S Gulch like a polished meat hook, and the stars flecked around it like shimmering bloodstains … or something. Abel wasn’t much for metaphors. Or was that a simile? The difference had something to do with if you used the words “like” and “as,” he thought, but he couldn’t quite remember which was which. He wasn’t much for the rules of literature and grammar and all that, and he’d never been great at focusing in school … or focusing anywhere else, really. Abel got distracted easily, especially when he was stressed out. And he was currently very stressed out. The school counselor had said it was a kind of attention disorder and anxiety condition—and also somehow related to puberty, which he didn’t really want to talk to the school counselor about. But it didn’t matter, because they weren’t his school counselor anymore. He didn’t have a school counselor anymore. The school in the remote desert town of Glassblower’s Gulch didn’t have one. Or school supplies. Or even qualified teachers. His parents had tried to reassure him it might be good to have a change, though it seemed like they were trying to convince themselves of that too. None of them had actually chosen to move to Glassblower’s Gulch. They’d been forced to move there by the government, so in that way, it wasn’t a move but an exile, and it was kind of Abel’s fault they’d had to move, because he’d raided an experimental dragon laboratory and he’d battled against the dragon-riding kins and the secret police and then he also— Oops. He was doing the thing again, getting distracted by his own thoughts. He remembered enough grammar to know that was a run-on sentence in his brain, and he knew enough about himself to know that now was not the time for running on sentences. Now was the time for running like his life depended on it. Because it did. He was currently standing on the smooth glass desert above Glassblower’s Gulch, looking down the throat of a very angry dragon. That’s why he was stressed. It was a reasonable response. The dragon’s scales and skin were almost clear. Abel could see its jagged skeleton underneath, and its mouth made a sound like bones breaking. When it roared, it spat a single sharp spike from its throat, one as long as Abel’s arm and sharper than the meat-hook moon hanging in the sky. Meat-hook moon? Was that a metaphor? he wondered as he dove out of the way. The spike embedded itself six inches deep in the solid-glass ground. Cracks spiderwebbed the surface around it. Cracked desert glass wasn’t a spiderweb, and a ten-ton wild dragon wasn’t a spider, even though Abel certainly felt like a fly caught in its trap. Like a fly! That’s a simile! I got it! “Focus, Abel!” he told himself as he rolled across the ground, still thinking about metaphors and similes and his own impending doom. Until his foot bumped into another spike from an earlier