by Holly Black
When we return to the apartment with our stack of steaming cardboard boxes, Heather and Vivi have tied up a silvery banner that reads CONGRATULATIONS, NEWLYWEDS! in bright colors. Under it, on the kitchen table, is an ice-cream cake with scattered gummy snakes on it and several bottles of wine.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” I say, going over to Heather and giving her a hug. “I just know I’m going to love you.”
“She’s told me some wild things about you all,” Heather says.
Vivi blows a noisemaker. “Here,” she says, passing out paper crowns for us to wear.
“This is ridiculous,” I complain, but put mine on.
Cardan looks at his reflection in the door of the microwave and adjusts his crown so it’s at an angle.
I roll my eyes, and he gives me a quick grin. And my heart hurts a little because we are all together and safe, and it wasn’t something I’d known how to want. And Cardan looks a little shy in the face of all this happiness, as unused to it as I am. There will be struggles to come, I am certain, but right now I am equally sure we will find our way through them.
Vivi opens pizza boxes and uncorks a bottle of wine. Oak takes out a slice of the prawn pizza and digs in.
I raise a plastic glass. “To family.”
“And Faerieland,” says Taryn, raising hers.
“And pizza,” says Oak.
“And stories,” says Heather.
“And new beginnings,” says Vivi.
Cardan smiles, his gaze on me. “And scheming great schemes.”
To family and Faerieland and pizza and stories and new beginnings and scheming great schemes. I can toast to that.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Finishing this book would have been immensely difficult without the support, help, criticism, and thematic derring-do of Sarah Rees Brennan, Leigh Bardugo, Steve Berman, Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson, Joshua Lewis, Kelly Link, and Robin Wasserman. Thank you, my roguish crew!
Thank you to all the readers who came out to see me on the road, wrote messages, drew Folk of the Air art, and/or dressed up as the characters. Every bit of it meant more to me than I can say.
A massive thank-you to everyone at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers for supporting my weird vision. Thanks especially to my amazing editor, Alvina Ling, and to Ruqayyah Daud, Siena Koncsol, Victoria Stapleton, Bill Grace, Emilie Polster, Natali Cavanagh, and Valerie Wong, among others. And in the UK, thank you to Hot Key Books, particularly Jane Harris, Emma Matthewson, Roisin O’Shea, and Tina Mories.
Thank you to Joanna Volpe, Hilary Pecheone, Pouya Shahbazian, Jordan Hill, Abigail Donoghue, and everyone at New Leaf Literary for making hard things easier.
Thank you to Kathleen Jennings for her wonderful and evocative illustrations.
And thanks most of all to my husband, Theo, for helping me figure out the stories I want to tell, and to our son, Sebastian, for reminding me that sometimes the most important thing to do is play.
Thank you for choosing a Hot Key book.
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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by
HOT KEY BOOKS
80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE
www.hotkeybooks.com
Copyright © Holly Black, 2019
Illustrations by Kathleen Jennings
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of Holly Black to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
‘Elfin Song’ by Edmund Clarence Stedman, first published in 1860 ‘A Fairy Tale’ by Philip James Bailey, first published in 1855
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-4714-0757-4
Hot Key Books is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
www.bonnierbooks.co.uk
