“I’m going to take the land route west,” Katsa said. She hesitated, then made an admission. “I’m going into the Middluns, Po. There’s one more king I need to face.”

Po released a small, surprised breath. “But you faced him already.”

Katsa sighed. “Yes. But I was scared of myself then. I was scared of him. I’m not anymore. Po—I need Randa to know I’ll come and go as I please. I won’t hide myself like some kind of criminal, and I won’t be afraid to visit my friends. I miss Raff so much already, and I need to see Helda—I want to convince her to go to Monsea. Bitterblue needs her.”

Po’s arms came around her and pulled her against him. His fingers brushed sand from her hair. “All right,” he said softly. “Be careful. I’ll look for you after you’ve faced your king.”

They lay quietly together in the dark. Katsa settled her head against his chest. She heard lapping water and its echo. She heard the pulse of his blood through his skin.

“You know,” he said, “I wish you could see this cave.”

“What’s it like?”

He paused. “It’s . . . beautiful, really.”

“Tell me.”

And so Po described to Katsa what hid in the blackness of the cave; and outside, the world awaited them.

Acknowledgments

A debut novel is a true team effort. With all my heart, I would like to thank my sister Catherine (and the guys), always my first reader(s); my stupendous editor, Kathy Dawson; my agent, Faye Bender, who is a rock star; Liza Ketchum, who taught me to think like a novelist; Susan Bloom, Cathie Mercier, Kelly Hager, Jackie Horne, Lisa Jahn-Clough, and everyone else who changed my life at Simmons College’s marvelous Center for the Study of Children’s Literature; my sister Dac, Dana Zachary, Deborah Kaplan, Joan Leonard, Mom, and Rebecca Rabinowitz, aka my fearless readers; Daniel Burbach, who offered loads of support; my uncle Dr. Walter Willihnganz, who answered a lot of silly medical questions with great patience; my uncles Alfio, Salvatore, and Michael Previtera, who answered a lot of even sillier questions about bows and arrows at the Previtera family Christmas party; and last, but far from least, both of my parents, for everything.

Afterword

Dear Reader,

I’m tempted to approach this afterword in the spirit of Albus Dumbledore, who rises to his feet at the beginning of the start-of-term banquet and announces that he’d like to say a few words.

“And here they are,” he says: “Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!”

Then he sits down. Good job, Albus. Now, what word should I choose as my afterword—my word for after? What single word can I stick right here, in this spot?

That’s easy. My afterword is “gratitude.”

What do you see when you look at Graceling? Because when I look at it, I see one of the most surprising things that’s ever happened to me. It looks to me like a kind of door. I built the door, badly. Friends and professionals helped me renovate the door, which I did with a lot of enthusiasm, bashing things around, sticking things together with goo, slapping paint over the scratches, humming loudly to distract everyone from the gaps and splinters and crooked parts I couldn’t figure out how to fix. It became a slightly better door. I renovated it again. Then again. Eventually, it became the best door I could manage: wobbly and worrying, but sufficiently functional. I opened it and stepped into an astonishing world.