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Chapters (53)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Letter from the Author
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. • One •
  7. • Two •
  8. • Three •
  9. • Four •
  10. • Five •
  11. • Six •
  12. • Seven •
  13. • Eight •
  14. • Nine •
  15. • Ten •
  16. • Eleven •
  17. • Twelve •
  18. • Thirteen •
  19. • Fourteen •
  20. • Fifteen •
  21. • Sixteen •
  22. • Seventeen •
  23. • Eighteen •
  24. • Nineteen •
  25. • Twenty •
  26. • Twenty-One •
  27. • Twenty-Two •
  28. • Twenty-Three •
  29. • Twenty-Four •
  30. • Twenty-Five •
  31. • Twenty-Six •
  32. • Twenty-Seven •
  33. • Twenty-Eight •
  34. • Twenty-Nine •
  35. • Thirty •
  36. • Thirty-One •
  37. • Thirty-Two •
  38. • Thirty-Three •
  39. • Thirty-Four •
  40. • Thirty-Five •
  41. • Thirty-Six •
  42. • Thirty-Seven •
  43. • Thirty-Eight •
  44. • ∞ •
  45. • Thirty-Nine •
  46. • Forty •
  47. Epilogue
  48. Acknowledgments
  49. Excerpt from Be Dazzled
  50. One
  51. Two
  52. About the Author
  53. Back Cover

Kane slipped through aisles of ivy and ferns, whipping past flowers that looked as surreal as they did poisonous. He tore away from their nettled grasps, only slowing in the far reaches of the massive greenhouse where he found a forest of upright, woody stalks. He slid inside, panting.

Had he escaped?

The Dreadmare must have ran after Adeline instead. What had happened to the others? Their screams had cut off like clipped film.

Kane’s nose burned with an incoming sob. He forced it down when he heard the door to the greenhouse open.

“Perhaps in here?” came a voice that was distinctly Poesy’s, though now it simmered with the song of cicadas. Hearing this, Kane wondered how those two sounds had ever sounded different to him. He backed farther into the stalks.

Footsteps advanced upon the greenhouse floor. He heard the sniffing of a dog, and Ms. Daisy whined. Water hissed from turgid hoses. Past the opaque glass of the walls, shadows as big as whales drifted and turned.

Kane’s lungs burned for air. His vision was going gray. He was so focused on the footsteps he did not notice the odd vines encircling him. Vines that were steely and black, with hooked hooves at the end. It was only when one wrapped around him that he thought to look up into the great, shining beak of the Dreadmare as it opened.

There was no chance to scream. The beak closed over Kane’s shoulder, as certain and deft as a kiss, and Kane was dragged into blackness.

• Twenty-Seven •

In the In-Between

When Kane was twelve, Sophia convinced him to turn up their parents’ treadmill all the way to see if he could run on it. Arms braced on the bars, he had hovered over that rushing track, knuckles white as he guided himself downward. For the briefest second he kept up! And then, inevitably, he tripped into that breathless moment between rising and falling—a place of reckless momentum without any movement.

That’s what Kane felt as the Dreadmare closed around him. There was no gravity, no direction. Only momentum and the sick inevitability of impact. Kane had to get out. He clapped his hands and light fractured open the darkness, catapulting him outward with terrific speed.

The impact when he landed was softer than it should have been. Kane sat up on a bed in a dimly lit room. He felt for his backpack straps before remembering he’d ditched it during the escape. The thing wrapped around his shoulder was actually another person.

Kane scrambled away from the figure coated in a bodysuit of pliant leather, black like the Dreadmare’s hide, with plates of obsidian armor jabbing into the whirled sheets. A pointed, full-head helmet had replaced the beak, but the horns remained. It was the same beast in a new form. It sat up, watching Kane. Waiting to see what he’d do.