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A century ago, Irora’s ancestors bargained with the supernatural zader for power over fire. A year ago, their secret was exposed and her life fell apart. This morning, she’s setting out to take her revenge.

Shine is running out of time. 

She’s a self-taught sorceress in a kingdom that outlaws magic, and the witch hunters are closing in. If they catch her, she’ll face slow death by torture. If she turns herself in, the best she can hope for is a long life locked in a convent. 

She takes a third option: she summons Tatterdemalion, the immortal sorcerer of legend, and offers herself as his apprentice.

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Rosario Hernandez doesn’t ask for much. She’d like to sleep on a bed instead of a sidewalk, to know where her next meal is coming from, and maybe, if she’s really feeling optimistic, to get a girlfriend. More than anything, though, she wants her best friend Arkay not to murder anyone— because Arkay is a dragon, claws and all.

But the world is a dangerous place for a pair of homeless women, even if one has scales and claws. Arkay is doing everything she can to keep Rosa safe, but with every fight, Arkay becomes more ruthless and brutal. And Rosa is losing her grip on her dragon.

With Rosario, Arkay was unstoppable.

Without her, she’s a wreck.

Her home is in ruins, her friends have betrayed her, and she’s the target of a group of professional monster-hunters who think she’s literal hellspawn. The only thing keeping her going is the impossible hope that Rosario isn’t gone forever. In the shadowy world of monsters, there may still be a way to get her back, if Arkay can survive long enough to find it.

There are worse monsters than dragons in the world, and now they have her in their sights.

Arkay misses the good old days, when she used to beat up drug dealers and stalkers and rifle around in their pockets for loose change. Times were simpler then. She could sleep at night, confident that she was one of the good guys.

Now she’s the unwilling figurehead of the Hoarde, and her life is a political nightmare. Her allies are playing mind games. Her subordinates are on the verge of mutiny, impatient with Arkay’s eccentricities and Rosario’s ideas of mercy. Innocent people are dying by the hundreds, slaughtered in labyrinthine death camps by a ruthless enemy.

They all look to Arkay to save them–or to die trying.

This timeline stops here. It has to.

I can’t help being terrified. I’ve never gone back more than an hour, and that took so much out of me that I barely came back at all. 

A part of me wants to stay here in the timeline where it’s safe, and leave the plague in the capable hands of the CDC and the WHO and all the other well-funded organizations full of scientists who know what they’re doing. I don’t have to get involved.

But no matter how brilliant they are or how fast they work, there’s one person they can’t save, and right now, that’s the one person who matters.

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Three hundred and twenty-five days.

That’s how long Campbell’s been waiting for his old friend Mel to come back from his fool’s errand on the other side of the fence, where the shambling dead walk free. The only safe place is on the inside, where the last of the real people are. Or so they say.

But now Mel’s back, and he brings news of the outside.

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