NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this hilarious fantasy adventure from the New York Times bestselling author of the Story Thieves series, a girl strikes a deal with the ancient, cranky dragon she accidentally summoned to teach her the forbidden magic she needs to save her mother. STOP. Don’t read any further. There are magic spells in this book, and the Emperor has forbidden anyone from learning magic, because it’s way too dangerous! If you try one of the spells, any number of terrible things might happen (or so the Emperor says). Don’t be like Ciara, a twelve-year-old girl living in the tiny village of Skael. When she used a spell from within this book, she ended up summoning a dragon. A DRAGON ! Those things breathe fire! From their mouths ! She’s obviously doomed. And don’t listen if Ciara tells you that dragons won’t hurt humans, and that they even once taught us magic, a thousand years ago. Definitely don’t pay any attention to the fact that the dragon she summoned, Scorch, might be willing to help rescue Ciara’s mother and free her village from the Emperor and his Warden, because it’s all obviously a big lie. So put this book down, and forget about it. Magic is just way too dangerous. After all, you wouldn’t want to summon your own dragon, would you? "Alternately humorous and heartrending, this lively fantasy will have wide appeal ." — Kirkus Reviews "An uproariously funny third-person narrative....chronicling high-spirited hijinks while unspooling an inventive mythology." —Publishers Weekly "Undeniably entertaining ." —Booklist James Riley is the New York Times bestselling author of the STORY THIEVES, HALF UPON A TIME, ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME, REVENGE OF MAGIC, and DRAGON’S APPRENTICE series. He’s never apprenticed with a dragon . . . yet . He’s pretty sure there’s still time, though, especially if he could do it as an online video apprenticeship sort of thing. Does that exist? If not, it should: Learn Magic over Zoom (and Try Not to Burn Down Your House)! Chapter One Magic makes the world go round. So does spinning in place really fast. --Bianca of Skael More soon! Bianca had written, but that was the last entry in her thousand-year-old journal. Ciara flipped through the rest of the book, just like she’d done every time she’d read it, hoping she was missing something, but every other page was blank. What had happened to Bianca after that? What did the Dragon Mage have in mind for the dragons? And most importantly, why hadn’t everyone learned mag-ic like the Dragon Mage had promised? She leaned back from the book, lost in thought, which the book didn’t seem to ap-preciate. It closed its brown leather cover and floated up to her eye level, looking for attention. She smiled in spite of herself and reached out to pet it, and the book began to purr like a cat. Were all magic books this needy, or was it just Bianca’s journal? It’d been this way ever since Ciara had found it five years ago--though it was probably more accurate to say the book had found her. A boy in Skael had dared Ciara and her best friend, Meg, to spend a night in the tower near the mountain pass, which had terrified Ciara and excited Meg. If Ciara had known at the time that the tower had once be-longed to the Dragon Mage, then she probably would have been just as eager as her friend. Unfortunately, Ciara and Meg had gotten separated as they’d wandered around an upper floor, and Ciara had ended up in a room she’d never seen in the daylight. There she discovered Bianca’s journal sitting on a broken shelf, somehow looking completely brand-new, especially compared with the ruins of the rest of the tower. She’d reached out nervously to take it, only for the book to float out to her, flap-ping its pages to say hello. Needless to say, she’d screamed in terror and run for her life, but the book had just floated along behind her. Meg heard her screaming and eventually found Ciara on the ground a few yards from the tower, the book dancing happily in the air over her. So Meg did what any good friend would do: she punched the book. Only, the book punched her back. It hadn’t ever liked Meg after that. Even then, the book hadn’t given Ciara a choice, as it followed them all the way back to Skael. Fortunately, it was dark, so no one saw Ciara and Meg sneak with it into Ciara’s barn, where Ciara finally got brave enough to open it. It wasn’t like she’d seen magic before, since it basically didn’t exist in Skael any-more, not since Bianca’s time. Only the Emperor and his son could use magic now, as it was strictly forbidden for anyone else. But according to Bianca, that wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. No, they were all supposed to know magic, not just the rulers of the Draconic Empire. Bianca had been just a random kid from Skael when she was chosen by the Dragon Mage at twelve, the same age Ciara was now, and Ciara had pictured herself in Bianca’s place a million times since she’d found the book.