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The last dragon of Verrin Vale did not come to the palace with fire or thunder. She came on a grey morning in late autumn, folded small into the shape of a tired old woman with a satchel of ink-stained letters, and she asked the chamberlain for work.

Her name was Ysolde Cindermaw, though she had gone by Mistress Sooth for two hundred years. Her wings had become a shawl. Her claws had become spectacles. Only the faint scent of cloves and hot stone clung to her, and the chamberlain, who had a cold, sneezed twice and waved her in.

The royal library was a tower of pale oak and dust-gold light, its shelves rising past the reach of any ladder. The old librarian had died in summer, and the books had been drifting into disorder ever since. Ysolde walked the aisles with her hand brushing the spines, and where her fingers passed, the volumes stilled and slid into their proper places like obedient swallows.

Prince Taddeus, nineteen and bored, found her at the far window. "You're not the usual sort of applicant," he said.

Pip was a small snail with a big dream. He wanted to win the Great Garden Race.

Every summer, the animals of the garden lined up at the old stone wall. There was Lila the ladybug, Tomas the tortoise, and Mo the mouse. Pip always stayed at the back, hiding inside his shell.

"Maybe next year," Pip whispered. He could smell the sweet clover and hear the buzz of bees nearby.

On race morning, the starting bell rang. Tomas plodded off slowly. Lila zoomed ahead, her red wings flashing. Mo scurried through the grass. Pip poked out one eye and took a tiny step.

The Harrow family moved into the narrow grey house at the end of Lantern Lane in late autumn, when the leaves had turned the color of old pennies. Mara, who was eleven and believed herself too old for fear, claimed the attic room because it had a round window that looked out over the marsh.

The stairs were the first thing she noticed. There were fourteen of them, pale wood worn soft in the middle, and she counted them every morning on her way down to breakfast. Fourteen. Always fourteen.

On the third night, she counted them again in the dark, one hand on the banister, the other clutching the little brass lantern her grandmother had given her. Eight, nine, ten. The wood creaked under her bare feet. Eleven, twelve, thirteen.

Fifteen.