If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes an army to write a book, and we couldn’t have done this without our army. To those who were brave enough to read this in its earliest stages—Susan, Natasha, Yi Liu, Tashina, Sara, Laura, Justine, Mom, Uncle David, Grandma Fay and Grandpa Terry—thank you for being swift and merciless with your feedback. Many thanks, of course, to our tireless agent, Tamar Rydzinski, to Anne Groell, our editor at Bantam Spectra, for taking a chance on Rook, Thom, Royston, Hal and all the metal dragons, as well as to our copy editor, Sara Schwager, and Joshua Pasternak, who was always kind enough to tell us “Don’t panic.” Thanks to both our dads for the straight-talkin’; to John Jurgensen at the Wall Street Journal for including Jaida in his article, “Rewriting the Rules of Fiction,” which somehow landed us on this path in the first place; to the society of Nitpicky Babes for their sound advice and witty repartee; to Cassie and Holly, for being our first inspirations; to Claudia and all the fine ladies at Java City, for keeping the coffee coming; to Jonah, for the soundtrack; and to those in our lives who put the right books in our hands when we were the right age. Finally, thanks to the boxers: You know who you are, and where would we be without you?

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