The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my writer friends who saw me through the scheming and imagining and writing and editing of this book. Thank you, Sarah Rees Brennan, Leigh Bardugo, Kelly Link, Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson, Robin Wasserman, Steve Berman, Gwenda Bond, Christopher Rowe, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Paolo Bacigalupi, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Gavin Grant, Joshua Lewis, Carrie Ryan, and Kathleen Jennings (who drew beautiful pictures during a workshop, thereby producing my favorite critique ever).

Thanks, too, to everyone at ICFA who gave me feedback after I read the first three chapters out loud.

Thank you to everyone at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, who have supported my weird vision. Thanks especially to my amazing editor, Alvina Ling, Kheryn Callender, Lisa Moraleda, and Victoria Stapleton.

And thank you to Barry Goldblatt and Joanna Volpe for shepherding the book through its various trials and tribulations.

Thanks most of all to my husband, Theo, for talking through so much of this book with me over many years, and to our son, Sebastian, for distracting me from the writing and giving me a fuller heart.