The team at HarperCollins Canada for all the work you do this side of the border, especially Ashley Posluns, Shamin Alli, and Maeve O’Regan!
Myrthe Spiteri, for your wisdom and support.
My foreign agents, publishers, translators: I’m so grateful for all of you. Seeing my stories in languages other than my own is real-world magic.
Jenny Bent and the Bent Agency team, for the tremendous work you do on my behalf so I can focus on what I love most: getting the words written.
The librarians and booksellers I’ve met along the way, for your kindness, enthusiasm, and support.
Anna Priemaza, Faith Boughan, Gareth Wronski: for debut year (Canuck) solidarity. Isabel Ibanez Davis, for keeping me accountable when I needed to just get the darn thing written. Tomi Adeyemi, for your spot-on feedback and grounding voice of reason. Chris Cabena, for telling me the book was broken so I could make it better. Boyce Roberts, Cheryl McCarron, and Wayne Bartlett: for taking in a lost author and helping her find her joy again.
Every single one of my family and friends: for filling two hundred seats at my book launch. For dressing up as my characters on Halloween (Aunt Mary, I love you). For buying my books, pushing them on your acquaintances, and turning them face out on the shelves (my apologies to booksellers everywhere). I wouldn’t want to do this without you all!
Mum, for your selfless love and shining example. Dad and Jolene, for your constant support.
Joe, for being there through all of it—my good, happy, hopeful days and my bad, crazy, sad days—and for being my coadventurer in this wild and beautiful life.
Pa, for showing me there’s a time to hold on and a time to let go, and that letting go doesn’t mean love ends. Your life and death taught me that love always triumphs.
My readers and fans, for your overwhelming support, stunning bookstagram photos, kind and encouraging messages, reviews, fan art, all of it. Thank you from the depths of my heart.
And for those of you who need to hear it: Real love isn’t just stronger than death. Real love transforms the living; it transforms the world. Never forget who you are and the kind of love you’re capable of—death-defying, world-altering love.
About the Author
Photo by Ninth Street Photography
KRISTEN CICCARELLI is the internationally bestselling author of The Last Namsara. Before writing books for a living, she worked as an artisanal baker, an indie bookseller, and a ceramic artist. These days she resides in a blustery seaside cove on Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula with her blacksmith and her rescue dog. She likes her coffee dark, her weather broody, and her house warmed by a wood fire. Learn more at www.kristenciccarelli.com.
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Books by Kristen Ciccarelli
The Last Namsara
The Caged Queen
The Sky Weaver
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Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE CAGED QUEEN. Copyright © 2018 by Kristen Ciccarelli. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover photography by Michael Frost, Inc.
Digital retouching by Sebastien Hue
Cover design by Michelle Taormina
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-256803-8
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-256801-4
1819202122PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
About the Publisher
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The Caged Queen Page 29