Ooh, fairy floss,” said Hawthorne, waving over a uniformed Trollosseum worker selling treats. “Want some? I’ve got Christmas money from my granny.”

Morrigan shook her head. There was only so much room in her stomach, and at present the entire space was taken up by nerves, nausea, and the growing certainty that today was going to be the most humiliating day of her life. “Aren’t you nervous?”

Hawthorne shrugged as he tore off a huge strip of fairy floss with his teeth. “A bit. I s’pose. I’m not doing any new tricks today, though. Nan thought I should stick with my best ones. I just wish I could pick which dragon I’m riding.”

“Won’t you be riding your own?”

Hawthorne gave a short, sharp laugh. “My own dragon? Are you mental? I don’t have my own dragon. Whose parents can afford to buy them a dragon?” He licked remnants of sticky pink spun sugar from his fingers. “I ride one of the Junior Dragonriding League’s featherweights when I’m doing tricks. Usually either Flies Effortlessly Like a Discarded Sweet Wrapper on the Back of the Wind, or Glimmers in the Sun Like an Oil Slick on the Ocean. Oil Slick is definitely the best trained, but Sweet Wrapper’s much braver. She’s good at pulling out of steep dives.”

“Why can’t you use one of them?”

“You know what the Society’s like.” Morrigan didn’t bother to remind him that, no, being from the Republic, she didn’t. “They think their dragons are better than the League’s dragons. Nan says it’s best not to argue. I hope they don’t give me a highland breed, though—they’re so bulky, I can never turn them properly. Ooh, look—it’s starting.”

Finally, thought Morrigan as she watched the Elders enter the Trollosseum. A cheer rose from the stands. Elder Quinn held her hand up for silence and spoke into a microphone.

“Welcome,” she said, her voice booming from the speakers, “to the final trial for Unit 919 of the Wundrous Society.”

Another cheer. Morrigan’s ears rang. The stadium was packed with not only the remaining candidates but also their patrons, other Society members who’d come to scope out the new talent, and of course friends and family. Hawthorne’s parents were up in the stands somewhere, as was Jack, who’d come home for the weekend specially to support Morrigan—which she found surprising and, actually, quite touching. There was an air of festivity in the Trollosseum, as if this were a normal day out and they were about to watch two trolls bash each other’s skulls in.

“Welcome, esteemed members of the Society. Welcome, patrons. But most of all welcome to our candidates, the seventy-five brave young souls who have come so far, accomplished so much, and made my fellow Elders and me so very, very proud.

“Candidates, when you arrived today you each were randomly assigned a number to determine the order of your trials. A Society official will come to collect you from your seats in groups of five. Be prepared to move quickly when your number is called, and follow the official down to the gate, where your patron will meet you and escort you into the arena.”

“Yeah, if I’m lucky,” Morrigan muttered, and Hawthorne snorted, smiling at her sympathetically. He would be eleventh in the trials today, but Morrigan had been assigned number seventy-three… which at first she’d been unhappy with, as it meant a long, nervous wait ahead. But as Hawthorne pointed out, the later she was on, the more time Jupiter would have to get there.

“If, after your trial,” continued Elder Quinn, “you have earned a place in the top nine candidates, your name will appear on the leaderboard. If not, well… we will wish you all the best for your future, somewhere else. Good luck, girls and boys. Let us begin.”

The first candidate to enter the arena was Dinah Kilburn of Dusty Junction. Before she began, her patron fussed about arranging chairs, tables, and ladders in haphazard towers to create a sort of makeshift jungle gym.

Dinah was amazing. An agile climber, an extraordinary acrobat, and, Morrigan was shocked to discover—

“A monkey?”

Hawthorne laughed and then looked around guiltily. “Morrigan. You can’t call her that. She’s not an actual monkey. She just has a tail.”

Dinah swung neatly from one tower to another, balancing on top or hanging upside down by her tail, and finished with a perfect landing. But the Elders took only a minute to reach their decision, waving her out of the Trollosseum without adding her name to the leaderboard. Dinah looked crushed.

“Ooh,” said Hawthorne, cringing. “Tough start.”

Morrigan was flummoxed. Exactly what were the Elders looking for? What sort of person did they consider Wundrous Society material? She thought of the only Society members she knew—Jupiter, whose obscure knack was for seeing things nobody else could. Dame Chanda Kali, award-winning opera singer and gatherer of small woodland animals. When they were eleven years old, were they even more remarkable than Dinah Kilburn, the extraordinary monkey-tailed acrobat? Or was there something else the Elders were looking for, some other indefinable quality that made the perfect Wundrous Society member?

The performances only went downhill from there.

None of the next four candidates—a landscape painter, a hurdler, an illusionist, and a boy who played the ukulele—ranked in the top nine. When they brought forward the second group of candidates, there were still no names on the leaderboard.

In fact, nobody ranked at all until the ninth candidate, Shepherd Jones—a boy who claimed he could speak to dogs. He performed an incredible series of tricks with a dozen canines, big and small. He barked commands to them and the crowd cheered as the dogs jumped through hoops, walked backward on their hind legs, and danced with each other. The Elders remained skeptical, however.

“Send one of the dogs over to me,” commanded Elder Quinn. Shepherd barked at a blue cattle dog and it ran up into the stands to Elder Quinn, who showed it the contents of her handbag and sent it back to him. “Now tell me what the dog saw.”

Shepherd knelt down to have a short conversation with the dog. “A coin purse, a ham sandwich, an umbrella, a lipstick, a rolled-up newspaper, readin’ glasses, and a pencil.” The dog barked once more. “Oh, and a piece of cheese.”

Elder Quinn nodded, and the audience applauded.

The dog barked twice. Shepherd glanced up at Elder Quinn shyly. “Er—he says can he have the ham sandwich, please?”

Elder Quinn beamed and tossed the sandwich down to Shepherd. “Here, he can have the cheese too.”

The cattle dog whined a little and barked three times. Shepherd’s face turned red. “I ain’t tellin’ ’em that,” he said quietly.

“What did he say, boy?” asked Elder Wong.

Shepherd Jones ruffled his hair, looking at the ground. “He says cheese makes him constipated.”

Shepherd Jones was the first candidate added to the leaderboard, and the audience applauded as his name appeared on the big screens at either end of the Trollosseum.

The tenth candidate, however—a girl called Milladore West, who made three extraordinary hats in eleven minutes and presented one to each of the Elders—was not awarded a place.

Next it was Hawthorne’s turn. Morrigan wished him luck as he was ushered down to the arena with the next group of five. He was dressed head to toe in soft brown leather, and as Nan Dawson introduced him (“Hawthorne Swift of Nevermoor!”), Hawthorne fastened his shin guards, wrist guards, and helmet. The audience gasped as a Wundrous Society dragon handler led in a twenty-foot-tall dragon with iridescent green scales and a long, jewel-bright tail.

Morrigan had seen pictures of dragons, of course. (They were considered both a Class A Dangerous Apex Predator and a Plague Proportions Pest in the Republic, and the Dangerous Wildlife Eradication Force often made headlines in culling season. Either for successfully destroying a nest or for having their faces burned off.) But nothing compared to seeing the real thing. Hawthorne had offered several times to sneak her into a dragon stable under cover of night, since he wasn’t allowed to invite her to training sessions. But Jupiter had said no, he’d prefer Morrigan kept all four of her original limbs, thanks.

The dragon emitted steaming-hot air in great bursts from slit-like nostrils as it swung its head from left to right. The crowd leaned back in their seats.

Hawthorne seemed entirely unfazed by his proximity to an ancient reptile that could burn him to a crisp if it sneezed the wrong way. He took a few minutes to acquaint himself with the animal, allowing it to get comfortable with his presence and patting its flank gently but firmly. The dragon watched him closely through one fiery orange eye.

Hawthorne walked around it in a circle, trailing his palm over the dragon’s rough hide so that it knew where he was and wouldn’t get skittish. Morrigan had seen a stable hand at Crow Manor do the same thing with her father’s carriage horses. The Elders leaned forward, watching this interaction very closely. Elder Wong looked especially impressed and kept nudging Elder Quinn and whispering in her ear.

Hawthorne took a large piece of raw meat from the Wundrous Society handler and fed it to the dragon, patting it more roughly now on the neck until finally—without hesitation—he took a running leap and climbed up into the saddle that had been fitted between the dragon’s shoulder blades. He snapped the leather reins and lurched forward in his seat as the enormous green reptile beat its wings and took off into the air.

Hawthorne and his dragon soared in a wide circle above the arena before beginning their show in earnest. Hawthorne yelled a command Morrigan couldn’t quite make out and dug his heels into the animal’s sides, and they were off—rolling into tight somersaults, swooping over the stands, and taking steep dives down to the ground, only to pull back at the last second. They sped in a straight line with the dragon’s wings outstretched as Hawthorne stood up on its back, mimicking the movement with his own arms out, as if he were flying. Then he abruptly took his saddle and called out a command, and the dragon pulled its wings in tight and tumbled over in a 360-degree turn before outstretching its wings again without losing any height at all.

Morrigan had never seen Hawthorne like this—completely confident and in control, as if he were doing the thing he was born for. Shoulders back, eyes ahead. He commanded the dragon masterfully; it could have been an extension of his own body. Hawthorne was every bit the champion Nan Dawson had described.

The response of the audience confirmed it. Everyone—including the Elders—was in Hawthorne’s thrall, gasping and screaming as he sped downward to the ground and cheering when he pulled out of a dive or glided around the Trollosseum stands mere inches above their heads.

Morrigan was surprised by her friend’s talent. It wasn’t that she hadn’t believed Hawthorne would be good, exactly. It was just that this poised, dazzling dragonrider was hard to reconcile with the boy who had once spent an afternoon showing her how he could make fart noises with his armpits.

As his final flourish, Hawthorne used the dragon’s fire-breathing mechanism to write his initials in the sky with smoke before coming to land neatly in the arena.

The audience and the Elders leapt to their feet to cheer Hawthorne as he climbed down off the dragon’s back and took a bow. Nobody cheered more loudly than Morrigan.

The Elders conferred briefly but seemed to be in perfect agreement; Hawthorne’s name went straight to the number one spot.

But the quality of the trials stalled again after that, and nobody from the next three groups was added to the top nine.

Finally it was time for the candidate Morrigan had been waiting all year to see. When Baz Charlton announced “Noelle Devereaux of the Silver District,” Noelle entered the arena like a queen at court. After a minute of preening she opened her mouth to sing, and it was like a choir of angels had exploded and spewed stardust over the Trollosseum.

There were no words to the song. It was a cloud of melody—a clear, sweet lullaby that seemed to surround Morrigan like a bubble of perfect contentment. A quick look around told her she wasn’t the only one; there were glazed eyes and tranquil smiles everywhere, as if Noelle’s voice had cast a strange, blissful spell. Morrigan never wanted the song to end. She had to admit that Noelle’s knack was truly, breathtakingly good.

How annoying.

The entire stadium—even Morrigan—applauded wildly as Noelle bowed and curtsied, blowing kisses into the crowd and beaming at the Elders. Hawthorne nudged Morrigan and made gagging noises, but it was too late for that. She’d already seen him wipe away a sneaky tear when the song ended.

Elder Quinn waved a fragile hand at the leaderboard and the names rearranged themselves so that Noelle the songbird was now in second place behind Hawthorne, with Shepherd the dog whisperer close behind. Noelle’s face fell for the briefest moment, as though disappointed she wasn’t number one, but she quickly recovered her poise and left the arena with her nose high in the air.

Morrigan’s stomach dropped. Noelle was going to get into the Society. Popular, talented Noelle was going to be in Unit 919, and so was Hawthorne, and they’d become best friends. Hawthorne would forget all about Morrigan, and Morrigan would have to leave Nevermoor, and Jupiter, and all her friends at the Hotel Deucalion, and she’d never see them again. She knew it. The certainty of it took her breath away, just as if a big, depressed elephant had sat on her chest.

Hawthorne seemed to know what she was thinking. (Maybe not the depressed elephant bit.)

“It’s easier to rank high near the beginning,” he said, elbowing her in the ribs as he took a long slurp of peppermint fizz. “There are plenty of people left to knock Noelle off the board. They’ll probably knock me off too.”

Morrigan knew he was just being modest, but she appreciated it all the same. “You know you’ll get in,” she said, elbowing him back. “You were amazing.”

As the afternoon wore on, Hawthorne’s prediction seemed unlikely. Although Shepherd quickly dropped out of the top nine, Noelle only went down two places. Ahead of her was Hawthorne, who’d dropped to second place, and in third was a boy named Mahir Ibrahim, who performed a long soliloquy in thirty-seven different languages with what Elder Quinn declared “perfect intonation.”

Currently in first place was Anah—the plump, pretty girl with golden ringlets, whom Morrigan remembered from the Wundrous Welcome. With her faded yellow dress, patent leather shoes, and hair tied back in a bow, Anah looked like she was off to Sunday school… which left Morrigan utterly unprepared for her unusual talent.

Anah’s patron, a woman called Sumati Mishra, boasted that her candidate had a knack for knowing the human body. To prove this, she volunteered to lie down on a metal hospital gurney while Anah sliced her open with a scalpel, removed her appendix, and sewed her back up again with neat, tiny stitches. Most extraordinarily, Anah did all this blindfolded.

Morrigan found it tremendously satisfying to watch Noelle Devereaux’s face drop when Anah went straight to first place and bumped her down to fourth.

The trials continued with mixed results as candidate after candidate took the nerve-racking walk to the center of the arena. Some were confident and brash, others looked like they were praying for the arena floor to open up and swallow them.

One frightened girl trembled so violently that she appeared to fade into the air, becoming incorporeal from the sheer terror of stage fright. Luckily, that was her knack—becoming incorporeal. She shimmered like a milky, pearlescent ghost in the sunshine and demonstrated her intangibility by walking straight through the Elders’ table. The audience was impressed. Gradually the girl’s confidence grew.

Unfortunately, it seemed her talent stemmed from her terror, because once she felt more comfortable and began enjoying the limelight, her body became substantial again. On her return journey through the Elders’ table, she bumped right into it and sent a jug of water flying over Elder Wong. She didn’t make it onto the leaderboard.

Meanwhile, Morrigan tried to quell the anxiety that had been growing in the pit of her stomach. Between each performance she scanned the rows of patrons.

“Where is he?” she muttered.

“He’ll be here.” Hawthorne offered her some of his popcorn, which she refused. “Jupiter would never miss your last trial.”

“What if he doesn’t make it?”

“He’ll make it.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Morrigan repeated over the roar of the crowd as Lin Mai-Ling ran a speedy twelve-second lap of the Trollosseum, then stamped her feet in frustration when the Elders waved her away kindly. The audience groaned in sympathy. “I don’t even know what my knack is supposed to be! How am I supposed to do my trial without him?”

“Look, he’ll make it, all right? But if he doesn’t…” Hawthorne craned his neck, looking around the stadium. “If he doesn’t, I’ll come down into the arena with you. We’ll think of something.”

Morrigan raised one eyebrow. “Like what?”

He chewed his popcorn and thought seriously for a moment. “Can you make fart noises with your armpits?”

The sun set behind the Trollosseum grandstands and the floodlights turned on. In Morrigan’s head they were like giant spotlights, designed to cast a very bright glow on her public humiliation.

The rankings shifted constantly, and the candidates in the top nine anxiously watched the leaderboard. Every time a new candidate was ranked, there were groans or tears or tantrums from the candidate who was bumped out of the top nine.

Morrigan glanced down at Noelle, two rows below, chewing her fingernails and glancing every five seconds at the leaderboard. She was now clinging to seventh position.

Just ahead of Noelle was a boy Morrigan recognized from the Book Trial, Francis Fitzwilliam, who’d whipped up a seven-course dinner for the judges. Each course took them on a roller coaster of heightened emotions that was bizarre to watch: from severe paranoia after a dish of grilled octopus to gales of gleeful laughter brought on by a blueberry soufflé.

In fifth place was Thaddea Macleod, a brawny redheaded girl from the Highlands who defeated a full-sized adult troll in single combat.

Hawthorne had dropped to fourth place, just behind a small, angelic-looking boy called Archan Tate. Archan was a violinist, and as he played he moved nimbly all around the stadium and through the rows of seats without missing a note.

He was very good, but the Elders didn’t seem inclined to add him to the leaderboard… until the very last moment, when sweet-faced Archan revealed his true talent. With a slightly sheepish grin, he emptied his pockets of what turned out to be quite a lot of jewelry, wallets, watches, and coins that he’d managed to purloin while playing the violin. Morrigan was deeply impressed. He’d even swiped Elder Quinn’s earring, right out of her ear!

Hawthorne didn’t seem at all put out that a pickpocket had ranked above him. If anything, he was delighted by Archan’s knack, even after realizing his own leather dragonriding gloves were among the pile of pilfered loot that the boy was now returning, piece by piece, to its rightful owners. “How did he do that?” Hawthorne kept saying, grinning widely and examining his gloves as if they might give him a clue.

Morrigan was about to say for the twenty-seventh time that she didn’t know, and would he please stop asking, when she saw Noelle’s sidekick enter the arena with Baz Charlton.

“That’s her.” Morrigan nudged Hawthorne. “That’s the girl we saw in the courtyard during the Fright Trial. Remember? Oh, what was her name…?”

She was the eighth candidate Mr. Charlton had presented that day; of his group it was Noelle who’d come the furthest. Morrigan looked at Noelle; she was watching her friend with a blank, disinterested expression—like she was just any other candidate.

Hawthorne shook his head. “What are you going on about?”

“Do you really not remember her?”

“Remember who?”

Bored, distracted murmurs rippled through the rows of candidates when Baz Charlton announced his candidate as Cadence Blackburn of Nevermoor. His voice was nearly drowned out by the restless audience talking among themselves. But unlike everybody else, Morrigan was paying close attention.

“Cadence! That’s her name. I forgot. How did I forget that?” Morrigan said to Hawthorne, who shrugged.

“Proceed,” said Elder Quinn, pouring herself a cup of tea. The Elders too were beginning to show signs of weariness; after several hours of judging, there were glances at wristwatches, chins leaning in hands, and long, openmouthed yawns.

Baz Charlton gestured to somebody in a small windowed room at the top of the stands. The floodlights dimmed, throwing the audience into darkness, and a film was projected onto the big screens.