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The Winter Long

(The eighth book in the October Daye series)

A novel by Seanan McGuire

This book is dedicated, with love and gratitude, to Tanya Huff.

Thank you for making so many things possible.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

Welcome to The Winter Long.

This book was one of the first I fully plotted, back when this series was a glimmer in my eye and a fantasy for the future. Everything I have done with October’s world to this point has been for the sake of getting here, to the book that you now hold in your hands. I am incredibly excited to be at this point, to have gotten this far into Toby’s story—and make no mistake, there’s still so very far left to go.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for trusting me to tell you this story, which has been with me for so long. Thanks to the Machete Squad, who are a constant in my life, and who keep me together when things get hard. Thanks to Amanda and Michael, and to Aislinn (welcome to the world, my skeleton girl; we are going to have a lot of fun). Thanks to the Disney Magic Bitches, who have endured another unnumbered series of Disney excursions, including possibly the best birthday party I have ever had, and to my darlings, Vixy, Amy, Brooke, and Shawn, who knew I was a scorpion when they picked me up.

My editor, Sheila Gilbert, is the best I could have wished for, and my agent, Diana Fox, is still my personal superhero. Thanks also to Josh Starr at DAW, who is the most frequent target of my random mid-week phone calls, and to my cover artist, Chris McGrath, for bringing Toby so beautifully to life. And thanks to the crew here on the ground: Christopher Mangum, Tara O’Shea, and Kate Secor.

My soundtrack while writing The Winter Long consisted mostly of Night Visions, by Imagine Dragons, Queen of Spindles, by Talis Kimberley, Baptized, by Daughtry, endless live concert recordings of the Counting Crows, and random episodes of Welcome to Night Vale. Any errors in this book are entirely my own. The errors that aren’t here are the ones that all these people helped me fix.

Now grab your coat. It’s going to get a little chilly in here.

OCTOBER DAYE PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

THROUGH THE WINTER LONG

All pronunciations are given strictly phonetically. This only covers races explicitly named in the first eight books, omitting Undersea races not appearing or mentioned in book eight.