From ancient times the ice dragon was a creature of legend and fear, for no man had ever tamed one. But Adara was not afraid. For Adara was a winter child, born during the worst freeze that anyone, even the Old Ones, could remember.

The ice dragon had always been in her life, glimpsed from afar as she played in the snow long after the other children had fled the cold. In her fourth year she touched it, and in her fifth year she rode upon its broad, chi ...