Dragon's Bait [Paperback]

Fifteen-year-old Alys is not a witch. But that doesn't matter--the villagers think she is and have staked her out on a hillside as a sacrifice to the local dragon.
It's late, it's cold, and it's raining, and Alys can think of only one thing--revenge. But first she's got to escape, and even if she does, how can one girl possibly take on an entire town alone?
Then the dragon arrives--a dragon that could quite possibly be the perfect ally. . . .

A human sacrifice teams up with the dragon meant to eat her.

Wicked wit and charm . . . as well as a gutsy heroine and a sexy dragon. --Booklist

Alys herself is a worthy heroine, with a capricious gift for irony. A thoughtful mainstream fantasy. --Publishers Weekly

[A] dark, bittersweet romance. --Kirkus Reviews

Chapter 1

The day Alys was accused of being a witch started out like any other.

She woke to the gray light of dawn and to the sound of her father coughing. Did he sound any better than he had the morning before? Yes, she told herself-just a little bit, but definitely better. And though she'd thought that every morning since late winter when he'd been so sick she'd been afraid he'd die, and though here it was with the wheat already harvested and the leaves beginning to turn, and he still too frail to run the tin shop by himself-that did nothing to lessen her conviction. He definitely sounded better.

Of course, it wasn't normal for a girl to help in her father's business. A man without sons was expected to take in apprentices, not teach his trade to a fifteen-year-old daughter. But her father had had no need for an apprentice before he got sick, and now there was nothing extra with which to afford one. Without the goat cheese that Vleeter and his wife had given them and the bread that the widow Margaret had periodically left at their doorstep, they might well have starved during those long, long days when he'd been lc^