John

You wake at a ruined lantern-stone beside a copper-haired knight, a gray warhorse, and a vast gate waiting down the old road.

For five years Dorian Ardelean chased the quadruple somersault, because his catcher Gemma Sorensen promised that the night he landed it she'd stop hiding him from her circus family. Tonight, in the empty Sarasota training barn, he lands it. She catches him flawlessly, but she doesn't call his cue, doesn't smile and doesn't initial the card. The scouts come tomorrow, and Dorian has to decide whose hands his best trick belongs to.

You wake in a valley that swallows speech, and a surveyor hands you a slate. Read the giant Ring together, one gesture at a time.

Seven years ago Anders Whitlock left town without a word. Now his family's cider farm is foreclosed, and the woman who holds the debt is the girl he left. She wants a public engagement or the farm goes to auction. He has the ledger page that could end her revenge, if he decides to show it.

A house party at the place you share with Maren. Her three teammates arrived at nine instead of midnight, and the crush she hasn't told you about is already crowding the room.

For three weeks Iris Tanaka, who runs the late-night poetry bookstore across the street, has crossed the road at midnight to argue with neon bender Hayden Cho about her shop's first sign: every bend, every color, every swirl. Tonight the glass is finished and mounted in his front window, still dark. Hayden hasn't plugged it in. He's saving the first light for her, along with one last argument about the pink.