The Bonds of Starlight and Shadows
By: Cammy & Aly Crady
To the readers
To the readers.
The star-chasers, the daydreamers, the ones who believe magic lives inside books.We wrote this story for you.
For the late-night page-turners and the under-the-covers- with-a-flashlight romantics. For everyone who’s ever wanted to ride a dragon, sneak through a fae-touched forest, or make a wish on a shooting star.
But before we could give it to you, a few other people helped us find the story.
To our children, Imani, Lily, and Tyler. Thank you for letting us spend countless hours hunched over our computers muttering to ourselves about character names and punctuation. You are our greatest adventures and our daily dose of real-life magic.
To our mother, Kim. You handed us the love of reading and the courage to go on wild adventures, even if they were sometimes in matching outfits. Your love of books, integrity, and curiosity are on every page.
To our incredible beta readers: Kristen, Amanda, Jill, Alex, Shelby, John, Ellie, and Samantha. You legends. You pointed out all the plot holes we tried to ignore, gave us your honest thoughts, and helped us turn this into something real.
To our editor, Bethany Dancel, and our cover artist, An-Nhien Nguyen, thank you for polishing our chaos into something beautiful.
To our partners, Alex and James. Thank you for cheering us on when we doubted ourselves, for bringing us snacks, and for listening to dramatic monologues about our characters like it was the most important thing in the world. Your belief in us carried us through.
And finally, to each other —
Growing up as twins meant sharing everything: a room, a birthday, a hundred inside jokes, and a mutual love of books. We’ve always been two parts of a whole, same spark, same stubborn fire, yet beautifully, wildly different. Writing this book together made us laugh, cry, argue (just a little), and ultimately fall in love with storytelling.
So go on, step into the starlight, wander through the shadows, and may the magic stay with you long after the final page.
With all our hearts,
Cammy & Aly Crady
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Meet the Authors
Cammy has been in love with stories for as long as she can remember.
She’s the kind of person who packs way too many books for a weekend trip and then still ends up buying another one on the way. When she’s not writing, she’s usually behind her camera, trying to catch a bit of magic in everyday life, or getting lost on winding streets in other countries and calling it “research.”
Home is in Florida, where she shares life with her partner, Alex, her daughter, Imani, Alex’s son, Benny, their dog, Fox, and two cats who are certain they’re running the show.
Between road trips that rarely go as planned, bedtime stories that spiral into giggles, and the daily comedy act that is family life, she has no
shortage of inspiration.
At the end of the day, she just loves telling stories, whether
it’s on the page, through a lens, or in the middle of her perfectly ordinary, perfectly chaotic life.
Growing up as a twin gave her a built-in co-writer and rival all in one—though writing this book together has proven they’re better at finishing chapters than finishing each other’s sentences.
Aly Crady is a reader, artist, and book binder based in Maryland. By day, she works in hospitality, a job that puts her right in the middle of people’s lives and stories. She’s come to believe that everyone has a story worth telling, and she carries that perspective with her into her own creative work.
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At home, storytelling takes on all kinds of forms. Sometimes it’s through the books she binds by hand, other times it’s in the worlds she escapes to when she’s writing, reading, or gaming late into the night.
Aly spends a lot of time with her online community too, where friendships, laughter, and shared adventures give her the kind of inspiration you can’t plan for. She jokes that her best ideas show up after midnight, though her family suspects it has more to do with caffeine than creativity.
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She and her twin wrote this book together, which gave them a chance to explore the bond, rivalry, and shared dreams that inspired Seraphina and Fadeya, capturing all that comes with being a twin.