When he emerged, his face was ashen. In his hands, he carried something wrapped in rotting velvet something that caught the green light and threw it back in dull, bone-white reflections.

He set it on the examination table beside me. His hands were shaking.

The velvet fell away.

It was a skull. Human. Male. Ancient, by the yellowing of the bone.

But what made my heart stop wasn't its age, like it was the crack running from temple to jaw, and the single word carved into the forehead in jagged, deliberate strokes:

TRAITOR

I couldn't breathe. "Wh-who—"

"Enrique's father," Mom whispered from the doorway. She looked small now,. "He was...