EMBER’S POV

And that’s it. Dismissed, without a glance, the way you’d wave off a fly that hasn’t even had the decency to land on anything.

Beside me, Queenie draws a slow breath, and I know that breath, I know exactly what magnificent and ill-advised thing is loading behind it.

So I catch her wrist before it can launch. Because I’ve spent a great many years being looked through by people who’d already decided I wasn’t worth the air.

And the one thing I learned is that the harder you push a closed door, the harder the person on the other side pushes back.

But I’m not leaving. Rayana doesn’t...