EMBER’S POV

I look at Queenie. Queenie looks at me.

Neither of us has an answer because the truth is that in the chaos of the Bacchanal’s aftermath — the heat, the compound, the rescue, everything that followed — nobody stopped to check.

Queenie laughs.

It comes out high and tight and hollow.

“Okay, come on. You’re both scaring me right now and I’m not doing this.” She waves her ice cream cup like a tiny plastic shield against the direction this conversation has taken. “Rafael is not alive. He simply CAN’T be alive. We barely made it out of that lodge in one piece, Rayana. Ember was drugged, I...