LOGINEMBER’S POVThe man follows my gaze to the flower, baffled, then sees Daxon and Reyes, who have arrived and are looming with the unmistakable energy of men deciding whether to break someone, and he goes pale and starts to babble.“I — please — I didn’t — a man gave it to me, I swear, I didn’t take anything, a man in traffic, back there, he just — he handed it to me through the car window, said it was too pretty to throw away, I thought it was odd but it was pretty, so I kept it, I haven’t done anything, please—”“What man?” I’m closer now, and the guards have him hemmed, and he’s whimpering. “Describe him. The man who gave it to you.”“I — I don’t — it was quick, I was in traffic, he was just there and then gone—”“Was he—” My mouth is dry.I describe Rafael. Tall, beautiful, the kind of handsome that makes a room rearrange itself, the easy charm, the way he holds himself like he’s doing the world a favour by existing.I describe him in detail, every detail, my voice shaking.And the
EMBER’S POV“Ember Aragon,” she breathes, through her fingers. “You — you deliciously evil woman.”“Too much?”“Too much? It’s perfect. It’s diabolical. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. He will never recover. He will never prank you again as long as he lives.” She grabs my shoulders. “You have to. You absolutely, one hundred percent, no-backing-out, have to do that. I will personally die if you don’t.”“Then we need a few things.”“We need several things.” She’s already scanning the shelves with new, focused, terrible purpose. “We need the—” she points “—and the—” she points again “—and, oh, yes, obviously the—” and she sweeps toward a display I’ll let the reader imagine, “—and most importantly,” she turns to me, deadly serious, “we need handcuffs. Good ones. Heavy ones. The kind that mean business. This does not work without the handcuffs.”“This does not work without the handcuffs,” I agree gravely.We buy the handcuffs.I’m not going to tell you what else we buy, or w
EMBER’S POVAnd what do you say to that?I, of all people, who spent the whole morning learning exactly how much a person needs the fantasy sometimes, the silly unreal thing that isn’t another catastrophe.“Yeah,” I say softly. “Yeah, of course. We stay in the fantasy.” I link my arm back through hers, and I bump her shoulder, and I pitch my voice deliberately light, giving her the off-ramp. “Besides, we’re not done humbling Knox. We’ve barely scratched the surface. A man that rich, Queenie. There’s so much more spiritual damage to do.”She laughs gratefully, and squeezes my arm, and the door closes again, gently, over the thing beneath, and I let it, because she asked me to and because some doors you only open when the person’s ready to hold what’s behind them.“Okay,” she says, scrubbing her eyes, brightness firmly restored. “Okay. Yes. More damage.”And maybe it’s the leftover adrenaline, or the giddy bulletproof feeling of having walked out of that shop alive, but the mischief is
EMBER’S POV“How’s my money?” he says, by way of hello, and I can hear the smile in it.“It’s having a wonderful time. It’s making so many new friends.” I watch , across the shop, gravely considering two different enormous ugly vases. “Don’t go in the dining room when you get home.”A pause. “Why would I not go to the dining room?”“No reason. The gnomes are having a meeting, and it would be rude to interrupt.”“…The what.”“Love you, checking in, everything’s fine, bye.”I hang up on the sound of him starting to ask a question, and cackles, and one of the guards — Reyes, I’ve finally sorted them, Reyes is the one whose left eyebrow does a thing when he’s suffering — makes a small pained sound behind us.“Problem?” asks him sweetly.“His Majesty,” Reyes says, with the careful diction of a man choosing his words very carefully, “is going to ask us why we permitted the gnomes.”“And you’re going to tell him you’re a bodyguard, not a gnome guard, and it wasn’t in your job description.” p
EMBER’S POVThe first thing Queenie does, the very second we’re clear of the moth shop and into a part of the city that has actual sunlight and shops that sell things that won’t kill you, is hold out her hand.“Card.”“It’s for the herbs—”“The herbs are bought, the herbs are in the bag, the herbs are handled.” She wiggles her fingers. “Knox Volkov looked your two boulders here dead in the eye this morning and said, and I quote, because I was standing right there, ‘she comes back with bags up to her elbows and a smile on her face.’ His words. A direct order from your future husband. Are you going to disobey a direct order, Ember? In front of the staff?” She tips her head at Daxon and Reyes. “They’ll report you.”“We will not,” says one of the boulders, with great dignity.“You absolutely will, you’ve called him four times, don’t pretend you’re not his little snitches.” Queenie snatches the card out of my hand before I’ve decided to give it to her. “Right. First order of business. We b
EMBER’S POVThe warmth that flooded the shop a moment ago thins, just slightly, and the two of them lean over the cracked page together, and that silent forty-one-year conversation passes between them again, except this time there’s no delight in it.This time it’s careful. Almost wary.“We don’t carry that,” Penelope says.“You don’t carry it, or you can’t get it?”“We don’t carry it.” She straightens, and her pale eyes have changed, studying me now in a different way, a way that lifts the hair on my arms. “That’s not a Western herb, girl. That’s not anything compounded this side of the world. It’s old. It’s eastern. The sort of thing that doesn’t grow where people can reach it, and isn’t sold where people can buy it, and isn’t spoken of, mostly, by the ones who know what it is.” She glances at her husband. “We know what it is. We don’t touch it. And I’ll give you this with your herbs, free of charge, because you earned it: whoever set down this recipe knew things they’d no business
KNOX’S POVHe blinks, the picture of innocence. “I’m not sure I understand. I explained the purpose quite clearly at the beginning of the evening. Conflict resolution. Closure. An opportunity for all parties to—”“Bullshit.”The word is deadpan, and I see Logan’s head snap up, see Gale’s sobbing st
EMBER’S POVI slump back into my seat unconsciously, not realizing how rigidly I’d been holding myself until the tension drains away.Knox lifts our entwined hands to his lips and presses a kiss to my knuckles, his eyes on me.It slows the tightening in my chest. Loosens the knot that Harrison’s qu
EMBER’S POV“Because I saw you on the news.” His voice cracks again. “During a press conference. I saw you standing up there, speaking to the camera, saying five words they have haunted me every night. You are dead to me. And though it wasn’t directed at me, I felt it so much. I felt it down to my
EMBER’S POVMy mother stands in the doorway, draped in designer everything as always.A silk dress in garish emerald that probably cost more than she can actually afford. Jewelry dripping from her neck, her ears, her wrists, every piece fighting for attention.Hair and makeup done to perfection, no







