Zoe POV

The fireworks go off before I can decide whether the woman I glimpsed was real or imagined, the crack and bloom of them so sudden and so loud that my whole body startles, and whatever thought I’d been chasing dissolves entirely into the noise and light and the wave of sound that rolls through the crowd like something alive.

The procession has begun.

And the crowd—the crowd is something I wasn’t prepared for. The moment the first float rounds the corner ...