It's true, Ewen is the one who spends most of the book In Peril of Death, so it makes sense that I figured he would be the one to die in the sand at the end. But he was not! Instead it was Keith!

I assumed from the start it would be Keith who died, because he was my favorite and I had an early and depressingly formative grounding in all my favorite characters dying or otherwise meeting tragic ends. Alas.