EMBER’S POV
Burn. No stop. Breath.
“Two each,” the old man says quietly from the back, and I glance at him, and he’s not amused anymore, he’s watching the cups with his arms folded too tight across his chest.
“Four left.” Penelope reaches for the next, and her hand is as steady as mine, steadier, a woman who has done this so many times it doesn’t reach her pulse at all. “You want to know the truth, girl? Most of them have wept by now. Got down on the floor of my shop and begged. The grand ones are the worst for it, the ones with the big names and the big purses, they think the begging will move me.” She drinks., sets it down, lives. “It never does.”
“Maybe they beg,” I say, and my voice comes out level, “because you’ve built a thing designed to make people beg.”
Something flickers in
