EMBER’S POV

And oh, the satisfaction of it nearly makes me laugh out loud right there at the counter. I keep my face stupid, thumb resting on that one sticky rim, but inside I am grinning like a fool.

Because they’d been so good. So patient, so smug, so certain. And they’d handed themselves to me with the thing they were proudest of.

The paint was the proof. But the paint only told me what the old man’s face had been screaming at me the whole time, if I’d only thought to ask the right question.

Which was: why on earth is he afraid?

A man who’s run this exact...