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Except May’s had always borne hope.
Before Ana could reply, May pulled away and slipped through the crowd. Ana hurried after her, just in time to see the child reach into the folds of her gray fur cloak and dig out a single copperstone. It was one of the coins Ana had told her to keep, promising they would use it to buy a treat.
Gently, May took the pastry vendor’s hands and folded the coin into them. “Keep it,” May whispered, pressing a small finger to her lips. She chanced a glance at Ana, and for a moment, her eyes said it all: flashes of rage and crashing waves of grief tossing and turning within. And Ana realized with gut-wrenching pain that May had seen her ma-ma in this Affinite, that she’d been looking for her ma-ma when she’d spotted this pastry vendor.
Suddenly, the pastries looked too bright, too false, and the rest of the world faded to a blur of noises and dim colors.
It was as though the world she had seen for the past eighteen years was slowly peeling away to reveal the truth of what it was. How many times had she purchased something from someone who might have been forced into a bad contract? How many overworked and exploited Affinites had she waved at in the crowds when she had traveled with her father to see her empire as a child?
Cyrilian law stated that employment under contract was fair employment … but it never dug into actual terms of that agreement. How an employer was to treat an employee. The terms of payment. Whether that contract had been signed willingly … or through coercion.
“Here,” the pastry vendor said quietly. Her hands darted over the rows of pastries on display, and she plucked one up and held it out to May. “It’s a ptychy’moloko. Bird’s milk cake. You can have it.”
Ana recognized the hush in the girl’s voice, the furtive way her eyes darted around to check that nobody else caught this transaction.
May smiled as she took her first bite, and Ana would have paid all the goldleaves in the world to see her friend smile like that again. “It’s good,” May said, and held it out to Ana.
It was difficult to manage a smile over the cold realization that had just seeded in her chest. “It was my favorite as a child,” Ana said. She thought of Yuri, his coal-gray eyes bright as he handed treats to her and Luka, steaming hot from the kitchens. “Go ahead, finish it.”
May’s face was radiant. “I like the hard brown layer,” she said between bites.
“That’s chokolad.” The pastry vendor watched May with a hint of a smile warming her eyes. “It’s made of cocoa from Nandji.”
“Oi!”
A man in lush furs shoved through the crowd, his gaze locked on May. The pastry vendor’s face had gone paler than flour.
“Did she pay?” the nobleman snarled, storming over and making as though to snatch the pastry from May’s hands.
Something snapped in Ana. “Don’t touch her,” she growled.
Rage flickered in the man’s eyes, but he turned to the pastry vendor, who was watching him with a terrified expression. “I’m going to count my books tonight, and if I find that you’ve been stealing …” He lowered his voice to a hiss. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, witch.”
“Ana.” May’s voice trembled as she tugged insistently at Ana’s hand, pulling her away from the stall. “We gotta go. There’s nothing we can do here. Please.”
Even as she followed May, Ana’s step faltered. It felt wrong, in her heart, to turn and leave someone in need of help. Someone whose Affinity made them different, ostracized. Someone like her.
A cry rang out; Ana and May froze as they turned to look. And, with the rest of the crowd, they gasped as the nobleman backhanded the young pastry vendor with all his strength.
The slap resonated in the square like the crack of a whip. The pastry vendor staggered back and crashed into the stall of neatly arranged pastries.
Anger coiled around Ana, white-hot. She was the Princess of Cyrilia. There was a time when scum like him would have bowed to her, when she could have ordered his demise with a single word.
That time was past, but she could still do the right thing.
“Please, mesyr,” the Affinite girl begged.
The nobleman raised his hand again.
Ana wrapped her Affinity around him. She’d only ever learned how to push or pull, but now she commanded for the blood in his body to remain still with every ounce of her strength.
For a few seconds, the nobleman was frozen, his arm raised and his expression slipping from fury to panic. He began to choke, his eyes rolling into the back of his head.
She was aware of May tugging at her cloak. She heard the gasps of the crowd as she finally let go of the nobleman’s blood and his body hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. Horrible wheezing sounds came from his mouth.
“Ana,” May shrieked. “We need to go, before—”
Someone screamed. As the Vyntr’makt erupted into panic, Ana realized that she had gone too far.
“May,” she gasped, and the child’s hand was in hers, and they were stumbling away from the collapsed nobleman and the pastry vendor.
Yet the crowd had grown oddly still, and the skin on Ana’s back pricked. It took her a moment to realize that a hush had fallen over the entire square. All the vendors and townspeople were gazing at a spot behind Ana with expressions of awe and anxiety.
Slowly, Ana turned. And looked into a squad of Cyrilian Imperial Patrols.
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