"Hello?" Ivan called out, as he pushed open the door to the pawnshop. "Anyone home? We're, uh, customers… paying customers. Potentially."

  He could see Brom through a curtain to the backroom. "Shop's closed," Brom said. His voice was low and rough, the kind of voice that came from the bottom of a barrel.

  "The door was open," Ivan said.

  "Door's been broken for a while… shop’s closed." Brom didn't move from behind the curtain.

  Ivan swallowed. His mouth was dry. He could feel Rory behind him, still and silent under her hood, and he could feel Brom's one eye cutting between them, questioning why these two were in his shop when it was closed.

  "Look man," Ivan said, and he held up both hands. "We aren’t here to buy or sell anything… just here to get something back."

  Brom's good eye didn't blink. "Back?"

  "Back. As in, it was taken from my friend here, and we think it ended up in your shop."

  "Everything in my shop was bought and paid for." Brom crossed his arms. "I don't deal in stolen goods."

  Ivan almost laughed.

  "Right," Ivan said. "Sure. Absolutely. Clean operation, I can see that. But the thing is… someone brought you something recently. A girl. Young, lavender hair."

  Brom's expression didn't change. His good eye stared at Ivan.

  "Lots of people bring me things," Brom said.

  "This would have been specific. A spiritual nature." Ivan held up his hand and curled his fingers to approximate the size, Rory had said. "A red stone about this big."

  Brom's jaw tightened. Just a fraction, a small shift in the heavy muscles around his mouth, but Ivan caught it because he was watching for it.

  Brom knew what it was.

  "Haven’t seen it," Brom said.

  "You sure about that? Something tells me you have." Ivan dropped his hand.

  Brom uncrossed his arms. He put one hand on the edge of a shelf. "Who sent you?"

  "My name's Ivan. This is—"

  "I didn't ask your name. I asked who sent you."

  "Nobody sent us. The stone belongs to her." Ivan jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Rory.

  Brom's good eye moved past Ivan to Rory’s hooded figure behind. It stayed there for a long time.

  "The girl with the lavender hair," Brom said. "She brought me something like that a few days back and asked me to find her a seller."

  "So you do have it."

  Brom's mouth pressed into a hard line. "I didn't say that, did I?" Brom continued, moving further into the shop now, "she brought me something. I didn't say I still have it sitting on a shelf laying around."

  Ivan's mouth went dry. "You sold it already?"

  "No." Brom put both hands flat on the table. "But I did find a buyer. They are coming tonight and will meet with your alleged thief. Someone who heard what I had and made an offer."

  "How much was the offer?"

  “Six-hundred gold.” Brom told him.

  "That's..." Ivan ran his hand through his hair. "That's a lot of coin for a rock."

  "It is." Brom's good eye was steady. "Which is why I made the deal. When someone pays more than something's worth, you don't ask why. You take the money and you move on. That's business."

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "But you just said you haven't sold it yet."

  "The buyer hasn't come yet. He's coming tonight."

  "So cancel the deal. We'll pay you—"

  "You'll pay me what?" Brom looked at Ivan. Then at Rory. Then back at Ivan. The look on his face wasn't cruel. "Son. I've been doing this for most of my life. I can tell how much money someone has by the way they stand. You two don't have it."

  Ivan's jaw clenched. The heat crawled up his neck and settled behind his ears.

  "We have resources," Ivan said. "My employer, Harwick—"

  "There is no Harwick." Brom didn't even blink. "You used that name at the tavern. Word travels fast in these streets, son. Faster than you do."

  Ivan's hands went cold. The whole Harwick cover story, the careful performance at the bar… all of it, burned in a single sentence. Word travels fast. Of course it did. This was a slum, not a damn video game town where NPCs reset after you left the room. These were real people who talked to each other, who gossiped.

  "You're just two kids that are in over your heads, and one of you is hiding under a hood because she doesn't want to be recognized. Which tells me she's either wanted or she's someone important trying to look unimportant." His good eye flicked to Rory. "Either way, it's not my damn problem."

  He had nothing. No money, no leverage, no cover story, no backup plan. The pen floated beside him, invisible to Brom.

  "What's the price to cancel the deal and get us the stone?"

  Brom shrugged and repeated the number. Six-hundred gold. It might as well have been a million.

  "And there's no... negotiation? No discount? No payment plan?"

  "This isn't a charity." Brom's voice was flat. "The buyer offered that price. If you want the stone, you match it. If you can't match it, you leave. That's how this works."

  The shop pressed in around him… all that stolen junk, all those broken things that belonged to someone else, and the one thing that mattered, the one thing they needed, was sitting somewhere behind that moth-eaten curtain.

  But this wasn't a game. And Brom wasn't an NPC with a hidden affection meter.

  Ivan turned to look at Rory.

  She hadn't moved or even said a word. But her fingers were white where they gripped each other.

  She was scared. And she was thinking.

  "I have no money," Rory said.

  Her voice cut through the cluttered silence of the shop. She stepped forward, past Ivan, and pulled her hood down.

  Rory’s pink hair spilled out. The orchid sitting proudly in her hair. Brom's good eye widened—just a fraction, just enough—and his hand on the table curled into a fist.

  "I have no money," Rory said again. "I have no title that would mean anything to you. I have no army, no household, no lands to pledge. What I have is my word, and I know—" Her voice caught. "—I know that means nothing to a man who has survived on coin and caution."

  Brom said nothing.

  "I am a candidate in the Royal Succession," Rory said. "If I am chosen I will ensure amnesty for this district. Fair treatment and protection under the law for the people who live here, who have been ignored and exploited for generations. I will—"

  "Stop." Brom said, as he started to laugh. "Just stop."

  It was the laugh of experience.

  "Amnesty," he said. "Fair treatment." He shook his head. "Girl, I've heard promises from nobles, from merchants, from priests, from every kind of person who thinks they can fix this broken shithole. You know what words buy in the slums?"

  He didn't wait for an answer.

  "Nothing. Words buy nothing. Coin buys food. Coin buys medicine. Coin buys another day." He tapped the table with one thick finger.

  "You're right," Rory said.

  Brom's finger stopped tapping.

  "You are right," she said again. "Words are cheap… promises from people who have never lived as you have are worth less than the breath used to speak them. I cannot prove to you that I am different. I cannot show you a future that does not exist yet. All I can do is stand here, in your shop, and tell you that the stone you have is not a jewel. It is not a trinket to be sold. It is the spiritual nature of Ifrit, the Great Beast of Fire, and without it, I cannot complete my inscription. Without my inscription, I cannot stand in the Selection. And without the Selection—" She paused. Her gold eyes were bright, and there was something raw in them, something that had nothing to do with fire. "Without it, I am just another person making promises she cannot keep…"

  Brom stared at her, his good eye moved across her face. It was the look of someone who had been cheated too many times and had stopped believing in anything they couldn't hold in their hands.

  But Rory wasn't lying. That was the thing. Ivan knew it, and he was pretty sure Brom knew it too, because you couldn't fake what was on her face right now. You couldn't manufacture that kind of open, unguarded honesty.

  Brom exhaled, his massive shoulders dropped.

  "The buyer is coming after dark," he said. "If you can outbid him, the stone is yours."

  "We don't have—" Ivan started.

  "I heard you the first time." Brom held up his hand again. "I'm not giving it to you. I'm giving you a fair chance." He looked at Rory. "You want your stone, you find a way to outbid the buyer before he walks through that door."

  "And if we can't?" Ivan asked. He already knew the answer.

  "Then it’s sold to the man who can pay." Brom picked up one of the pocket watches from the table, turned it over in his thick fingers, and set it back down. "I've got my own people to feed, girl. My own debts to settle. I can't eat promises." He moved toward the curtain at the back of the shop. "You've got until dark. I'd suggest you use the time."

  He pushed through the curtain and was gone.

  Rory pulled her hood back up. Her hands were steady now, the white-knuckle grip gone. "Until dark," she said.

  "Until dark," Ivan said. He rubbed the back of his neck. "So... any chance you've got a rich uncle?"

  Rory's mouth twitched.

  "No," she said.

  "Yeah." Ivan looked at the door. "Didn't think so."

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