His stomach bottomed out.
If Farrow couldn't cut the power to the internal checkpoints, Jameson's teams couldn't move beyond the Entertainment District. They would be trapped there.
He would be trapped there.
"Lira called you," Callum said frantically. "What did she want?"
"What?" Farrow said, confusion fusing with her panic.
"What fucking plan did she make with you?" His words were a snarl now.
"Tonight. At the final ceremony, she was going to release documents to the public of her father's corruption. She asked me to help her make copies without the Heart knowing."
That couldn't be what she meant. That was too simple, that was too easy. "What else?"
"Nothing, Callum. What is going on?" There was a breath's pause. "Oh God. Did she—"
"No." He refused to believe it. She wouldn't betray them. She wouldn't lock them out of the system. She wanted this as much as any of them.
"Shoot it," Callum said. "Fry the whole fucking power grid if you have to, just get those checkpoints offline."
Lira was sure she'd faint from breathing so hard. Each shallow breath barely sustained her as she stood rigid beside her mother, watching the ceremony unfold with the inevitability of an execution.
Maximus turned to Shadera, the tilt of his golden mask conveying benevolent authority as he asked the question that had sealed the fate of countless women before her.
"Do you, Shadera Kael, accept this Vow? Do you vow to uphold the honor of bowing to your husband, of bowing to the Heart and the laws of New Found Haven?"
Lira watched Shadera's chest rise with a deep breath, watched her straighten despite the pain that must have lanced through her body.
"Yes." The word carried across the plaza, broadcast through speakers that would send it to every corner of the city. A single syllable, devoid of emotion.
Lira's fingernails bit into her palms.
Her father turned to Greyson now, his posture shifting subtly—from benevolent ruler to stern patriarch. "Do you, Greyson Serel, accept this Vow? Do you vow to uphold your duty as the head of the family, the educator of the family, and to bow to the Heart and the laws of New Found Haven?"
Greyson's "Yes" was firmer than Shadera's, almost challenging in its clarity. Even through his mask, Lira could feel the rage radiating from her brother, the violence that simmered beneath his exterior.
"By the sacred laws of the Heart," Maximus declared, raising his hands in a gesture that would be captured by every camera, broadcast on every screen, "your vows have been recorded into history." His voice swelled with practiced emotion. "You may now witness each other's faces as husband and wife."
At his command, the veil descended, the golden cylinder lowering smoothly around Greyson and Shadera. It would give them their minute of privacy—the only moment in the ceremony not broadcast to the watching city.
Lira focused on her breathing, forcing each inhale and exhale to steady and slow. She'd planned this moment methodically. Had moved pieces on the board with a patience that would've made her father proud, had he known. Had created contingencies and fail-safes, backups for backups.
But still, doubt crept in. Doubt and fear and the terrible weight of consequence.
It all rested on Greyson and Shadera now.
The minute passed in silence, the crowd waiting with collective breath held. Her father stepped forward again, his posture radiating satisfaction and control.
"The veil will now rise on the newlywed couple," he announced, his voice carrying to every corner of the plaza.
The golden cylinder began to ascend, inch by slow inch, revealing first Greyson and Shadera's joined hands, then their formal attire.
"Citizens of the Heart, please welcome Mr. and Mrs. Greyson Serel."
The Heart remained utterly silent.
No applause. No murmurs of approval.
No reaction at all save for a collective inhale that seemed to suck the very air from the plaza.
Confusion rippled through her father's stance, a momentary hesitation that would have been imperceptible to anyone who didn't know him as she did. He turned, his movement unnaturally stiff, to face the altar.
Maximus froze.
Lira watched the shock move through him like electricity, his body going rigid as stone. The golden mask hid his expression, but she could read the disbelief in every line of his posture, in the slight tremor that ran through his hands.
Greyson and Shadera stood side by side, fingers still intertwined, faces bare to the world.
No masks.
No veils.
Shadera's shawl slipped from her shoulders, pooling around her feet as a note slipped from her fingers, fluttering to the ground at Maximus's feet.
He bent to retrieve it, movements mechanical, as if his body were functioning on instinct while his mind struggled to process the betrayal.
Lira watched as he read her handwriting. Her command. Her rebellion.
Leave them off.
His head lifted slowly, the golden mask turning toward her, gaze finding her face across the platform.
In that moment, with her father's eyes locked on hers, Lira felt a lifetime of fear fall away. Fear of his disapproval. Fear of his anger. Fear of his punishment. All of it dissolving like mist under the rising sun.
She'd spent her life as his perfect daughter. His diplomat. His puppet. Moving when he pulled the strings, speaking the words he put in her mouth. She'd smiled through her mask as he built his empire on the broken bodies of the rings.
No more.
She held his gaze, refusing to look away, refusing to bend.
For the first time in her life, she faced her father not as his daughter, but as his enemy.
The silence in the plaza stretched, taut as a wire about to snap. The media drones hovered, capturing every moment of this unprecedented breach of Heart law.
Slowly, Lira's hand raised, finding the zipper on the front of her dress, and pulled it down. The sound of it sliding over teeth was the loudest thing she ever heard. She shrugged out of it, letting it pool at her feet, letting it reveal the white slip underneath.
White.
The mark of purity required for the Vow. The purity that would be stripped from every woman who ever took it just moments later.
Lira didn't have to wait for a Vow ceremony for her father to rip everything from her. She'd only had to wait fourteen years for that.
She swallowed hard, never taking her eyes from her father's as she reached up and removed her mask. It slipped from her fingers, falling to the platform with a ringing sound that was beautiful in its pitch.
Then, slowly, she heard it, the gasps that began to flow from the crowd.
Gasps turned to murmurs, and murmurs swelled into a growing wave of sound as women throughout the plaza began to move. One by one at first, then in clusters.
They shed their dresses. Expensive gowns fell to the ground, revealing white slips beneath. Their hands reached up, fingers finding the edges of their masks, sealing their fates as they showed their faces.
Lira's heart hammered against her ribs as she watched her own rebellion unfold. She'd planted the seeds days ago, whispered truths in the right ears, passed messages through networks of women who had suffered in silence for generations. But seeing it now—this mass defiance—stole her breath.
Soon the plaza was filled with the musical clatter of metal hitting stone as women revealed their faces to the world.
Some were scarred—burns, cuts, deliberate disfigurements hidden for years behind clothing, behind masks.
Others bore bruises, fresh evidence of what happened behind closed doors in the Heart's glimmering towers.
Her father's body went rigid as he turned to see the severity of her actions. She could feel his rage radiating like heat, the golden mask no longer able to hide the monster beneath.
"What have you done?" he hissed, not caring who could hear it.
Lira lifted her chin, rolling her shoulders back as she took two steps forward and looked directly into the eye of the media drone.
"We are the Heart. We are its power. And we are taking it back."
Her words rippled through the crowd. Women who'd spent their lives as decorations, as possessions, as silent witnesses to atrocity, lifted their faces to the sky. Their expressions ranged from terror to exhilaration, but in each face, Lira saw the same thing.
Freedom.