“Kestrel Farrow,” Maximus continued, his voice softening in a way that made Shadera’s skin crawl. “Oh, she is exquisite, isn’t she? Such fire. Such intelligence. It would be a pity to waste her. No, I think I’ll keep that one. Find uses for her talents. After I break her, of course.”
Maximus paused for only a breath. Letting his words settle, ferment.
“And Callum.” Maximus turned back to Lira, whose face had gone ghostly pale.
“Your lover.” Greyson tensed beside her.
“Your co-conspirator. I’ll take my time with him.
Perhaps I’ll even let you watch as I peel him apart, layer by layer.
As I extract every secret, every plan, every thought he ever had about you. ”
Shadera watched the gears turning in Lira’s mind, watched as she decided how to respond. Choosing between begging for his life and not giving her father the satisfaction of seeing her flinch.
She chose the latter and when she spoke, her voice was steady, cold as steel.
“And Brooker?” she asked. “What are you going to do to him this time?”
Greyson’s vision blurred, the gun in his hand suddenly leaden.
“What?” he breathed, the question directed at Lira, whose face remained resolute despite the pallor that had crept beneath her skin.
It wasn’t possible. Couldn’t be possible.
Maximus laughed, the sound grating against Greyson’s eardrums like metal on glass. His father’s amusement, his casual dismissal of the pain he’d inflicted, ignited fury in Greyson’s chest.
“Surprised, son?” Maximus asked, his voice pitched to carry across the platform. “You shouldn’t be. Death has always been . . . negotiable in our family, as you know well.”
Something in Maximus’s words made the Veyra surrounding them hold their guns higher.
Veyra loyal to Maximus formed a perimeter, weapons raised, while those who had sided with Mikel stood their ground, creating a protective formation around Greyson, Shadera, Lira, and Elara.
Outnumbered at least three to one, but unwavering.
The tension in the air was a physical thing now, pressing against Greyson’s skin, filling his lungs with each labored breath. A single wrong move, a twitch of a finger, and the platform would erupt in blood and bullets.
Maximus raised his hands, the gesture almost benedictory as he addressed the scattered crowd below. “Citizens of the Heart,” he called, his amplified voice booming across the plaza. “Return to your homes immediately.”
The crowd hesitated, uncertainty rippling through the gathered masses. Some began to retreat, filtering toward the exits, while others remained rooted in place, eyes fixed on the drama unfolding above them.
“Now,” Maximus added, the single word carrying the full weight of his authority.
The exodus quickened, people streaming toward the exits in growing numbers, desperate to escape whatever violence they sensed was imminent. But not everyone fled. The women who had removed their masks—hundreds of them—stood firm, forming a defiant knot at the base of the platform.
Maximus observed them with an air of detached amusement.
“Interesting,” he murmured, just loud enough for those on the platform to hear. “Your little rebellion has more backbone than I anticipated, Lira.”
He signaled to a squad of Veyra, who moved immediately toward the women. “Deal with them,” he ordered. “I’ll address their . . . disobedience later.”
The Veyra swarmed around the unmasked women, herding them together like livestock. Some went quietly. Others fought, their resistance quickly subdued with practiced brutality. Greyson forced himself to watch, to bear witness to the courage they showed, to memorize each face, each act of defiance.
Maximus waited for the plaza to empty before he turned his attention back to them, and allowed a light chuckle to slip over his lips.
“What does she mean about Brooker?” Greyson growled toward his father.
“My poor son,” he said, locking his eyes on Greyson. “This is what hope does to you. What love does to you.” He shook his head in disappointment. “It makes you naive. It makes you dull and blind and weak.”
Greyson’s finger tensed on the trigger, the urge to end this—to put a bullet through the golden mask and whatever twisted expression lay beneath it—nearly overwhelming. But something held him back. The need to know. To understand.
“Your brother is indeed alive,” Maximus continued, his voice almost gentle now, as if explaining a difficult concept to a child. “And he’s played you beautifully. Played all of you, really.”
“No,” Greyson said, the denial automatic, instinctive. “Brooker wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t what?” Maximus interrupted. “Wouldn’t serve his father? Wouldn’t protect the Heart? Wouldn’t do his duty?” A harsh laugh escaped him. “You never did understand your brother, Greyson. Never saw his true nature beneath that facade of compassion.”
From the corner of his eye, Greyson saw Lira’s sharp intake of breath, saw Mikel straighten as if struck. Their reactions made no sense.
“What’s going on?” he demanded, looking between them. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“So many secrets,” Maximus said, enjoying his confusion. “So many lies. It must be exhausting trying to keep them all straight.”
He took a step closer, unconcerned by the weapons still trained on him.
“I had such fun toying with you, breaking you,” he continued.
“And it was so easy once you thought the Daggermouth killed your brother.” He gestured toward Shadera.
“I did not have to tell you anything about Brooker, could have waited until you figured it out on your own, but I enjoyed watching you crumble. Watching you try to reconcile your feelings for the Boundary trash with the idea that she killed your hero.” Maximus shrugged.
“It was a test of trust, I suppose, and you passed. You still trusted me, even after every lie I have ever told you. You trusted that I was telling you the truth.”
Greyson’s stomach clenched, bile rising in his throat as his words sank in.
Movement below caught his attention. A figure emerging from the perimeter of the plaza, walking with confident strides toward the platform. Greyson’s gaze caught on the man, and his world tilted on its axis.
Brooker.
His brother. Alive and whole, a gun in his hand and a smile on his face that Greyson had never seen before—cold, cruel, triumphant. And beside him, stumbling as Brooker dragged him forward, a gun pressed to his temple—
“Callum,” Lira whispered, then louder, a scream and a sob tearing from her throat all at once. “Callum!”
Brooker laughed, the sound so familiar and yet so wrong that it made Greyson’s skin crawl.
“Grey,” he called up, his voice carrying across the plaza. “I missed you.”
Greyson’s stomach bottomed out, a hollow sensation spreading through his core, as if everything that had anchored him to the world had suddenly dissolved.
His brother.
His brother who had held him through nightmares as a child, who had taught him to fight, to survive their father’s cruelty.
“I killed him,” Shadera said beside him, her voice cracking with disbelief. “I killed him. He should be dead.”
“Unfortunately for you, you didn’t,” Brooker replied, his smile widening as he tightened his grip on Callum as he struggled against him, blood seeping from a cut above his eye, from his lips. “Though not for lack of trying. Your reputation is well earned, Shade.”
Brooker pulled down the collar of his shirt to show a thick scar at the base of his neck as he continued to move toward the platform. “I’m gonna have to repay you for this one day. Hurt like a bitch.”
They reached the base and Brooker forced Callum to ascend the steps ahead of him, the gun never wavering from his head.
Up close, Greyson could see the changes in his brother—the harder set of his jaw, the coldness in his eyes that had never been there before.
Or perhaps it had, and Greyson had simply been too blind to see it.
Lira reached for Callum, and he moved to run to her, but Brooker pulled him back quickly, pushing him to his knees and pressing the gun to his temple.
Lira gasped, tears streaming down her face now. “Please don’t. Brooker, please don’t hurt him.”
“You’ve been alive this whole time,” Greyson said, the words tasting like poison in his mouth as he met Callum’s eyes.
He had never seen fear there. But now, it was exploding in his irises. His eyes flickered to Lira then back to him. Then again.
“Very much so,” Brooker confirmed. “Dad and I came up with the plan years ago to plant me in the rings. We took a gamble with my life by buying that contract, but I was willing to die for the Heart.” His smile didn’t falter as he glanced to Shadera.
“And I almost did thanks to that bitch. Thankfully, she was a little too drunk that night to realize she left me breathing.”
Dad.
Greyson forced the sickness back. His mind reeled, struggling to process the betrayal unfolding before him. His brother—the man he’d idolized, mourned, tried to emulate—had been working against them all along.
“The contract was the only way to make the rebels truly trust that I was a deserter,” Brooker continued, his tone too close to the sound of his father’s.
“That my loyalties were with the rings. It took years of planning, of building my cover, of sleeping with Cardinal trash and helping the scum of the rings.” His smile deepened with something like pride.
“But it was worth it because it all came to this moment.”
Each word was a knife, slicing through Greyson’s last illusions about his family, his brother, his place in the world. The man before him was a stranger wearing his brother’s face. A monster who had orchestrated suffering and death with the same casual cruelty of their father.