“Make room for what?” Greyson demanded, a new suspicion forming.

  Maximus met his eyes, and a sickening smile twisted onto his face. “For the future. City-states to the north are failing. Their elites—people of culture, education, wealth—need somewhere to go. New Found Haven has the infrastructure, the security. All it lacks is… space.”

  The full depravity of his father’s plan ossified in Greyson’s mind.

  “You’re insane,” Greyson whispered.

  “I’m pragmatic,” Maximus corrected. “The world is changing, son. Those who adapt will survive. Those who cling to outdated notions of equality will perish.” He paused. “The old ways, the old power structures… they’re crumbling. And it’s up to us, the strong, the worthy, to shape what rises from the ashes.”

  “At what cost?” Shadera’s voice cut through the tension between father and son. “How many lives are you willing to sacrifice for your utopia?”

  Maximus turned to her, his posture straightening into something threatening. “At every cost,” he said simply. “Whatever is necessary to ensure the Heart’s survival.”

  He stood, straightening his dark blue suit.

  “The Vow ceremony will proceed as planned. You will both cooperate fully. You will present yourselves as the perfect symbol of unity between Heart and Boundary and use your voices to convince those loyal to the Heart to come forward, to be spared. And in exchange, I will consider modifying my plans. Perhaps sparing key sectors of the rings.” He placed his mask back over his face and turned away from them. “Resist, and I will ensure you watch thousands die before I kill you both. The bombs are ready, the targets selected. One word from me, and the Boundary burns.”

  With those words hanging in the air, Maximus signaled to the guards. They fell into formation around him as he exited, the heavy door closing behind them with a final, echoing thud.

  Silence descended over the cells, broken only by the ragged sound of Shadera’s breathing. Greyson sat motionless, staring at the concrete floor where his blood had pooled beneath his chair then dried. His mind was a hurricane, each emotion crashing against the others, leaving him numb in their wake.

  His father had paid for Brooker’s contract and Shadera had been the one to carry it out. The knowledge sat in his chest like a stone, crushing his lungs, his heart.

  “Greyson.” Shadera’s voice reached him through the glass. “Greyson, please—”

  “Stop,” Greyson said, the word barely audible.

  He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t hear her voice. He couldn’t stand the sound of it. The pain it held, the lies it told.

  “I need you to understand—”

  “Please.” His voice was shattering now, that grenade Maximus had planted in his chest finally detonating. “Please just stop.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY THOSE TWO THINGS

  LIRA SAT ACROSS THE table from her brother. Her dead brother. Her mind refused to process what her eyes were seeing.

  Brooker. Alive. Breathing.

  The world around her seemed to blur at the edges, the voices planning at the table becoming distant and muffled as if she were underwater. Her brother, whom she’d mourned, whose absence had torn a hole in her family, sat there with a slight smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. The same smile he’d worn when they were children and he’d successfully pulled a prank. Only this wasn’t a childish trick—this was an earthquake shattering the foundation of everything she thought she knew.

  She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could barely breathe as he shifted in his chair, leaning back casually like he hadn’t just been resurrected. Callum’s hand tightened around hers beneath the table, his thumb stroking reassuringly across her knuckles, but even that familiar touch couldn’t anchor her to reality.

  Brooker’s hair was longer now, dark strands falling to his shoulders, the length something their father would never have permitted. A thin scar bisected his right eye and brow, puckering the skin in a way that made his face seem sharper, more severe. But it was his eyes that had changed the most—those blue Serel eyes that now held shadows she couldn’t begin to fathom.

  Lira watched Brooker reach beside him, his fingers intertwining with Farrow’s in an easy, intimate gesture that spoke of history, of trust. Farrow’s expression remained neutral, but her grip on Brooker’s hand tightened fractionally, a silent communication passing between them.

  The clearing of Jaeger’s throat drew her attention back to the matter at hand. “… We need to be ready to strike in two days,” he continued, as if the return of a dead man was minor. “The night of the Vow ceremony provides our best opportunity. Security will be focused on keeping Shade and Greyson secure after the broadcast. They will be expecting a disturbance during the ceremony, so we wait until after.”

  Jaeger spread the maps across the table, his finger tracing routes through the Heart. “Mikel and Brooker have Veyra officers on the inside, their teams will secure the plaza, monitoring and relaying any information back to the rebels that will be waiting with Ghost to flood the Heart when Farrow and my team fry the electricity powering the checkpoints. Lira will make sure the media drones are creating blind spots for us to navigate.”

  Lira heard the words, saw Jaeger’s finger moving across the paper, but they made no sense. Nothing made sense.

  Her brother was alive.

  Her brother was alive and had been working with the rebellion all along. Her brother was alive and holding hands with a rebel leader while Greyson was being held prisoner by their father.

  “What the fuck.”

  Brooker laughed, the sound achingly familiar. “There she is.”

  “How dare you.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, trembling with rage. “How dare you sit there and laugh.”

  The smile faded from his face.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” She leaned forward, her body vibrating with fury. “Do you know what it did to us? What it did to me?” Her voice rose with each question. “To Greyson?”

  She pulled her hand from Callum’s, needing to feel unanchored, untethered in her anger.

  “What have you been doing all this time, Brooker? While we were trapped with him? While we were living with the monster day after day, knowing exactly what he’s capable of?” She swallowed back the tears threatening to spill. “Did you even think about us while you lived free?”

  Brooker’s expression sobered, the playfulness evaporating from his eyes as he leaned forward. “I know.” He shook his head, swallowing hard. “I’ve thought about you every day, Li. Believe me, there has not been a second where I haven’t wished this could’ve been different.”

  The gentleness in his voice only fueled her rage. “No, you don’t know. You weren’t there. You didn’t have to see Father getting worse, becoming more paranoid, more cruel. You didn’t have to watch Greyson take your place on that platform, become the thing he never wanted to be.”

  “There was no other way,” Brooker said, his voice low and urgent. “He needed to believe I was dead. The Heart needed to believe I was dead so I could continue my work.”

  “Your work?” She spat the words. “What work could possibly be worth letting your family think you were murdered?”

  His eyes hardened. “Saving thousands of lives. Building a resistance that could actually challenge Father’s power. Creating an escape route for people trapped in the Heart.” He squeezed Farrow’s hand. “Finding people I could trust with the truth.”

  Lira gasped as the words tore like a bullet through flesh. He couldn’t trust her. Didn’t trust her.

  “I see,” Lira answered, her own voice going hard.

  Guilt flashed across Brooker’s face, a genuine emotion cracking behind his eyes. But before he could speak again her gaze shifted to Mikel, her fury finding a new target. “What do you mean Greyson is your son? How is that possible?”

  The Veyra captain’s face remained impassive, his military bearing not faltering under her scrutiny. She’d known this man her entire life—had seen him standing at her father’s right hand at every official function, had watched him carry out her father’s orders without question.

  “Your mother and I have known each other all our lives.” He paused, a shadow of sadness passing over his features. “We had planned to take the Vow together, but then she was betrothed to your father.”

  He leaned forward, tipping back the rest of the liquid in his cup and clearing his throat.

  “Elara is the only woman I have ever loved, and I had to watch while she was forced to marry the devil.” He took a long breath, forcing his voice to remain steady. “There is no love to be found in your father’s bed, only pain. It didn’t matter to us that we could be killed for it, we weren’t afraid of death knowing we would die together.”

  He refilled his glass as Lira opened her mouth to snap back, but Jaeger’s fist found the table first, cutting her off.

  “Enough,” he growled, his gaze pinning on her. “Your family drama can wait. We have—”

  Lira moved, her hand snatching the gun from her thigh.

  They saw her as a simple girl, a princess, a woman not capable of violence.

  They were so wrong. That was their mistake.

  That was the reason she was able to train the barrel of her gun on the center of Jaeger’s skull before being shot down in a room full of assassins.

  In the next breath every Daggermouth in the room had their weapons trained on her back, readying to fire. Time seemed to tilt around her as she watched Brooker’s eyes widen, as she felt Callum slowly move his own hand to his gun, as she watched Jaeger’s back straighten.

  “Tell your men to stand down,” Lira snarled, flicking off the safety in warning.

  Jaeger didn’t hesitate as he signaled to them. She could feel the weight lift off her back as the guns lowered but remained ready.

  “Now, Miss Serel,” Jaeger started slowly. “I believe it is your turn to stand down.”

  Lira only raised her gun. “How dare you mock me when you’ve facilitated this. You accepted contracts on both of my brothers. What’s to stop you from accepting one on me next?”

  Brooker stood slowly. “Lira, please. Put down the gun.”

  “No.” Her eyes never left Jaeger. “I want the truth. All of it. And I want it from him.”

  Jaeger’s eyes met Lira’s over the barrel of her gun, his expression unreadable. “You want the truth?” he asked, his voice low and even. “The truth is rarely a comfort.”

  “I don’t want comfort,” Lira replied, her finger steady on the trigger. “I want answers.”

  “Fine.” Jaeger leaned back in his chair, seemingly unconcerned by the weapon pointed at his head. “My partnership with Farrow didn’t start until after I accepted the contract on a man named Levi Pierce.”

  Lira’s brow furrowed at the unfamiliar name, but she remained silent, letting Jaeger continue.

  “I didn’t know back then that Brooker was working under that alias in the rings. The evidence supplied in the purchased contract was sufficient to show that Pierce was selling Cardinal secrets to the Heart.” Jaeger’s gaze flicked briefly to Brooker before returning to Lira. “I didn’t know what Brooker had really been doing for the rebellion, that he was working with Farrow.”

  Lira’s mind raced, trying to piece together this new information with what she already knew. Her brother, living a double life under a false name, caught between two worlds.

  “Shadera’s part of the contract was to kill him,” Jaeger went on, his tone matter-of-fact. “I would handle the rest with my contacts to complete the contract, which was to display his body in the center of the Heart as a warning to others who might consider informing on the rings.”

  Lira’s stomach turned at the thought, bile rising in her throat. The cold brutality of it, the callousness with which her brother’s life had been bargained away.

  “Farrow watched Shadera’s attack on Brooker from their meeting place,” Jaeger said. “She found him barely alive and was able to stop the bleeding, get a medic to him in time to save his life.” He paused, his eyes meeting Farrow’s across the table. “That’s when she called me and told me the truth about what was really happening in the Cardinal rings. That’s when we decided we needed to start working together, to share information so things like this wouldn’t happen again.”

  Lira’s arm began to tremble, the weight of the gun pulling at her muscles.

  “We were able to save his life,” Jaeger continued, “and he told us the contract most likely came from your father. But we needed to complete the rest of it to make sure he believed he was dead.”

  Every word he spoke was a hammer against Lira’s already fracturing reality.

  “We found a body,” he said, his voice flat. “From the Cardinal clinic, similar to the build of your brother’s. We took it, tattooed Brooker’s mark on his chest, then we beat it. Badly. Until it was unrecognizable.”

  Lira’s stomach lurched. She didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to know what came next. But Jaeger kept talking.

  “We burned off the fingerprints. Pulled the teeth. Scalped it. Drained the blood, replaced it with Brooker’s. As close a match as they could make it to him.”

  Each detail was a fresh horror, a new violation. Lira’s vision swam, nausea rising in her throat.

  “I left the body in the Heart,” Jaeger finished. “The contract on top of it, and it was enough. Enough to convince your father it had been completed.”

  Lira turned to Brooker, searching his face for a denial, for any sign that this was a lie. But his eyes met hers, solemn as he nodded once. Confirmation. Acknowledgment.

  Finally, she lowered the gun as she turned back to Jaeger.

  “And Greyson?” she asked, her voice sounding distant to her own ears. “What’s your excuse for accepting his contract?”

  She needed to know. Needed to understand how the man who claimed to protect the rings, to fight for the people, could so easily trade her brother’s life for… for what? Money? Power?

  Jaeger leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table, his scarred hands clasped before him. He met her gaze steadily, unflinching in the face of her anger, her devastation.

  “A year after Brooker was presumed dead, he brought Mikel to me. Said he’d been acting as eyes and ears inside your father’s circles, feeding information to the rebellion. That he was willing to help us however he could.”

  Jaeger paused, taking a coin out of his pocket and flipping it through his fingers as he sipped from his drink.

  “Six months ago, Mikel presented us with an ultimatum. Said he’d only keep helping if we got Greyson out. Told us of his connection to Greyson, about the smuggling, that Maximus was beginning to get suspicious.”

  Lira’s eyes flicked to Mikel as Jaeger continued. “We agreed to extract him, but we needed time to plan, to find a way that wouldn’t jeopardize the rebellion we were planning in the rings. We were still figuring out the logistics to get him out when the contract came. This time, there were no aliases, no smoke and mirrors. It was bought specifically for Greyson Serel, by an unknown Heart elite claiming they wanted change.”

  Her stomach churned. Lira knew, with sickening certainty, where that contract had truly come from.

  “But you knew it was from my father,” she said, her voice hollow.

  Jaeger nodded grimly. “I took it to Brooker and Farrow immediately. We saw it for what it was—an opportunity. A way to get Greyson out without arousing suspicion.”

  Her mind began to spiral as she tried to absorb it all. The secrets, the lies.

  “The plan was to send Shadera in,” Jaeger continued, the coin dancing between his fingers. “I assigned it to her because she was the only one I trusted, the only one smart enough to have a chance at making it out of the Heart alive. Completing this contract would have to happen from inside.”

  Jaeger glanced at Jameson, his expression hardening. “I had a choice to make—risk her life to get Greyson out, or lose our most important informant in the Heart. I chose the option that would save the most lives.”

  She could feel the anger radiating from Jameson in waves, watching as the muscle twitched in his jaw. He seemed to be the only other person that was kept in the dark, the only other person that wasn’t trusted with the truth.

  “Shade was never supposed to actually harm Greyson,” Jaeger said, his voice growing softer as he flipped the coin over his knuckles one last time before catching it in his palm. “I went to her warehouse while she was out on contract. Replaced all her bullets with blanks soaked in a poison that would lower his heart rate, make his limbs seize so it would look like he was dead.”

  The room spun around her, all these revelations piling atop one another until she could barely breathe under their weight.

  “The Veyra officers that came to the scene of the assassination were Mikel and his men. They were supposed to pronounce him dead and take care of the body like they always did. That’s when they would smuggle him out of the Heart.”

  “But something went wrong,” Lira said, the pieces clicking into place.

  Jaeger nodded. “I didn’t know about the Veyra pistol she kept hidden. I didn’t replace those bullets.”

  A chill crawled down Lira’s spine as she sank back into her chair. All those careful plans, all those manipulations—undone by a single hidden weapon.

  “And then,” Jaeger sighed, “Greyson removed his mask. Those two things—the bullet and the unmasking—detonated our entire plan.”

  Jameson surged to his feet, his chair clattering to the floor behind him. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time?” His eyes trained on Farrow. “I expected this from Jaeger, but you?”

  Lira watched the blood drain from Farrow’s face as she rose to meet him. “That’s not what this is, Jay—”

  “I came to you for help. Sharing all the information I had. I begged you to help me find a way to keep everyone safe. And you let me—you let me sit there in fear and you said nothing.”

  The betrayal in his voice resonated in Lira’s chest, his pain reflecting her own.