Page 89 of Storm of Stars

“Shut up!” She screeched.

“Nial Torvich,” I choked, my voice faltering just once. “Canyon. He killed himself after surviving your twisted game. His little sister still lights a candle for him every single morning.” My heart cracked open wide at the thought of Ava and her pain.

I saw her flinch.

“Elise Fairchild. Nile Fulton. Dani and Victor Cale. Beron Goaler. Winnie Fetter. Franklin Shale. Dominic Shallow?—”

I heard Briar and Thorne inhale sharply beside me. Dominic. The body they’d found on day one.

“Fenly Nots. Lark Harbor!” I screamed. And the pain and anguish in my voice was enough to silence the room.

“Enough!” she shrieked, and her palm flew across my face with a crack that rang louder than her scream.

The sting bloomed across my cheek, but I stood still, eyes locked on hers. The guards flinched. Their hands slackened on my arms. And in that silence, something shifted. The shape of power had changed. I felt it.

I raised my voice again, this time a weapon forged from truth.

“Every single person Praxis has killed in the name of Reclamation. Is it hard to hear their names, Archon?”

She looked at me now like she wanted to silence me for good. And I knew she would.

“You want me to lie,” I said. “You want me to smile into a camera, tell the Collectives that I made a mistake? That Praxis is just and honorable."

I stepped forward. The guards didn’t stop me.

“Well, here’s the truth.” I looked her in the eyes and saw something finally crack.

“You think offering me a choice between the people I love will break me. My brother, my guard, my family. You think mercy is something you get to ration.”

I smiled. And it was genuine.

“But I won’t choose between them. I won’t give you the performance you want. I would rather burn beside them than build a world where you get to call that mercy.”

She stumbled back a step. Just one. But enough.

And for the first time, through the glitter and the politics, the gowns and the bloodshed, Evanora Veritas looked completely, and totally, afraid.

“Kill them,” Veritas hissed, her voice laced with venom. Sharp, cold, unyielding.

I froze. Every muscle in my body clenched, steeling itself for the inevitable.

This was it. The end.

I closed my eyes for the briefest moment, breathing in the last seconds before death. I waited for the deafening crack of gunfire, for the final shudder of breath to leave the bodies around me. I waited for my Wildguard, my family, to be torn from me in an instant. I waited to follow them, to meet my brother in whatever came after, to die with some kind of grace if not victory.

But the shots never came.

Silence swelled.

Veritas realized it just as I did.

“What are you waiting for, you idiots?” she barked, voice tightening with disbelief. “I saidkill them!”

The guards shifted.

But not toward us.

In perfect synchrony, their rifles turned, clicking into place, now aimed at her.