Page 44 of Storm of Stars (Pride of Praxis #2)

But if she thought I would kneel to save myself, or choose who lived and who died just to give her the power we’d taken from her, then she never really knew me at all.

I stared her down.

“Thomas Halden,” I whispered.

Evanora’s brow furrowed, a flicker of confusion breaking through her icy composure.

“Horizon. The very first casualty of the Reclamation Run. He died trying to win electricity for his Collective.”

Her eyes hardened, but I saw the twitch in her jaw.

“Lira Voss,” I said louder. “Steelheart. Refused to compete in your sadistic Medical Trial when you told her to operate on her own mother. She begged you for mercy. You handed her a scalpel. Then had your guards shoot her when she refused. Her mother died on the table anyway.”

My voice echoed. Clear. Anchored. I stood taller as the names formed like armor around me. I remembered their faces, their stories, each one stitched into my memory with blood and fire.

“Junia Rhade. Oasis. Lost her eyesight during the fuel trial. But Praxis still forced her to compete in the next trial. She died within five minutes. You broadcast her screams.”

Evanora opened her mouth to speak, to lie, maybe. But I didn’t give her the space.

“Mirelle Dox. Canyon. She was pregnant when you left her to survive in the Wilds alone for a week. When she died your cameras zoomed in on her stomach.”

Each name lit a fuse inside me. Each memory sharpened my rage.

“Be quiet,” Veritas hissed, her voice low and dangerous.

But I didn’t stop. Name after name. Dozens of them, from a century of death and lies.

“Cassian Roe. Ember. Figured out a shortcut in the transportation trial through some tunnels, so Praxis collapsed them on top of him.”

More names. More death. More pain.

“Elin Wren. Ironclad. She burnt to death while singing your national anthem. You called it poetic,” I spat. “Angus Ratch. Saltspire. His last words were ‘I love you, mom.’”

“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 said kill them! ”

The guards shifted.

But not toward us.

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

Veritas’s expression cracked like glass beneath a hammer. Her posture faltered, her eyes snapping wide, throat tightening around the panic that suddenly rushed in.

“No,” she breathed, stepping back, her voice shrill. “What are you doing? Stop! I am your Archon!”

One of the guards behind me moved. Slow and deliberate.

His hand rose to his helmet and unlatched it with a hiss.

He lifted it from his head and revealed a face beneath the armor.

Not cold or mechanical, but human. A young man with dark, sweat-matted hair, blood on his cheek, dirt in every line of his face.

His gaze flicked to Veritas. Then to me.

He looked just like us.

“For the will of the people,” he said, steady and clear.

A single breath escaped me, sharp and staggering. The air rushed in behind it, filled with more than oxygen. I met his eyes.

“We survive,” I replied softly.

Veritas stumbled backward, her polished facade fracturing with every step.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” she spat. “There are Praxis loyalists in every corridor, in every district, in every Collective. You cannot reach them all. You may have rallied a few lost souls, but you’ll never touch the system. We destroyed your precious little hard drive.”

Her desperation was a storm now, unraveling every part of her once-untouchable composure.

“Yes, you did,” said Zaffir, his voice raspy from pain.

Everyone turned. He was still on the floor, blood seeping through his shirt. Slowly, he pushed himself up, hands still wrapped around the camera he’d shielded with his body like it was the most sacred thing he’d ever held.

“You destroyed the drive,” he repeated. “But we didn’t need it.”

His fingers shifted on the camera.

And there it was.

The blinking red light.

The same one that had haunted me. That had captured our every breath, every tear, every moment of suffering during the Run. The one that made me feel like I was being hunted. Dehumanized. Watched.

But now, now it meant something else entirely.

It meant witnesses. It meant truth .

Zaffir stood, shaking but unshaken. His face was pale, lips split, but his voice was certain.

“All I have to do is load this footage,” he said, raising the camera ever so slightly. “And all of Nexum will see. See Praxis and you for exactly who you are and what you’ve done.”

A breath rippled through the room. Even the air seemed to pause, listening.

Then Zaffir took his first step toward the terminal.

Veritas lunged forward like a predator cornered, voice shrill with panic.

“ NO! I order you to stop!” She shoved past the last of her illusion of control, stumbling toward Zaffir. But the guard behind me moved faster, stepping cleanly into her path, blocking her with calm finality.

“You will not do this!” she shrieked, her voice cracking, hysteria breaking through her regal mask.

Zaffir didn’t flinch. He kept walking.

Her eyes darted around the room, desperately searching for a loyalist, an ally to take back the power slipping through her fingers. “One of you! Do something! Stop him!”

But no one moved.

Not for her.

Then her wild eyes found me, and I knew what she was going to do before she did. She charged, hands grasping the rifle slung across my chest.

I didn’t resist. I let her take it.

She yanked it free and spun on her heel, raising it with unsteady hands. The muzzle jumped from Zaffir to the guards and back again, her breath coming in short, furious bursts.

“Stop right now or I’ll shoot!” she barked. But her voice lacked the weight it once carried. It wasn’t power. It was fear.

Zaffir didn’t stop. Step by step, he crossed the floor toward the terminal. The guards around the room raised their rifles, ready to take their shot.

I couldn’t help the smile that tugged at my lips. A quiet, knowing thing.

“I said stop!” she shouted again, voice ragged, trembling. “I swear, I’ll?—”

She didn’t get to finish.

Zaffir reached the terminal. Slowly, he raised the camera and brought it toward the port. Her finger squeezed the trigger.

Click.

Nothing.

No shot. No bullet. Just silence.

Because after all, Ezra was right. An empty rifle could buy us some time.

I turned to him where he sat propped up nearby, and he met my gaze with that familiar, cocky smirk.

The screens in the room flickered, then glowed to life. One by one, monitors and walls lit up, casting a cold white light across the chamber. And then the image appeared.

Veritas. A vicious wild smirk as she spoke.

“People like you,” her voice echoed, smooth and deliberate, “believe the system is broken. That it just needs to be fixed. But you're wrong. It isn't broken…”

Her whisper was barely audible in the room, but the playback had captured it perfectly. A secret no longer.

“...It's working exactly the way it was designed.”

“No…” she whispered again, her gaze locking on the screen as if sheer will could undo what had already begun. The blood drained from her face. Her arms dropped, rifle hanging useless in her hands.

“Turn it off!” she screamed, whirling toward the guards. They didn’t budge.

She spun in place, unraveling. “ The Reclamation Run was never about distributing resources, ” her recorded voice played again, dripping like poisoned honey. “It’s about control. About ensuring the Collectives stay just weak enough to never rise.”

“If you don’t stop that feed right now, I swear, I will have you all executed!” she snapped, but her voice held no power anymore, just desperation.

The guards closed in. Not threatening. Just final.

Her own words continued playing. The carefully curated lies of the regime, shattered by the truth she’d hidden for decades. Then mine. The names. The people who’d been used as pawns of Praxis. They echoed through the room, drowning out her outraged and wild cries.

Zaffir stepped back from the terminal, limping toward me. He reached out, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and pressing a kiss to my temple.

“You did it,” I whispered, overcome.

“No, Brexlyn,” he murmured back. “ You did.”

Ezra reached us next. He folded us both into his arms, pressing a kiss to my lips, then to Zaffir’s forehead. A breath of warmth in the coldest room we’d ever stood in.

Behind us, Veritas thrashed in vain.

“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” she screamed as the guards seized her arms. Her movements were frantic, animalistic, her grandeur crumbling.

I didn’t look back. I didn’t need to. She was no longer worth the effort.

A hand brushed the small of my back. I turned, and there was Briar. Her eyes burned with light and something gentler, deeper. She kissed me like she’d been waiting her whole life for it, like it was the last kiss either of us might ever get.

Then Thorne was there, folding me into his arms. His hands slid up my spine, grounding me. Anchoring me. Home.

And then…a single gunshot.

Sharp and final.

Silence swept through the room like wind through ash.

The Archon was dead.

And Praxis?

Praxis had finally fallen.