She had to stop this, had to save someone—anyone.

Another blow caught across her face that sent her sprawling. She tasted blood, felt the crunch of her nose breaking, but the pain was nothing compared to the carnage and music unfolding around her.

A guard dragged her by the arm, his grip bruising as the toe of his boot found her stomach. Shadera recoiled into herself, retching acid as he threw her over his shoulder and turned toward the exit. Her nails broke and bled as she dug into his back, fists pounding against his armor.

“Kill me! Please. Kill me instead,” she screamed again and again as the prison door slammed shut at the guard’s back.

A sob lodged itself in her chest as she watched the massacre continue through the small square window of the prison entrance. The guard hauled her down the corridor, the song and window growing smaller as tears spilled over her bloodied cheeks.

She would be the only survivor, she knew that.

Knew that this act of savagery would be buried, would be hidden from this city.

She would die before she let that happen.

She barely registered the doors they passed, the turns they took, the elevator they’d stepped into—her focus narrowed to the single, searing point of her hatred for the man who held her.

For the system that bred him.

For the world that allowed such brutality to flourish.

The elevator crawled to a halt and the guard shoved Shadera from his shoulder as the doors slid open. She stumbled, her boots smearing blood across the polished marble floors as he dragged her toward two doors at the end of the hallway.

“You can’t silence us all,” Shadera spat, the words tasting of blood as the guard stopped in front of closed doors. “You can’t kill everyone outside of the Heart and expect no one to rise up against it.”

The guard stared at her for a long moment, saying nothing, then raised his fist and knocked on the door. The answering voice that sounded from the other side sent dread coiling down her spine.

“Enter,” Maximus Serel said as the doors swept open.

Chapter tenYou Do Not Have A Choice

The world existed in layers of white and gray, each stacked atop the other until the thrum of pain lost all meaning.

When Greyson woke, it was to the hard pulse of his own heart echoing against sterile tile, and the sharp medicinal stench of antiseptic burning the inside of his nose. No concerned mother gripping his hand too tight as she prayed he would live, no worried father waiting at his bedside. Just him, alone in a room, as hospital machinery beeped in a lazy rhythm. His eyes fluttered open and closed, the room alternately swelling and shrinking around him with every breath.

He drifted.

He was aware, at times, of the thin blue line of an IV stitched into his arm, of crisp sheets tight over his body, of the industrial drone of lights overhead. Sometimes a nurse appeared at the edge of his vision—a blur of pale hands, a voice so gentle it made his skin crawl. Once, he thought it was his sister, but the woman’s eyes were too kind.

It had been three days since the bullet. Or maybe thirty. The days bled together, measured only by the pain that ebbed and surged beneath his rib cage, by the cadence of footsteps in the corridor, by the clock that never seemed to move.

He floated through dreams of blood and ceremony and Shadera’s face. She stared at him, her eyes two chips of verdant glass, reflecting nothing back but contempt. Then she became his father, and then his brother, and then a darkness that consumed the rest. He would wake, gasping, only to find the world less real than the dream.

He did not speak to the nurses, or the doctors, nor to the aides who came to check his vitals and reset the monitors. When they asked for his pain level, he lied and said it was nothing. When they checked the wound, he stared through them, his mind crawling back to the altar, to the moment of unmasking.

He’d never seen anything like her, never witnessed such brutality and hunger for violence in any woman. She’d fought better than any of the Veyra he’d trained with, and that only made his hate for her penetrate deeper into his bones.

She was a Daggermouth, a weapon, and she needed to be put down. He would be the one to do it, as the Executioner, and the thought brought him some semblance of satisfaction. It would be a full-circle moment. A bullet for a bullet. A Daggermouth life snuffed out. Payment in blood for what they had done to Brooker.

An execution that actually brought justice.

Greyson let out a long sigh, tearing his eyes away from the ceiling as he pressed his fingers to his neck to feel the steady, relentless beating of his own pulse. As much as he’d wanted her bullet to be the death of him, he wanted to be the death of her more.

A drone entered the room and his eyes twitched toward it, narrowing as it hovered above him before scanning his body. It beeped three times with a green flashing light as a nurse entered the room. She didn’t look up from the tablet in her hand as she tapped it against the underbelly of the drone to download his vitals. A smile reflected in eyes behind her mask as she set the tablet on the small table next to Greyson and pulled back his sheet.

She worked with deft, clinical hands, never wincing at the angry red of the wound or the bruises that marbled his abdomen. She made quiet noises of approval as she checked the stitches, the healing, the lack of infection.

“You’re lucky,” she said, voice pitched low as she pressed a fresh pad to the wound. “It missed everything important.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Greyson answered, his voice dull beneath his mask as he watched a small amount of fresh blood bloom through the gauze. He liked the color, the way it soaked and spread and reminded him of his own fragility.

The nurse’s eyes darted up to meet his, her professional facade faltering for just a moment to reveal something akin to understanding swimming in their depths.

“I’ll need to change your dressing again in a few hours, but you’re healing remarkably well. The doctor says you’ll be able to leave tomorrow morning.”

Greyson turned his gaze back to the ceiling. “When can I resume my duties?”

“The doctor recommends at least two weeks of rest before—”

“I didn’t ask what the doctor recommends,” he cut in, his voice sharper than intended. He forced it softer and let out a shallow breath. “When can I resume my duties physically?”

The nurse swallowed, looking away from him as she pulled the sheet back over his abdomen. “Physically, you could return in a few days, but it’s not advisable.”

Greyson nodded once. He knew these were the questions his father would ask. The longer he stayed down, the weaker the Serels would look and questions would arise. He would happily take the advised time, would let his body heal, but the President would never allow it.

The nurse hesitated for a second by the side of his bed, watching as his mind churned. “I . . . I could write in your chart that there is still internal bleeding. That you need longer to recover.”

Greyson’s eyes snapped to hers and for one suspended moment, they stared at each other. She’d offered to lie to the Heart for him, had seen something in his features that reflected the turmoil swirling inside his head. That sentence alone could get her killed.

“No, I would never put you in that position,” he finally said, shaking his head.

The nurse picked up her tablet, dipping her head in response before taking a quick glance over her shoulder then looking back at Greyson. “Doctor Knowles says you’re important, outside of your name. He said that the cause needs you. To do whatever we can to keep you alive.”

A knot formed in Greyson’s throat at her words, his pulse quickening. He opened his mouth to respond, but the words were silenced before they could break into the open as Captain Mikel strode into the room. The nurse stepped back, pressing herself against the far wall, her eyes frantically fluttering between them as he approached the bed.