His head lifted slowly, the golden mask turning toward her, gaze finding her face across the platform.
In that moment, with her father’s eyes locked on hers, Lira felt a lifetime of fear fall away. Fear of his disapproval. Fear of his anger. Fear of his punishment. All of it dissolving like mist under the rising sun.
She’d spent her life as his perfect daughter. His diplomat. His puppet. Moving when he pulled the strings, speaking the words he put in her mouth. She’d smiled through her mask as he built his empire on the broken bodies of the rings.
No more.
She held his gaze, refusing to look away, refusing to bend.
For the first time in her life, she faced her father not as his daughter, but as his enemy.
The silence in the plaza stretched, taut as a wire about to snap. The media drones hovered, capturing every moment of this unprecedented breach of Heart law.
Slowly, Lira’s hand raised, finding the zipper on the front of her dress, and pulled it down. The sound of it sliding over teeth was the loudest thing she ever heard. She shrugged out of it, letting it pool at her feet, letting it reveal the white slip underneath.
White.
The mark of purity required for the Vow. The purity that would be stripped from every woman who ever took it just moments later.
Lira didn’t have to wait for a Vow ceremony for her father to rip everything from her. She’d only had to wait fourteen years for that.
She swallowed hard, never taking her eyes from her father’s as she reached up and removed her mask. It slipped from her fingers, falling to the platform with a ringing sound that was beautiful in its pitch.
Then, slowly, she heard it, the gasps that began to flow from the crowd.
Gasps turned to murmurs, and murmurs swelled into a growing wave of sound as women throughout the plaza began to move. One by one at first, then in clusters.
They shed their dresses. Expensive gowns fell to the ground, revealing white slips beneath. Their hands reached up, fingers finding the edges of their masks, sealing their fates as they showed their faces.
Lira’s heart hammered against her ribs as she watched her own rebellion unfold. She’d planted the seeds days ago, whispered truths in the right ears, passed messages through networks of women who had suffered in silence for generations. But seeing it now—this mass defiance—stole her breath.
Soon the plaza was filled with the musical clatter of metal hitting stone as women revealed their faces to the world. Some were scarred—burns, cuts, deliberate disfigurements hidden for yearsbehind clothing, behind masks. Others bore bruises, fresh evidence of what happened behind closed doors in the Heart’s glimmering towers.
Her father’s body went rigid as he turned to see the severity of her actions. She could feel his rage radiating like heat, the golden mask no longer able to hide the monster beneath.
“What have you done?” he hissed, not caring who could hear it.
Lira lifted her chin, rolling her shoulders back as she took two steps forward and looked directly into the eye of the media drone.
“We are the Heart. We are its power. And we are taking it back.”
Her words rippled through the crowd. Women who’d spent their lives as decorations, as possessions, as silent witnesses to atrocity, lifted their faces to the sky. Their expressions ranged from terror to exhilaration, but in each face, Lira saw the same thing.
Freedom.
Chapter thirty-nine
This Is What Hope Does
Callum’sworldcollapsedinfront of his eyes.
Lira had just signed her own execution order.
Maximus would kill her for this. Not quickly, not cleanly. He would make an example out of her, his own daughter.
There was no hesitation as Callum started running. He was out of his office and down the stairs before he could even think about the others. All that mattered was Lira.
He had to get to Lira.
