Jameson.
Maximus flicked to the next angle. Shadera saw Jameson’s face, tired but smiling as he ducked into a makeshift clinic and crouched down beside a group of rebel children. She went cold, her blood freezing as she watched him.
“You see,” Maximus said, voice gentle now, almost fatherly. “We know where your loved ones are. We know who you care for. And if you fail to comply, the first bomb will fall on the clinic whereyour friendaids the rebellion. Then the next, and the next, until there is nothing left but smoldering dirt. It will take only a word from me.”
He stood, looming over them both.
“Do you understand?”
Shadera gripped the armrests so hard her nails tore open the fabric. Every muscle in her body screamed to lunge, to rip his golden face off, todie if it meant taking him with her. But Jameson’s face, and the children beside him, anchored her to the chair.
Greyson’s hand moved to his wound. He sat still, but the tension in him was visible, a slow build toward something inevitable.
“I understand,” Shadera said, the words acid in her mouth.
An exasperated breath burst from Greyson’s lips at her answer, his eyes darting back to Maximus and narrowing. “And what of me, Father? Will you bomb your own precious Heart if I don’t obey? Will you execute your last living heir on live stream to prove a point?”
“No,” Maximus spat down at his son, his fingers splaying across the desk as he leaned on his palms.
The screen flickered to a different view at his back. Two figures stood in the frame, one in a mask Shadera recognized to be that of his daughter, Lira Serel. The other mask, adorned with gold and copper patterns she didn’t recognize.
Greyson shot to his feet, a snarl rolling from behind his mask as he leaned over the desk toward his father. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Just as I told Shadera, I know where to strike, know what buttons to push that will make you beg for this Vow if I must,” Maximus clipped back, no emotion in his voice. “I love Lira, as I love all my children. But I have no use for her or Callum. You do not have a choice, Greyson. You will obey in the end, as you always have.”
The silence that followed was inhuman, as if a veil had been cast over the world to mute all sounds. Shadera watched as Greyson’s chest rose and fell at a rapid pace, his fists curling around the lip of the desk as if he were anchoring himself to it so he wouldn’t strike.
Once again, Maximus broke the silence. “Now,my son, do you understand?”
Greyson’s jaw worked, the veins bulging along the ridges of his neck. He didn’t speak, didn’t move outside the small dip of hischin.
“Excellent,” Maximus said, a renewed vigor in his voice as he clapped his hands together. “Please make Shadera feel at home. I will expect you both at our family dinner in a couple days.” He tapped a command into his desk as he said the words and the doors to his office hissed open, four Veyra guards standing in wait on the other side.
Shadera slowly rose from her chair, her mind already plotting, already scheming ways to finally end the Serel bloodline once and for all. She hadn’t seen when the Veyra officer moved to her side and pushed her forward. She jerked her arm away from him, finally turning toward the door and marched toward her next prison cell—Greyson Serel’s home.
From behind, she felt Maximus’s eyes on her, watching every step. The last king in a city built on bones.
Chapter eleven
Something Is Wrong
Jamesonslippedouttheback door of the clinic, the smell of sickness and blood clinging to his clothes like death’s perfume. The sun hung low over the Boundary, casting long shadows across cracked concrete and rusted metal as storm clouds began to fill the evening sky.
For days, he’d thrown himself into helping the wounded, distributing the medicine smuggled in on Veyra patrol vehicles—anything to keep his mind from dwelling on Shadera’s silence. But the hollowness in his chest only grew with each passing hour.
She should’ve been back by now.
In another life, Jameson thought he might have been a doctor, if circumstances had provided the means for him to follow that dream. But it hadn’t. He was born to the Boundary, and ‘Boundary rats’ were not worthy of an education. So, instead, he read as much as he could, learned everything old textbooks would teach him, and shadowed the clinic’s physicians.
He pulled his hood over his head to barricade himself against the chill wind that swept through the narrow alley, carrying the stench of industrial waste and sickness. The children inside the clinic were getting worse. Though, two that he’d thought would’ve died by now seemed to be making small improvements—but the victory felt hollow without Shade’s mocking voice asking if he’d gone soft.
The first prickle of unease crawled up his spine when he reached the end of the alley. A faint mechanical hum, barely audible over the thrum of the crowds beginning to spill onto the streets for the nightly debauchery. He glanced up, casual, as if checking the weather, and squinted his eyes into the last bit of sun.
A Veyra drone hovered at the intersection, its black carapace gleaming in the dying light. Jameson kept walking, maintaining his pace. Drones weren’t uncommon in the Boundary—they monitored the main thoroughfares, occasionally swept problem areas after riots—but they rarely made it this deep into the maze of forgotten streets and collapsed infrastructure without being shot down.
He turned left at the next corner, quickening his stride. The hum followed. Another glance over his shoulder confirmed it—the drone had adjusted its course, maintaining the same distance behind him.
This wasn’t a routine patrol.
