When it passed, Maven dropped to his knees, gasping. His skin was the color of chalk, his eyes dull and sunken.
Alina walked to where he knelt, looking down at him as she would a broken tool. “You can’t control it,” she said, softly. “You never could.”
For a long, stunned moment, no one moved. Maven slumped on the floor, eyes wide and hollow, his breath coming in panicked gasps. Around him, the battered survivors of the Caves cautiously emerged from their cover—watchful, wary, as if at any moment he might spring back to life and finish what he had started. Seraphina glared at Alina, taut as a bowstring, ready to strike. Maven only stared at Alina, unable to process the impossible thing she had just done. His eyes darted around the room, only to snatch back toAlina again. The world had shifted, and he was not standing on solid ground.
Alina watched him, steady and impassive. She felt the aftermath of the power she had wielded—a ringing in her bones, the echo of a thousand voices in her skull—but she held herself upright, radiating calm. Kael was still held by the brute, though his grip was slipping. Both were watching the scene unfolding, mesmerized.
Finn stirred on the floor, groaning, and Marcus knelt beside him, gently shaking him awake. The rest of Maven’s loyalists had surrendered—some on their knees, some simply sitting with their backs to the wall, waiting for whatever justice would come.
Alina drew in a slow breath and let her gaze travel the length of the mess hall. “It’s over,” she said, her voice as gentle as falling snow.
But Maven had not given up yet, unable to yield, unable to back down. He staggered to his feet, using a nearby table as a crutch, and glared at Alina through a haze of hatred and disbelief.
“You think this is done?” Maven snarled. “You think you’ve won?”
She regarded him with pity, not anger. “You lost the moment you believed yourself the only one fit to lead.”
He bared his teeth. “You betrayed everything. The cause. Our people. You’re a traitor—”
“Am I?” she said quietly. “Or is it you who abandoned them, Maven? Who poisoned your own with lies and broken promises?”
He sneered, but it was a dead thing, without the old sharpness. “They’ll follow me. They always have.”
“Then let’s ask them,” she replied.
She turned to the room. Every rebel, every survivor, every battered fighter looked back at her, waiting. Alina reached intoher jacket and drew out the pouch she’d taken from the courier, shaking loose the roll of messages onto the table.
“These,” she announced, “are Maven’s orders. His plans to overthrow not just Kael, but the whole structure of the rebellion. His plans to purge anyone who disagreed, to install himself as king of the ruins.” She flicked through the pages, letting the damning words spill out: Gather the fanatics. Exile the doubters. Accept help from the men who murdered your own family if it means you get the throne.
She read from the last note, voice clear and steady. “‘Once Kael is neutralized, our true allies will reveal themselves. All debts will be paid.’” She let the silence do its work.
The room grew very, very still. Alina found Seraphina’s gaze. The fighter’s face crumbled, disbelief stark on her features. Alina turned her attention back to Maven.
“All those times when the Crown knew where we would be; the position markers before the raid; all those suspicious coincidences you tried to pin on me—it was you. It was all you.”
Maven was shaking now, unable to contain the rage. “You don’t understand—”
Alina looked up, meeting his eyes. “No, Maven. I do. You speak of loyalty, but you plot with those who would destroy us all. You’d burn the world to rule its ashes.”
There was a long silence, then a low, muttered chorus broke out as the room digested her words. Marcus stood up, his face like carved granite. Finn, barely conscious, managed a thumbs-up and a bloody smile.
Maven’s face twisted into something almost animal. “You’ll regret this,” he spat. “You’re just a child—”
“Maybe,” she said, “but I have a future. You onlyhave the past.”
He screamed then, a wordless howl of hate and humiliation. For a moment, it seemed as if he might explode—unleash his Gift one last, desperate time, consequences be damned.
He did.
A wall of force erupted from him, white-hot and wild, shattering the nearest chair and sending the table skittering across the stone. The blast arced straight for Alina and Kael.
She met it, open-handed. She felt the power behind Maven’s attack—a life’s worth of spite and suffering, the fuel of a thousand nights spent plotting against a world that would never love him—and she answered it, not with violence, but with precision.
She shaped the blast, twisting it aside like a matador with a bull. The energy burned the air and split the stone, but none of it touched her, or Kael, or the people behind. It struck the far wall and rebounded, collapsing part of the ceiling in a cloud of dust.
Alina stepped forward, Maven’s attack still swirling around her like a cloak. She let the Gift pulse in her body, not as a weapon, but as a shield, a light so bright it made the torches look pale and sickly.
“Stop,” she commanded, her voice a low drum that carried through the bedlam. “It’s over, Maven.”
