Page 49 of Shattered Jewel

“You sure?”

I stare at Kaspian, surprised he even cares. “Yes.”

Wilder settles an arm over my shoulders and pulls me close. At least if I explode, he’ll cover me to lessen the impact.

Kaspian taps the screen, and Maverick comes to life.

“Sis, Ellie, I’m-I’m so damn sorry if you’re seeing this. No, not if. When. When you find this.” Maverick pauses, squeezing his eyes shut. The camera tilts as his hold on his phone loosens while he records. But with a shaky sigh, he centers the camera on his face again and continues. “I’m holding on to the hope that you’ll find everything I’ve hidden while also praying that you won’t need to. This isn’t what I ever wanted for you, but … but if …” His words catch as if something inside his body strangles his voice.

He visibly pushes past the lump in his throat, forcing the words out with a doggedness that belies the tremor in his voice. “If you’re watching this video, it means I’m dead, and it wasn’t accidental or from natural causes. Playing this video means I was murdered, and you’re stopping at nothing to find my killer.”

A tremor runs through me, a brief but undeniable quivering that I can't quite suppress at those damning words. They’re true. His death has been a fact for six years, but god, it still hurts.

“You’re sixteen, just a kid, but I see it in you. There’s a force brewing in your soul, one that I doubt was extinguished after I died,” he says, a hint of pride seeping through the despair in his voice.

A tear escapes, tracing a warm path down my cheek before falling to the filthy ground.

“I can’t protect you anymore,” he admits, another painful truth laid bare. “But I trust you can find your way out of this, because I’ve done everything I can to help you bring the Sovereigns down.”

Wilder’s arm turns to iron around my shoulders. Kaspian, who hasn’t blinked since Maverick started talking, gives a single eye twitch of acknowledgment to Maverick’s confession that he was trying to do exactly what we are. Axe lifts his chin, his attention tunneling into the screen.

“What I’m about to tell you goes against everything you think you know about Titan Falls, about its so-called elite Sovereigns who rule every aspect of this town and the powerful people outside of it.” Maverick pauses, lost in thought.

He leans in closer to the camera. “I found something, Ellie. Proof of a secret that could bring their whole empire crumbling down. That’s why they want me dead.” His voice drops to an urgent whisper. “There’s something called the ruby Heart. If you’ve gotten this far, I hope you know about it.”

I nod, though there’s no way he can see me.

“I found it. There are so many people looking for it, bad men, bloodthirsty ones, killers. But I found it before them, and I broke it. The other half, the one that will help you reveal everything, I’ve hidden it where they’ll never find it. It’s the only leverage I have over them.”

Maverick glances over his shoulder, his jaw working nervously before he turns back to the camera. “Inside this drive are documents—photos—of what Sarah Anderton compiled centuries ago. Records, transactions, communications. I took photos of everything I discovered in the Grand Library underneath Thornhaven Estate. Hard evidence of the Sovereigns’ true origins and the means by which they seized control.”

Kaspian’s stare lasers into the tablet’s screen as if the threat of his eyes alone could force Maverick’s ghost to provide more details.

As if predicting such intimidation, Maverick continues, “I won’t risk going into detail in this video in case it falls into the wrong hands, but I will tell you one thing. The place where you found this drive is where Sarah Anderton was imprisoned, tortured, and killed.”

I suck in a breath. My stare immediately locks on to the gouges in the slab, the vertical marks Wilder noticed.

Nails. Desperate, clawing fingers belonging to a woman.

“Sarah’s death wasn’t through official or lawful means,” Maverick says, redirecting my grief. “Not after her trial. The Sovereigns kidnapped her and held her here for weeks?—”

A crash sounds behind him. Maverick’s head twists toward the noise, then swings back into focus, and he’s talking faster and with more panic.

“Someone’s coming. Find the second half, unlock the Heart, and expose their lies. Change history, Ellie. You have what it takes. You’re the only one I trust to finish what I started … and please, please?—”

Another sound clangs, then a shout. “Mavvy-boy, you in here?”

“—don’t trust anyone other than family, Ellie,” Maverick says in a rush, the camera shaking now. “You hear me? Family only. No matter how many years separate them from you. Members of the Cimmerian Court will try to manipulate you and sway you to their side, but these are not good people. Everyone’s a liar. We’re bred to kill, to work for the Sovereigns, and destroy anyone in their way?—”

“Mavs! Where you at?” a disembodied voice yells somewhere behind him.

“I love you,” Maverick chokes out. “I love you so much, Ellie. And I hate that you’ll never see me again. There are no more USB drives. Just the three. Be safe. If there’s a way to still be here after death, I will do everything that I can to stay with you.”

The screen goes black as Maverick cuts the video.

I close my eyes against the anguish of his confirmation. The deep cut of his vow. Maverick was part of a brutal secret society and never breathed a word of it.

My shoulders slump as the final image of Maverick’s drained face is seared into my mind.

---