Page 87 of Storm of Stars
The pit in my stomach dropped straight through the floor.
Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes, hot and angry and helpless.
I felt the strength drain from my limbs. The hope. The fight. It all bled out of me like Zaffir’s blood on the floor.
We were surrounded. Beaten. Outmaneuvered.
And Evanora Veritas had just reminded us that the monster we were fighting had multiple heads. And we’d miscounted.
“Why?” I asked. My voice cracked with exhaustion and fury, the weight of everything we’d lost pressing down on my chest. Zaffir bleeding on the ground. Ezra pressed to the floor. Briar and Thorne at gunpoint.
Veritas tilted her head at me like I was a puzzle she was bored of solving.
“‘Why,’what, dear?” she asked lazily, lowering herself into a chair. She reclined, calm and unshaken like all of this was a performance and she already knew how the final act ended.
I took a shaky breath and stepped forward despite the guard’s hand still tight on my arms.
“Why don’t you listen?” I demanded. “When your people are screaming that they’re hurting? When they’re telling you they’re starving, that they’re dying, that they’re scared. You sit there in your golden palace while everything burns. Why?”
Her lips twitched, almost like a smile. But her eyes were cold. She didn’t blink.
“You’re in a position of power,” I continued, voice rising. “You could change it. You could end the Reclamation Run. You could release the stockpiles. Feed the families. House the kids sleeping in alleyways. People trusted you. Believed in you. You were supposed to protect them.”
She watched me silently, her fingers drumming against the armrest.
“You could make things better for everyone. So why don’t you?”
The silence stretched.
Then she smiled. Slowly. Venomously.
“Oh, Brexlyn,” she said, her voice syrupy sweet, “because fear is control.”
I stared at her, not understanding. She leaned forward, her voice dropping into something almost intimate.
“If people are afraid, they obey. If they’re desperate, they comply. Hunger makes them quiet. Sickness keeps them too weak to riot. A frightened citizen will do anything to survive…including turn on their neighbor.”
She stood, now, moving toward me like a viper poised to attack. She stopped just inches from me. Her perfume was cloying and thick, sickly sweet.
“If my people were safe, if they were happy and full and free… then they wouldn’t need me. Not really. And they certainly wouldn’t tolerate a system like mine.” Her smile sharpened. “So I make sure they’re never quite comfortable enough to dream.”
I felt the air leave my lungs.
“People like you,” she said, “you believe in the lie that the system is broken. That it just needs to be fixed. But you’re wrong. It isn’t broken.” Her voice was a whisper now, just for me. “It’s working exactly the way it was designed.”
She stepped back, sweeping her arms wide like a game show host presenting her prize.
“The Reclamation Run was never about distributing resources,” Veritas said, her voice like honey laced with poison. “It’s about ensuring the Collectives stay just weak enough to never rise.” Her eyes gleamed with something unholy, selfish righteousness, the kind of moral certainty that only comes from someone who’s convinced themselves they’re the savior in a story they wrote. She took a step forward, palm rising to cup my cheek like a mother comforting a child. I flinched at the contact. Her skin was cold, too soft.
“I offered you a deal once,” she said softly, as if we were the only two people in the room. “And you threw it away. Normally, I wouldn’t repeat myself. But you, Brexlyn… you are something rare.”
I twisted away from her touch, and her hand fell.
“So,” she said, voice lowering to a whisper so intimate I could feel it coil through my ears like a snake, “Out of the goodness of my heart, I have another offer.”
She smiled. I didn’t.
“Go on camera. Address the Collectives. Tell them the rebellion was a mistake. Tell them Praxis was right all along. Call off the Runaways. Tell them you were misled, manipulated…deluded, even. Say it however you like… just say it. And I’ll let you live.”
