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“You are brought here today before the People’s Tribunal so we es of: high treason, assassination of Dancer O’Faran and loyal senators of the people, election fraud, bribery, conspiracy to install despotism, embezzlement, and fornication with a known collaborator of the Core Golds, Daxo au Telemanus How do you plead?”

I stare at the it difficult to frown They hold themselves with such ludicrous self-iles No, not canaries Canaries can s They’re dodo birds

“Silence will not save you fro as an aide walks up and pours hilass The robotic cao dead and drop to the floor, hacked There’s a noise in the back of the court

So a scream

Publius shouts for the Wardens to investigate Half of the two dozenfor backup as if their coht at Publius as the weapons fire outside and grow silent

“Publius, what’s happening?” a Red senator asks

“It’s Sevro!” one of them cries

But Publius knows He knows all too well, becauseWardens take defensive positions around the entrance and the senators I look up at the ceiling as three transparent shapes drop from it

They land beside the Wardens guarding Publius and tear off their heads

Blood fountains onto the ghostCloaks They deactivate to reveal three tall Go

lds in black armor embedded with the bones of complete skeletons

I know their blood-spattered faces

Each one was fro our year at the Institute They shared the hunting grounds with me as children and human flesh with my brother Each was there at Darrow’s Triumph, and survived ten years in isolation They are pale and h as the Vox senators scream The Wardens at the door are already dead I tilt h to see the rest of the psychopaths enter

Seventeen rees that my brother collected for his own personal quest to depose Octavia and reach the highest office in the worlds Not a one of them is out of their thirties, and it seems a hilarious realization to think that perhaps their tia

Lilath, Queen of the Syndicate, walks at the head of the pack