Virginia, imprisoned under Octavia’s Pandemonium Chair, is subjected to neurological assaults designed to bypass her conditioning and extract secrets about allies and plans. Anticipating such attacks, she seeded false memories with private totems and deploys built-in countermeasures that kill one psychotech and drive another to suicide. In the void between sessions, she fixates on Lilath as the true architect behind Publius’s coup and fears for Darrow, Sevro, and her child.

She is brought—paralyzed below her sixth vertebra and stripped of speech by Broca’s-area interference—into an empty Moonhall court for a spectacle. Her dopamine and oxytocin are manipulated, leaving her euphoric when she should be enraged. She deduces the plan: a public accusation to justify her execution and consolidate Vox rule, even as wider war rages.

A hologram projects a funeral-execution procession outside the Moonhall. Vox Wardens crush prisoners beneath the Obelisk of Ares; Theodora dies with composure, then Servilla au Arcos follows as crowds dip banners in their blood. Virginia mourns Theodora’s hidden life and notes the ritualized terror shaping public sentiment.

Afterward, ArchImperator Zan and Publius argue over missed operations, helium stocks, Mars, and the incoming Telemanus–Augustus armada. Publius then addresses Virginia directly, justifying “virtue and terror,” claiming her child would have been returned after her abdication, vowing to erase the Syndicate and hunt Quicksilver, and to build a classless order. He declares she will be found guilty today and die tomorrow, while Virginia recognizes him as Lilath’s puppet and gauges the stakes.