The truth should have changed everything. It didn’t.

Sixteen-year-old Shayan “Shy” Soraya helped expose the Starlight Syndicate’s plot to kill him. But the people responsible still control the city-state, and Shy has become too visible to be quietly retired. So they give him a new role.

As the face of a campaign promoting unity between the enclaves and slums, Shy is expected to smile for the cameras and assure everyone that the system can change. He knows he is being used. Yet the publicity tour offers him a chance to connect with the neurodivergent community and explore the endi identity Hollywood kept hidden from him. It also keeps him close to Agustín Palazuelos, whose friendship is becoming harder to define.

Agustín has hacked his way into the Academy of Celebrity Impersonation, where the Syndicate presents him as proof that slumborn kids can succeed. He sees the arrangement differently. Every opportunity comes with conditions, and the people celebrating his success have no interest in hearing what life in the slums actually costs.

Then Wisp Badawi transfers to the Academy. To everyone else, she is just another S-lister. In reality, she has been assigned to watch Shy and determine whether he helped leak the Syndicate’s files. It should be a simple job. The closer she gets to him, however, the less certain she becomes about who she can trust.

As unrest spreads across the city-state, Shy begins to suspect the Syndicate’s reconciliation campaign serves a larger purpose. If he refuses to play along, he could lose everything. If he keeps performing, he may help the Syndicate rewrite the truth he risked his life to expose.

A neuropunk thriller about finding community in a world built to keep people divided.

Book Two of the Endi Cycle.

Book One can be accessed here: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/898803