OPERATION WINTERSPINE (Strings Between Us Book 2)

CHAPTER TWENTY: OF FILES UNSEALED, HOMES REDRAWN, AND A NIGHT

Xythe nodded once. "It was supposed to be a data wipe. I mapped the entry points. Ran mirror servers. No civilian exposure."

Dad looked at him-impressed, maybe. Or maybe regretful.

"But what you didn't know, Xythe, was that the node wasn't just a front."

He paused.

"That data farm was one of Halcyon's core servers. It held over a decade's worth of encrypted material. Training archives. Emotional rewiring blueprints. Behavioral analysis records."

My stomach dropped.

Dad went on, voice low.

"You didn't just break through firewalls. You collapsed them. Twelve years of covert operations gone in one sweep. Hundreds of agent profiles erased. Embedded operatives in educational systems-wiped. Their sleeper maps? Gone. Their backup chains? Cut."

He looked around the room.

"That wasn't just a breach. It triggered a blackout protocol inside Halcyon's inner web. You forced them to go dark for months."

"Alone?" Alexie whispered, like the word hurt her.

Tofer whistled. "You did that solo? You didn't asked help from us?"

Keryn was silent-but wide-eyed. Like she was watching someone she thought she knew turn into something else.

Xythe's gaze didn't move from Dad. "Then they weren't worth keeping."

"Yes," Dad agreed. "But they might come after you too,."

And for the first time since we walked into that office... Xythe looked shaken. Not because he was scared. Because he had accidentally made himself a ghost in someone else's war.

He was fifteen.

I was fifteen.

And we were still together.

I remember those nights he'd vanish for hours, saying he was just studying at the library or helping his mentor crack some code from an old encryption vault. I remember the way his eyes flickered with something heavier when I'd ask if he was okay, and he'd just smile that tired smile and say, "Almost."

But he never told me about this. Not even his pulse pattern leaked that to me. Not when he broke up with me.

He burned down a monster in the dark and didn't even realize it had claws buried in children like me. In people like us. He wiped out twelve years of evil—and all I ever saw was a boy who stopped holding my hand without saying why.

And now, the memory presses in—his voice from Grand Illumina Night, quiet but breaking: "I chose the Court. I chose the war. I chose to protect you from a distance... because if I stayed, I would've chosen you over everything."

Was that it? Was this one of the reasons? Not just because he thought I was fragile. Not just because he feared I'd break. But because he already had-broken something so large, so buried in shadow, it might've destroyed him if he told anyone... especially me.

And maybe...

Maybe part of him left because he knew if I asked him to stop, he would've said yes. And he couldn't afford to say yes to me.