CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: OF SHADOWS, GHOST SCALPEL PROMISES, AND THE HEART HE COULDN'T FORGET
Xythe's POV
Location: Dela Vega Medical Center - Private Recovery Room
Time: 11 hours after the Chandelier Incident
The IV ticks like a metronome.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Outside, someone wheels a tray down the corridor—rubber grating against tile, a sound too ordinary to belong to a room like this. Faint voices bleed in and out. Lives continuing. As if nothing snapped. As if nothing bled.
But in here? It's too quiet. The kind of quiet that presses into your chest like a loaded question. Like it's waiting for you to crack.
They offered me morphine. I refused. Pain sharpens things. Keeps the world in focus. And right now, I need clarity.
Because I've lied to myself enough. About what I wanted. About who I was. About who she needed me to be.
The bandages on my shoulder are tight—clean work, practiced hands. Someone out there recognized me, I'm sure. Not just the bleeding body they pulled off a chandelier's shadow.
But him.
The Court's Tactician.
The mind behind the math.
The shadow trailing the Soriano heir.
The boy who was once the gravity around a girl they all called Princess.
The girl who looked me in the eye, saw me break—and didn't reach for me this time. Maybe she doesn't have to. Maybe she shouldn't.
Because the truth is, she let go clean. And I'm the one still standing in the wreckage, holding pieces of something that doesn't belong to me anymore.
I sit alone now. The others—Lyle, Seb, Saichel, Tofer—are still out in the field. Tracking signatures. Cross-referencing the chandelier's detachment, the tampered circuitry, the irregularities in the guest list. Trying to figure out if the hit was meant for Khaizer... or me.
My money's on both.
Take out the Dela Vega heir—the Halycon Pact's Echo-9 and the Court's Tactician in one clean move? That's not coincidence. That's precision.
But only one of us was worth dragging out from the rubble. Only one of us had arms around them before the dust settled.
And it wasn't me.
That's the thing about being the mind behind the mission. You're only useful until you're not. Replaceable. Calculated. Expendable.
And somewhere beneath the logic— beneath the numbers I've trained myself to trust more than people— that still hurts.
Because I don't bleed for stats. I bled for her.
The curtain rustles. Two figures step in.
Dr. Caelum Dominic Dela Vega. Dr. Amara Lucille Villarico-Dela Vega.
Former identities: Vince Adrian Villaflor. Hyacinth Rivera-Villaflor. Known aliases in black file archives. Buried behind layers of sanitized clearance.
Now? Just two figures standing in front of me. Too composed. Too careful.
Like they've rehearsed how to be human again.
I recognize the calibration in their posture—the way predators mask themselves as protectors. Designers of ghosts. Engineers of silence.
Dr. Caelum moves first. Adjusts my IV. Clean. Controlled. Clinical.
"Your reaction time shouldn't have allowed that interception," he says.
YOU ARE READING
OPERATION WINTERSPINE (Strings Between Us Book 2)
Teen Fiction✧ STRINGS BETWEEN US ✧ Book Two: Operation Winterspine by miszywitch She thought she buried the war with her title. But some crowns aren't laid down--they're reactivated Arielle Rylance Del Rio walked away from the Ardent Court, from the strategist...
