Chapter 23 The Ghost in the Hospital

Chapter 23 The Ghost in the Hospital

The hallway leading to the Private Medical Wing smelled of death masked by bleach and industrial antiseptic. As I moved through the shadows, my stolen keycard gripped tight, every flicker of the overhead lights felt like a frantic warning.

I needed the antidote. I needed the formula that kept Leo in this suspended state. But as I approached the final door, my heart wasn’t beating for the mission anymore. It was beating for the little boy I had spent ten years mourning over an empty casket.

My hand shook as I pressed the card against the scanner.

Access Granted.

The door slid open with a ghostly silence. What greeted me wasn’t a laboratory, but a room teeming with machinery. The only sounds were the rhythmic, metallic beep of a heart monitor and the steady, artificial hiss of an oxygen concentrator.

In the center of the room lay a small, fragile figure.

The sound of the monitor suddenly transformed in my mind into the crackle of a roaring fire. The scent of antiseptic became the suffocating smell of burning wood and dry pine.

The night of the tragedy. I was standing outside our burning home, held back by two guards as I watched the flames swallow Leo’s bedroom. “Leo! My brother!” I had screamed then, fighting with every ounce of my strength to break free.

“He’s gone, kid,” a guard had said, his voice as cold as the grave. “Everything’s incinerated. He’s ash by now.”

I remembered the soul-erasing pain of that moment. For ten years, I carried those ashes in my heart. I built my entire existence around the fact that I was the only one left. But seeing him now—pale, skeletal, and hooked to a dozen life-sustaining tubes—it broke me more than the news of his death ever had.

He hadn’t turned to ash. He had become a ghost trapped inside his own body.

I approached the bedside. Leo’s eyes were closed, his skin almost as white as the linens covering him. He looked so fragile, as if one wrong touch would cause him to crumble into dust.

“Leo…” I whispered, the name barely finding its way out of my throat.

I took his hand. It was warm.

The warmth shattered me, and I collapsed to my knees. He was alive. He had been here for ten years, being used as a living experiment, while I was out there killing myself just for the sake of a hollow justice.

But as I scanned the room, I noticed something that didn’t fit.

This wasn’t an ordinary cell. The equipment keeping him alive was the most expensive, state-of-the-art life support available. And on the small table beside his bed sat a familiar object—a worn, tattered book of fairy tales. Leo’s favorite book before the fire.

Images began to overlap in my mind.

I remembered Julian. The Julian who, just last night, had called me “Marga.” The Julian whose eyes were always clouded with a sorrow I could never quite decipher.

A massive question began to puncture my resolve. Why?

Why did Viveca keep Leo alive? And more importantly… why did the access logs on the bedside computer show that Julian was the only person who entered this room every single night?

“Why are you doing this, Julian?” I whispered into the dark.

One part of my brain screamed: It’s just an insurance policy! He’ll use Leo against you once he realizes you’re Margo! That was the gospel of the Sanctum. Everything has a price. Everyone is leverage.

But the heart that had just begun to beat for him again last night told a different story. The high-end equipment, the storybook, the way Leo’s room was hidden even from the senior staff—it didn’t look like a laboratory.

It looked like a sanctuary. A secret Julian was desperately keeping from his own mother.

I felt a surge of violent confusion. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to scream because Julian let me believe I was alone in the world. I wanted to stab him for every night I spent crying while he sat here watching over my brother.

But alongside that was a maddening desire to believe.

To believe that in the heart of the Thorne darkness, Julian was trying to fight back, too. That perhaps his silence ten years ago wasn’t due to indifference, but because it was the only way to keep my brother from truly turning to ash.

Then, I heard a faint footfall in the hallway.

I scrambled up and dove behind a large medical cabinet. The door groaned open.

Julian entered.

He didn’t look like the cold prince of the Sanctum. He looked utterly exhausted. He shucked off his tuxedo jacket, tossing it onto a chair, and sat beside Leo. He took my brother’s hand—in the exact same way I had moments before.

“Another day, Leo,” Julian whispered, his voice cracked and raw. “She’s back. Margo… she found us. But I don’t know how to look at her without seeing every sin I’ve committed just to keep you breathing.”

I pressed my hand over my mouth to keep from sobbing. Every word he spoke felt like a dagger carving through my rage.

“You need to wake up now,” Julian continued, leaning his forehead against Leo’s hand. “Because when she finds out the truth… when she realizes I was the one who signed the consent forms to turn you into a subject just so my mother wouldn’t kill you… she’ll never forgive me. And maybe she shouldn’t.”

The true weight of the tragedy hit me then. Julian was trapped in his own private hell. He had chosen to be the villain in my story just to keep a piece of my world alive.

He was protecting us. In the most twisted, dark, and agonizing way possible.

I wanted to step out. I wanted to hold him and tell him I understood. But the Black Rose on my neck burned. I am Eris now. And the world we stand in has no room for such emotions. If I revealed myself now, everything would shatter. Julian’s protection of Leo relied on his image as Viveca’s “loyal son.” If Viveca found out we were conspirators, we would all be dead by dawn.

I watched as Julian opened the book of fairy tales. He began to read in a low, steady voice—the same story I used to read to Leo whenever a storm rolled in.

The tears I had been fighting finally spilled over.

I didn’t know who Julian Thorne was anymore. Was he the man who watched my life burn, or the man who had spent ten years reading stories to someone who couldn’t hear them?

Is this a final act of hidden love, or is he just as broken as I am?

I backed away toward the secondary exit of the medical wing. I still needed the antidote formula, but now, I didn’t know who I was doing it for. Was it for Leo, to set him free? Or for Julian, so he wouldn’t have to carry this secret alone anymore?

As I stepped out into the biting dawn air, I looked back at Leo’s window from a distance.

“Pearl…”

I thought I heard Julian’s voice carried on the wind.

My resolve to seek vengeance was crumbling. The anger that used to be a fire giving me strength was now just ash, weighing down every step.

I am Margo Valderama, the girl who died in the fire.

I am Eris, the weapon of the Sanctum.

And now, I am the woman who loves the man she is supposed to kill.

I squeezed the keycard in my hand until the plastic bit into my palm. I have to make a choice.

Save the brother, or save the man?

Or perhaps, in the end, there is nothing left of any of us to save.

I returned to my quarters, my mind a chaotic map of the past and present. I looked into the mirror, and for the first time, I didn’t see a Rank 10 asset.

I saw a girl who just wanted to go back to the library, where the only danger was a story ending too soon.

“Wait for me, Leo,” I whispered. “And Julian… please, don’t make me kill you.”