Chapter Thirty: The Mask and the Blade

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• Chains of Fortune: Beneath the Blackwood Name    Chapter Sixty-Four: The Edge of Us

  LucienShe was asleep.But not peacefully.Even in unconsciousness, her brow furrowed like she was bracing for impact. Her breathing was shallow, her hands curled tightly beneath the blanket like fists too exhausted to swing again.I sat in the chair beside the bed, watching the rise and fall of her chest, counting each breath like a prayer I wasn’t sure I still had the right to speak.Ivy Sinclair—my wife, my enemy, my salvation—had nearly died winning a war I’d started.And I didn’t know how to forgive myself for that.The med techs had cleared the room hours ago, but I hadn’t moved. Not since I carried her out of that courtyard, her body trembling in my arms like a lit match about to burn out.Clara had tried to pull me away. Had warned me that I needed rest too.But how do you rest when the one person who holds your soul in her hands lies broken because of you?Because of choices you made long before she walked into your office with that steel spine and those wild, furious

• Chains of Fortune: Beneath the Blackwood Name    Chapter Sixty-Three: A Crown in the Ashes

  IvyThey say blood remembers.I used to think it meant legacy. Lineage. History passed down through dinner conversations and gold-trimmed birth certificates. But as I stared at the terminal flashing Iris’s face—my face, twisted into something razor-sharp—I realized the truth.Blood doesn’t remember like a story.It remembers like a scar.I paced the cold floor of the tower suite, too wired to sleep. Too furious to think.Lucien’s confession echoed in my chest like an explosion I hadn’t braced for.The Thorn program.My father’s deal with the devil.Lucien’s complicity.I wanted to scream.Instead, I stood at the window and watched the estate’s courtyard flicker with motion sensors and shadows. War was coming. And it wore my skin.Iris.A name meant to be beautiful.A woman engineered to be anything but.She looked like me—only perfected. Programmed. No softness around the edges. No grief in her gaze. She was what I might’ve become, had I not clawed free of the data, the needles, the

• Chains of Fortune: Beneath the Blackwood Name    Chapter Sixty-Two: Reflections of a Monster

  Lucien I couldn’t stop shaking.Even after Clara stitched the gash above my ribs, even after Ivy stormed out of the war room to scream into the wind, my hands wouldn’t stop. I’d faced men with guns, knives, leverage sharp enough to cut bone—and none of them had ever made me tremble like this.Because none of them had been built by me.THORN01.My ghost. My sin.My mirror.The pain was dull now. Not gone—just buried. Ivy’s scent still clung to my skin, lavender and smoke. She’d looked at me like I was breaking right in front of her, and maybe I was. Maybe I had been for years.I watched the monitor replay on a loop.THORN01 didn’t hesitate. Didn’t flinch. And when he looked at Ivy—he didn’t see her as human.He saw her as a target.And I had made that possible.“Sir?” Clara’s voice cracked the silence.I looked up.“We’ve located Thorn03. The face recognition pinged through a burned HALCYON node. Eastern sector. Norway.”“And?”“She’s not hiding. She wants us to find her.”I turned b

• Chains of Fortune: Beneath the Blackwood Name    Chapter Sixty-One: The First Thorn Awakens

  Ivy I stood frozen as the names bled across the screen, each one more damning than the last.Lucien’s name—etched in red—flashed like a branding iron across my mind.Authorization Level RED.THORN01 – ACTIVE.THORN02 – DECEASED.THORN03 – UNKNOWN.Beneath it, a timestamp: nearly a decade ago. His signature. His access. His creation.The truth tasted like rust on my tongue.He hadn’t just been part of the story.He was its architect.Lucien didn’t flinch. Not when the lights flickered, not when I turned on him, trembling.“Tell me this isn’t you,” I whispered.He stared at the screen. His face pale. His jaw clenched so tightly I could see the muscle twitch in his cheek.“I don’t remember doing it,” he said again. “But it’s my clearance. My voice. My code.”“And that’s supposed to comfort me?”His voice cracked. “No.”Clara stepped forward, her hands trembling as she pointed to the feed from Cell Unit 4.“Something’s happening inside the Vault.”The screen zoomed in.And I saw him

• Chains of Fortune: Beneath the Blackwood Name    Chapter Sixty: The Names in the Flame

  LucienThe flames reminded me of my father’s voice—Sharp.Consuming.Impossible to ignore.As I stood above the command chamber’s vault, watching the last of Project NYX burn beneath Ivy’s hand, something old and ugly stirred inside me.Ghosts.Memories.Truths I’d buried in steel and silence.“Never love a fire, Lucien,” my father once said, his breath soaked in bourbon and regret.“It’ll burn you whether it’s yours or not.”But I had loved her anyway.And now I was watching her become something unstoppable.She hadn’t spoken to me in fourteen hours.Not after Wren’s death.Not after the data drop.Not after reading the files that detailed what she was, what we both were.Even now, as the sunrise bruised the sky with violent reds, she stood on the rooftop with her arms crossed over her chest, watching the city unravel beneath her.She didn’t flinch when I joined her.Didn’t acknowledge me.Didn’t need to.We were past words now.“You should have told me,” she said finally

• Chains of Fortune: Beneath the Blackwood Name    Chapter Fifty-Nine: Bloodline of Ash

  Ivy I smelled the blood before I saw it.Metallic. Sharp. Like a memory I’d never asked for.The vault door stood ajar—barely. A tremble in steel, its hinge groaning under the weight of something darker than betrayal.I pushed it open with the back of my hand.And there she was.Wren.Eyes open.Mouth parted.A scream frozen in time.I didn’t scream. I didn’t sob.I just stood there, as the pieces fell around me like ash. My stomach turned, as if my body already knew—this wasn’t just murder. It was a message.Written across the wall in blood:NYX RISESThe room blurred.My name.Not my nickname. Not my codename.My true name.Or was it?They said grief comes in stages.Shock.Denial.Anger.But mine came all at once—like glass shattering against concrete.Wren was supposed to be the one person I could salvage from the wreckage. She was a spy. A liar. But she was mine.And now, her silence screamed louder than any secret she ever held.I stumbled toward her, my knees giving. He