All Chapters of The Phoenix Bride Rises: Trust Was Her First Mistake : Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

The surgical theater had been cleaned, scrubbed down with precision, but an invisible weight still lingered in the sterile air. Something heavy, ancient and sacred. Dr. Harlow sat slouched on a stool in the corner, his mask pulled down to his neck, and his hands trembling ever so slightly. Not from fatigue but from disbelief and from awe.Around him, the other two doctors and a single intern remained unusually quiet. No one reached for charts. No one dared to speak above a whisper. Until the intern broke the silence. “That was definitely not science,” she murmured, her eyes still fixed on the now-empty surgical bed as though a ghost might still hover above it. “That was magic.”One of the senior physicians snorted, but it lacked conviction. “Don’t be ridiculous.” “But it was.” She turned to face him, wide-eyed. “She did not even cut him open. He floated, Dr. Emery. Floated. And that thing she pulled out, it hissed. It screamed. You heard it. We all did.” Dr. Harlow finally exhaled, sl

The garden at House Fleming was too green, too warm, too full of laughter. Countess Mirabel de Argent disliked all three.She stepped from the waiting car with the grace of a woman who had learned long ago that posture was power, her silken gloves pristine, her perfume as sharp and sweet as her smile. Her wide-brimmed hat shielded her from the afternoon sun, though nothing could shield her from the sting of what she’d heard just this morning: The Duke was planning a wedding.Her Duke. Mirabel’s jaw tightened as she walked past the fountain. The sound of splashing water grated on her nerves. She had not been officially invited, but that had never stopped her before. House Fleming was practically her second home, or had been, once.In the courtyard beyond, she could already hear the laughter. She rounded the corner, heels tapping on the polished stones, and paused. There they were.Duchess Evelyn Fleming, seated on a garden bench beneath the lilac canopy, her silver hair pinned in a fla

The emergency lights flickered once as the surgical team prepped the theatre. A low buzz of tension filled the air, the kind that usually came before a press conference, not a surgery. But this was not a usual case.A boy, six years old, had been rushed in from a military base two towns over. His vitals were erratic, his lungs spasming without a known trigger, and there were whispers of poison exposure, possibly spiritual in origin. His records were incomplete. The base medic had simply said: “The child’s lungs are collapsing. But not from trauma. It’s like his qi’s being siphoned.”Western medicine had not helped. The hospital's top pulmonologist had refused to proceed, citing “insufficient pathology clarity.” The neurologist had walked out, muttering about “nerve anomalies that make no scientific sense.”So they called her. Dr. Arla-Rosa Lunaria Hernandez. Chief of Emergency Interdisciplinary Response. Head of Integrated Healing. And the woman currently being crucified online for a

The ballroom in Vespas shimmered under a ceiling of blown-glass chandeliers and imported moonlight crystals. Every camera focused on one woman: Princess Aretha of Vespas. Or at least, that was what the headlines called her.She smiled softly, sitting in the center of the throne hall as a royal aide dabbed powder on her cheeks. The media was eating from her hand, gentle tears, delicate silks, the occasional hand on her chest when the word “family” was mentioned.But inside? She was burning. Because no matter how many designer gowns she wore, no matter how many charity galas she attended, the world was not talking about her. It was talking about Arla-Rosa.Aretha scrolled through the trending tags with shaking fingers. #DukeOfSecrets#WhoIsTheMother#LavenderTruth#TheWomanWhoHealsHer lip curled. They were calling her elegant, stoic, brilliant. They were admiring her silence, her discipline, her surgical genius. Aretha wanted to scream. That woman had always walked around like she was

Aretha thought she was slinging mud at Arla-Rosa, but she had now lit a diplomatic wildfire. It began as whispers, hashtags spiraling into chaos, clipped interviews resurfaced, doctored screenshots shared like gospel truth. But within seventy-two hours, the storm she stirred with lace gloves and trembling sobs had reached the glass towers of international diplomacy.The International Committee for Medical Ethics and Humanitarian Law (ICMEHL) released a statement that shook the world: "We have received concerning reports alleging abuse of medical authority, wrongful institutionalization, and undue military interference in the medical sphere. Effective immediately, an independent inquiry into Country L’s handling of the Arla-Rosa Hernandez case is hereby opened."The news exploded across media outlets, from local country L bulletins to primetime global panels. What was once palace gossip had metastasized into potential international scandal.On TwiTalk Feed, the Global Reaction was epi