The chains are cold against my wrists. I never thought I'd wear shackles in the same bunker where I'd spent three years saving lives. The irony isn't lost on me as I sit on the metal floor, my back against the examination table where I once performed emergency surgery with hands steadier than my heartbeat is now. Commander Kade Reinforcer stands outside the steel door. I can see his silhouette through the frosted glass panel, rigid in his crisp military uniform. The uniform I'd burned when I found him bleeding out in the snow, his body broken, his mind shattered. That was three years ago. "You're making a mistake," I call out, hating how my voice shakes. The door opens. He steps inside, and I'm struck by how different he looks from the man I knew. The confused, vulnerable patient who'd learned to smile again, who'd helped me gather firewood and laughed at my terrible cooking—that man is gone. In his place stands the enemy commander my brother died fighting. "A mistake?" His voice is ice. "The only mistake I made was trusting you, Dr. Thorne." I flinch at the formality. For three years, I was Sera. I was the woman who changed his bandages, who talked him through nightmares, who held his remaining hand when phantom pains from his missing arm made him scream. "I saved your life," I whisper. "You destroyed it." He moves closer, and I see the mechanical prosthetic where his right arm should be. State-of-the-art military technology, but not the same as flesh and bone. Never the same. "I was the greatest swordsman in the Northern Command. I led my forces to seventeen consecutive victories. And you took that from me." "You had sepsis! The infection was spreading to your heart. Another six hours and—" "And you let me die!" The words explode from him. "That's what you should have done. Let the enemy commander die on your table. Instead, you saved me just enough to make me useless." I surge to my feet, chains rattling. "I made you live! I spent seventy-two hours in surgery keeping your heart beating. I gave you antibiotics we desperately needed for our own soldiers. I chose you over—" I stop, but it's too late. "Over who?" His eyes narrow. "Over your fellow medics? Over your wounded troops?" He takes another step, close enough that I can smell the winter air clinging to his uniform. "Or over your brother?" My blood turns to ice water. "Yes, I remember now," he says softly, cruelly. "Captain Marcus Thorne. Your older brother. He died at the Battle of Frost Ridge." His jaw tightens. "The battle where I earned this." He raises his prosthetic arm. "The battle you cost me everything to survive." "Kade—" "Commander Reinforcer," he corrects sharply. Tears burn my eyes, but I won't let them fall. "You don't understand. When you came to me, you weren't the enemy. You were just a man dying in the snow. You didn't remember the war, didn't remember your rank. You were just... you." "There is no 'just me.'" His expression is granite. "I am my rank. I am my command. I am the sword that defends my nation." He glances at his prosthetic. "Or I was." "You're alive. That matters." "To who?" The question hangs in the frozen air between us. "My superiors consider me damaged goods. My soldiers look at me with pity. And the woman I—" He stops abruptly, jaw clenching. My heart stutters. "The woman you what?" But he's already turning away. "You'll stay here until the tribunal decides your fate. Treason carries a heavy sentence, Dr. Thorne." "Treason? I'm a medic. We're protected under—" "You gave aid and comfort to an enemy officer. You concealed my identity from your own forces. And according to my recovered field reports..." He pulls out a tablet, and his face is unreadable as he reads. "You had explicit orders to eliminate me on sight." The world tilts.