Chapter 160

The Mooncut felt heavier in my hands than it had the night I tore it from the gala display. It wasn’t just the weight of alloy and crystal. It was the memory sealed inside it, the shimmer of light through smoke, the copper tang of blood as it spilled across my palm, the sound of gasps through the crowd, and the raw pressure of Richard’s hand anchoring me in place when I had nearly collapsed.

My fingerprints were still visible on the inner edge of the handle, smeared faintly through the dried blood. I hadn’t cleaned them off because I didn’t want to forget what it had cost me to hold it.

The evidence vault beneath the west wing was colder than I remembered. I moved through its gates without speaking, past two posted guards who stiffened instinctively as I passed. They didn’t ask what I carried, and they didn’t need to, because my scent carried more than enough story to shut down any speculation.

I logged the Mooncut under code red asset protocol, placing it in the core chamber’s central pod, where it would be protected by triple-pane glass, a magnetic seal, temperature controls, and surveillance. I watched it for a long moment before turning away. It looked like a trophy, but it had never been a prize. It was proof that peace had never existed in the first place.

Richard wasn’t waiting when I emerged. I hadn’t expected him to be. He had been careful since the chapel, deliberate in his movements, present when necessary, and distant in every other way. We hadn’t spoken outside of operational updates. The silence between us didn’t feel like punishment. It felt like acknowledgment.

The new command chart hit my datapad around the same time I reached the upper landing. Richard had officially transferred day-to-day oversight of the barracks to Nathan. The message was short and impersonal. It referenced Council reform sessions, emergency transparency protocols, and the need to stabilize the southern border delegation.

It didn’t mention me, and it didn’t need to. I was no longer beneath the umbrella of his authority, and part of me knew that was the only thing keeping us from fracturing completely.

Nathan was ready. He had been ready for weeks. When I met him in the strategy room, he didn’t offer condolences or ask questions. He handed me three folders, each stamped with different trajectory outlines for an upcoming convoy assignment. I read them in silence and then asked for the field plans.

“We’re baiting the tunnel intercepts,” he said. “The convoy is already staged with decoys in place. The primary route cuts through the border markets, and the fourth vehicle is wired with a comm trap.”

“Live handlers on board?”

“Two. They’ll pretend to jam the signal when approached. We’re hoping whoever’s listening tries to redirect.”

“And if they do?”

“We’ll have five points of intercept,” he said, pointing to the canal line. “If not, we have fallback in the south corridor. The loop back leads into a dead zone where we’ve pre-positioned lockdown crews.”

I nodded. “Good.”

We didn’t waste time, and the trap worked.

By evening, the saboteurs revealed themselves. Just as Nathan predicted, they attempted to redirect the decoy from the fourth position. One of them made contact using phrasing pulled directly from David’s campaign messaging. The slip-up cracked open an entire string of routed comms, and the trace pulled back to a support terminal registered to a junior staffer in the debate preparation office.

That same staffer had attended every rally and filed clerical entries for two different vote recount petitions. Chain analysis dug deeper, cross-referencing payments tied to a medical subcontractor flagged in an earlier corruption probe. It hadn’t made sense then, but now the messages painted a clear picture. They hadn’t been using smuggling lanes for equipment. They had been moving credentials, leaking guard rotations and troop distributions, and providing floor access to the main compound.

Two dozen staffers were placed under review. Interrogations began immediately. Three of them flipped within hours. Though no one said it directly, the implication was clear. David’s network was deeper than we had allowed ourselves to believe.

I didn’t return to my apartment.

I stayed in the tactical wing, in a converted maintenance room that had been used for short-term officer housing. The walls were bare, and the air smelled faintly of polish and old metal.

There was no art on the walls, no warmth in the linens, and no remnants of anything familiar. Only clean lines, institutional order, and the kind of emptiness that left too much space for thinking.

I saw Richard once, across the outer yard. He stood beside a gate I hadn’t passed through since my first month here. He was speaking to a guard commander, his posture rigid and his expression unreadable.

I looked at him too long, just long enough for him to feel it. His gaze found mine. There was no change in his expression, but something inside me pulled tight, as if the part of me that still wanted to understand him was trying to ask a question he wouldn’t let himself answer.

I was the one who turned away.

Later that night, I sat in the war chamber and reviewed loyalty reports. Several platoons had submitted quiet transfer requests, asking to be reassigned to my watch. Not as protest or out of personal loyalty, but as a quiet consolidation of trust. They believed in the way I commanded, in the results I achieved, and in the steadiness I carried even when everything else in my life felt like it was unraveling.

Richard’s name hadn’t disappeared. His directives still came through, but fewer followed his orders without clarification. Most waited for secondary approval, and that authority now rested with me.

He didn’t fight it.

The messages we exchanged were short and clinical, focused solely on logistics, supply chain adjustments, and troop movements. He approved the bell warding draft I submitted, and I countersigned the funding realignment for the outpost repairs. Neither of us included notes. We didn’t acknowledge the silence. There wasn’t space for anything else.

Still, I felt him. I always had. Not through the bond, not in that strange mystical way that used to leave me aching when we were apart, but as a presence. A fact. A steady gravity behind the work. He lingered in the names on every document, in the way my hand hesitated before every decision, and in the part of me that still wanted to reach for him despite everything.

But I didn’t, because we couldn’t undo any of it.

That night, I stayed in the command suite long after the others had left. I sat with the wall of screens glowing low and the maps still open on the central table. I stared at the quadrant overlay until the lines blurred into something unrecognizable. My hands were steady, but my chest felt hollow.

I had power and authority. I had earned every ounce of it without anyone’s name behind mine. But there was a cost to standing alone, and I was still learning what that cost would be.

The bond hadn’t broken. I still felt its flickers, faint and distant, like the pulse of a memory I didn’t want to revisit. I didn’t miss the heat of it, but I missed what it used to mean, back when it felt like something we could survive.

I missed him, and I didn’t know what to do with that feeling.

But that didn’t mean I forgave him, and it didn’t mean I was ready to let him close again.

I continued to lead, held my position, and kept the mission on track. I stayed where I was needed.

Even if that wasn’t enough forever, it had to be enough for now.