The sterile, white-tiled corridor of Riverbend General Hospital felt like a pressurized chamber, the air so thin and charged with tension that every breath Serena Ashford took seemed to burn her lungs. She looked at the two men standing before her—the husband who had returned like a ghost after eight years and the elderly man who treated him like a deity—and felt a wave of nausea.
"Tell me, Derek," Serena said, her voice dropping to a low, cold vibration that was more terrifying than a scream. A small, cynical smile played on her pale lips, but there was no mirth in her eyes, only a jagged, crystalline resentment. "If this 'Grand Healer' is truly as magnificent as you claim... who taught him? Who gave him the secrets of the Celestial Needle technique?"
She paused, her gaze flicking betwe
