The Ember and The Queen

Kai's POV
Location: Aldeguer City Hospital, Private Doctors' Lounge

The blast of cold air from the lounge hit me as I stepped in, the jet lag sitting heavy on my shoulders.
But I shook it off. I was here for a reason. I always was — save lives, no questions asked.

Waiting by the window was Dr. Jacobe — one of the few people I trusted back in Germany. He looked up, his familiar smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"You still walk in like you own the place, Montinola," he teased, reaching out for a handshake.

I managed a tight smile. "Only inside the OR."

He laughed, then turned serious. Without wasting time, he slid a thick medical file across the table toward me.

"This is your patient. Stage 2 Glioblastoma Multiforme. Frontal lobe. It's fast-growing but operable. We need you leading this."

I opened the file, flipping through pages of scans and reports.
Focus, Kai. Like always.
This was what I was built for.

Until I saw the name.

Celmar, Robert D.

For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
The edges of the paper blurred before sharpening back into painful clarity.

Celmar.

Jacobe, unaware of the war erupting in my chest, kept talking.
"Patient's some retired congressman. Big name here. His family basically funded half the hospital's expansion. That's why they're pulling all the strings to get you."

My grip tightened on the folder.
Robert Celmar.
Rain's father.

Fate really had a cruel way of dragging you back exactly where you didn't want to go.

"You'll meet the family tomorrow after rounds," Jacobe said, tapping the folder. "Pre-op counseling. Standard procedure.
But I have to ask — you up for this, Montinola?"

I snapped the file shut before my hands betrayed me. I didn't hesitate — couldn't afford to.
Even if my heart was threatening to claw its way out of my chest.

"I'll save him," I said, my voice sharper than I intended.
Because that's what I do. I save people.

Even if it means standing face to face with the one person I wasn't sure I could survive seeing again.

I shoved the folder under my arm, nodded at Jacobe, and walked out of the lounge.

The hospital corridors bustled with the usual noise — nurses wheeling carts, residents flipping through charts, patients being escorted carefully to their rooms. The scent of antiseptic clung heavily in the air, familiar, sterile, numbing.

Kai Montinola adjusted her white coat over her slim frame as she strode down the East Wing, her boots clicking softly against the marble floor. Her face was a mask of calm, detached professionalism.
She didn't allow herself to falter. Not even when her heart was a ticking bomb inside her chest.

She was here for one reason: save Robert Celmar.

And if the universe had other ideas — she was not going to listen.

Meanwhile, just a few floors up, Rain Celmar leaned against the nurses' station, trying to steady her breathing after a grueling consult.
Ten years in New York had taught her discipline. Toughness.
But being back here — back in Aldeguer, back in the hospital that carried her family's name — it rattled something inside her she thought she had buried long ago.