Hearts Invincible Excerpt

***Major spoilers for both The Shattered Ones and In the Unbreaking. Read the previous two books to get caught up!***

St. Elizabeth’s had quieted. Sure, there was a steady hum of movement and emotion in the patient care and surgical areas, but the overall activity had died down to something that felt like the low hum of a fan in a quiet room. Deadeye and Sierra had been assigned to the room next door to Bandit and me, with Logan across the hall from them. Their sleeping forms were outlined in cyan light to my sixth sense, as were Caleb’s and Tara’s in the room across from mine. As the hospital settled for the night, peace fell over the whole residential wing.

But I couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t your fault. Caleb had been talking to Tara, but he could’ve been saying the same to me. I could almost hear his voice repeating the same words I’d heard over and over since being rescued from the Vanguard facility.

It wasn’t your fault. How often had I heard that phrase?

It wasn’t your fault that our new enemy had forged an alliance with the remnants of the old one.

It wasn’t your fault that the tech I’d invented had been used to imprison me.

It wasn’t your fault that my power had irrevocably changed my best friend.

It wasn’t your fault—

That our enemies had escaped with their data. That Caleb was hurting. That humanity was repeating the mistakes the xenos had made, that the power I’d never asked for was about to be inflicted on others, that countless people could be forced into a life of fighting, running, being used—

It was my fault. And if I hadn’t failed to stop Vanguard earlier, none of us would be in this position now.

My feet hit the floor, and I pulled my cargo pants over the gym shorts I’d been sleeping in. I snagged my hoodie from the end of the bed, stuffed my feet into boots, and slipped out the door. It took a moment of focus to pick out a path through the hospital, and I followed it up a twisting, echoing stairwell to the roof. I had a moment of concern that the door would be locked, but closer inspection revealed that someone—probably a bored graveyard shift worker—had put tape over the latch to hold it open.

I stepped outside and found myself staring at the darkened cityscape. Clouds had gathered to hide the sky, a few sparse lights reflecting off their pale underbellies and casting a faint glow around the rooftop. The air hung thick with humidity, which left a strange sensation against my skin.

I shivered and pulled on my hoodie, its familiar red desaturated in the dark to something dead-looking. Then I lowered myself to sit near the edge of the roof, not so near that vertigo could take me, but enough that I could see my surroundings.

Time stretched, then. Just like it had ever since I’d woken in the hospital to find that all of it had been real, that none of it was a dream, and that everything was worse than I’d remembered. I didn’t know how long it’d been before dizziness snapped me into reality, and I barely stopped myself from tipping sideways. “Did I fall asleep?” I gasped.

The light had shifted under the clouds, and a look at my watch said that it’d been almost an hour since I’d left my room. “One in the morning,” I muttered to myself, aghast at how the passage of time had felt like nothing. “It’s already tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” when we’d get back in the Thunderbird and race to warn the Defense Force before Vanguard grew too powerful to be stopped.

Hearts Invincible is coming October 16th, 2026!