Alto could only gape as events spiraled with lethal swiftness. The red-haired madman's desperate charge became his undoing – Yvette's blade flickered like argent lightning, leaving his head spinning through the air even as his body stumbled forward.

  Her swordsmanship startled Alto more than the grotesque spectacle. Every movement sang of deadly grace; a serpent's strike given human form. He'd never imagined that slender wrist could channel such brutal force. The cleanness of the severance suggested supernatural strength, the spinal column parting like wet parchment beneath her edge.

  Shaking himself from reverie, Alto watched Yvette kneel beside the catatonic stargazers. Her expression softened as she checked pulses, an unlikely gentleness from the girl who'd just orchestrated such clinical slaughter. "Best stash them in the carriage until Minders arrive," she murmured, more to herself than him. "The memory-erasure crews should be en route."

  "Sorcerous blood explains much," Alto blurted, torn between awe and irritation. "Yet you let me prattle about protection arrangements as if–"

  "Ill-gotten gifts from nameless powers," Yvette cut in briskly, stripping a blood-caked dirk from her forearm. Crimson droplets pattered the grass as she inspected the wound. "No gods or bloodlines – just stolen tricks through ritual chicanery. The lightshow earlier? Parlor theatrics to spook a cautious foe into closing distance."

  Alto stared at the fist-sized hole in her sleeve, suddenly queasy. The nonchalance of her wound-prodding seemed... unnatural. Young ladies of breeding didn't shrug off impalements with such stoicism.

  "Sorcery and parlor tricks," he echoed dubiously. "So the pentagrams and chants–"

  "Were lifted from penny dreadfuls!" she interjected with uncharacteristic shrillness, cheeks coloring. "Mock Latin and borrowed theatrics to sell the ruse! Must we dwell on this?"

  The abrupt shift startled him. Moments before, she'd been battlefield aristocracy – all icy precision and detached lethality. Now she squirmed like a schoolgirl caught plagiarizing. Alto found himself unexpectedly charmed by the dichotomy.

  Their cleanup collaborators arrived in a clatter of lead-lined trunks and weary professionalism. "Ah, the Minders," Yvette observed as a harried clerk-type bustled forward. "Bleary-eyed as ever. How does one apply for that posting? Chronic sleep deprivation appears mandatory."

  The subsequent operation proved illuminating. The stargazers proved puppets to something nested within the red-haired man's metal coffer – a thing whose psychic resonance compelled obedience like the Pied Piper's cursed flute. Merely cracking the chest's seal sent the captives jerking like marionettes.

  "Lead dampens certain emissions," the Minder explained through clamped teeth, resealing the box with shaking hands. "Not perfect shielding, but serviceable. Full isolation requires..." He mimed decapitation with gruesome jocularity.

  Yvette's answering smile didn't reach her eyes. "How practical. I'll commission an armored helm posthaste – neck included." Her blade sang from its scabbard as she turned toward the carriage. "Shall we relocate your puppeteered guests, maestro? Before their strings tangle further?"

  As the Minders scrambled to comply, Alto studied his young companion anew. Moonlight limned her blood-flecked profile; battlefield pragmatist and blushing innocent woven into perplexing harmony. The way her fingers lingered on the sword's hilt spoke of hard-earned familiarity – a lifetime's dedication compressed into stolen weeks.

  Dread kindled like cold embers in his gut. Forces beyond ken were molding this girl into something... preternatural. And he dreaded the shape she might take when fully forged.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The steam locomotive erupted from the tunnel like a wrathful leviathan, belching clouds of white smoke. Daylight flooded the carriages, wrenching passengers from subterranean blackness into sudden brilliance—a spectacle that drew murmurs of wonder from those unaccustomed to tunneling’s visceral theater.

  This pioneering passage beneath the Thames had been clawed from the earth by shield-drills modeled after insatiable shipworms. To Victorian Londoners, such marvels still felt alchemical. Few had journeyed through a mountain’s belly only to be reborn into sunlight, and the novelty ignited spirited debates about progress among the travelers.

  Ulysses reclined in first class, thin compartment walls doing little to muffle the human chorus outside. The babble felt… comforting.

  He’d spent recent weeks sequestered in a lightless vault beyond the city—an organizational precaution while his temper stabilized. Rejoining the living world now, even through this iron dragon’s bowels, carried an odd nostalgia. That final lightburst before emergence? It recalled breaching waves after deep-sea dives, sunlight fracturing through surface tension.

  Home again, he caught Winslow mid-stride toward the study, a letter bearing a covert branch seal in hand.

  “Business concluded, sir?” The steward’s smile held relief. “This arrived from Worlingham—two field agents injured during… anomalous events. Given your unexpected return...”

  No need for elaboration. Ulysses swept his barely-hung hat from the stand and was gone before Winslow finished apologizing for the opened correspondence.

  Miles away, Yvette prodded at her bandages in a safehouse parlor. The discreet flat—tucked among mistresses’ love-nests in a fashionable district—stored essentials for sudden disappearances: tinned meats, carbolic disinfectant, even decent Darjeeling.

  Worlingham’s overtaxed team had shipped them back to London post-incident. Now they waited, wounds slathered in phenol, for some mysterious medic.

  “Shame Ulysses is abroad,” Yvette mused. “Mourning Dove mentioned healers who shift injuries onto themselves. Wonder if any do instant miracles like RPG clerics?”

  Alto grunted. “Middle Ages priests bashed heads with maces. Save the chanting for stage magicians.”

  A bell jingled.

  Yvette answered, heart stuttering at the silhouette beyond frosted glass—Oh bloody hell, it’s him.

  “Miss Vaisseau.” Ulysses’ voice could frost brandy. “I see my absence failed to curb your talent for chaos.”

  To her credit, he spared only that one barb before inspecting her arm.

  “It’s Alto—his leg’s punctured clean through. Mine’s just a graze.”

  Her thrown dart had met resistance—slowed by defensive abilities, blunted further by a proxy golem. Alto had taken his assailant’s strike square: a stiletto-wound through the thigh, the sort that festered if neglected.

  “That sepulchral expression suggests he hasn’t bled out yet. Where’s the carbolic?”

  Deep stab wounds required debridement. Ulysses favored scalpel work paired with London’s latest marvel: coal-tar disinfectant.

  “Distillery closet. I diluted a batch—”

  He pressed her into an armchair. “Rest. I’ll fetch it.”

  The acrid reek led him straight to the flasks. Returning, he eyed the bandages.

  “Your assailant—human?”

  “Redhead. Knew our codenames. Hated us enough to spit ‘Ravens’ like a curse.”

  Ulysses’ pause lasted half a heartbeat.

  “Context?”

  He knew the Randall case. She briefed him: sewer sigils, Aurora’s abomination, star-cult propaganda. How tracing Moore’s roots led to celestial charting—and that damnable meteor.

  “Their falling star struck near Worlingham?”

  “Close enough. Doubt he worked alone, but...” She’d catalogued the attacker’s kit—no companion’s cigar ash, no stray blond hairs.

  “Unlikely,” Ulysses mused. “Obsession with our kind breeds lone wolves. The diamond’s legacy necessitates… discretion.”

  Cull the isolated. Quarantine outbreaks. Unspoken rules hung between them.

  Her arm healed in minutes under his care—scar fading like ink in solvent.

  Alto’s turn came. They found him armed and clammy, lowering his pistol with visible shame.

  “Morning, Alto.” Ulysses’ smile chilled wine.

  The agent typically matched him barb for barb. Today, caught between duty and blunder, he radiated schoolboy guilt.

  “Sir Ulysses—thank you for—”

  “I require coffee. And sustenance.”

  Yvette leapt up. “There’s a café nearby! Smoked salmon for you? Alto prefers beef, yes?”

  Albion’s gentry favored mutton, but Ulysses’ tastes ran maritime. She’d noted it during their Hampstead Heath stakeouts.

  “If… if it’s no trouble...” Alto’s protest died as the door clicked shut.

  Footsteps faded down the stairwell.

  Ulysses lifted his scalpel.

  Gods, let her return before he skins me.

  Alto swallowed hard.