On a train carrying fewer than a dozen passengers, a procession of figures clad entirely in black was impossible to miss.
Their clothing resembled a uniform of sorts, yet something about it felt *wrong*. Any proper uniform bore insignia—crests, rank markers, identification patches sewn into collars or sleeves. Theirs were conspicuously bare. Not a single distinguishing mark graced the dark fabric.
And that was not the only thing that unsettled her.
The group moved quickly, passing through the carriages without lingering, their boots striking the floor in near-perfect unison. They did not pause, did not speak, did not so much as glance at the passengers they passed.
But Juliet noticed what they carried.
As one man swept by her table, the hem of his black cloak lifted with the motion—just enough to reveal the medium-length sword strapped to his hip.
Seven years spent surrounded by the Duke's knights had trained her eye for such things. She recognized the shape of a concealed weapon the way most women recognized a familiar perfume.
*Carrying weapons aboard the train is strictly prohibited.*
Her fingers tightened around her teacup.
*Perhaps I should inform the conductor.* She turned the thought over, then dismissed it. *But that could cause even more confusion—and if these men are dangerous, a conductor would only be putting himself at risk.*
"…I hope nothing serious happens," she murmured, watching the black-clad figures disappear through the door to the next carriage.
---
The strangest development, however, came at the next station.
When the train ground to a halt and the doors hissed open, a second group boarded—and these newcomers were nothing like the first.
They carried no visible weapons. They didn't need to.
Every last one of them was *enormous*.
"They're really huge," Juliet breathed, her eyes widening before she could stop herself.
The men moved with the heavy, deliberate gait of people accustomed to physical confrontation. Their shoulders were broad enough to block the corridor, their arms thick as fence posts. Even from across the dining car, the sheer mass of them seemed to compress the air.
Then Juliet's gaze landed on their leader—and she forgot to breathe entirely.
He stood nearly two meters tall, with a craggy, weathered face that looked as though it had been carved from granite with a blunt chisel. His jaw was square, his brow heavy, and his eyes swept the carriage with the cold efficiency of a predator surveying unfamiliar terrain.
*He looks even bigger than Sir Kane.*
The comparison surfaced unbidden. Sir Kane—commander of the Duke's personal knights and her assigned escort in the North—was the largest man Juliet had ever known. Or so she had believed until this moment.
*If a bear became a man,* she thought, studying the stranger's barrel chest and ham-sized fists, *he would look exactly like this.*
Unlike the first group, these men made no effort to conceal themselves. They wore no cloaks, carried no hidden blades. At first glance, they appeared unarmed.
Though "unarmed" seemed a generous term for men whose bodies *were* weapons.
Juliet's instincts whispered a quiet assessment: *If the two groups clashed, the swordsmen would lose.*
She lowered her gaze to her teacup, feigning disinterest. But her ears sharpened of their own accord when two of the massive newcomers paused close enough for their voices to reach her.
"…I'm sure. Mr. Roy must be somewhere on this train."
"Find him as quickly and quietly as possible."
*Roy?*
She hadn't meant to eavesdrop. The fragment simply arrived, clear and uninvited.
*They're searching for someone.*
When the train lurched forward again, the group moved on to the next carriage, their heavy footsteps fading into the rhythmic clatter of wheels on iron.
Juliet set down her cup.
*Two groups of strangers. One armed and unmarked. The other unarmed but formidable. Both boarding at different stops. Both moving through the train with purpose.*
Unease coiled in her stomach like a restless snake.
*I should return to my compartment before this becomes something I can't ignore.*
The men in black with their hidden swords had been agitated—tense, alert, their movements too sharp for ordinary travelers. And now this second group, searching for a man named Roy with barely concealed urgency.
Every instinct she possessed told her that something was about to happen.
*…But what about the freshly baked buns?*
Juliet pressed her lips together, a small, private war waging behind her calm expression. The rational part of her mind insisted she leave immediately. The part of her that had spent seven years in a cold northern castle, eating meals that were adequate but never *joyful*, reminded her that Angie had promised buns.
*Warm, freshly baked buns.*
She wavered.
And then, as if fate itself had intervened on behalf of pastry, Angie reappeared—beaming, flushed from the kitchen's heat, bearing a tray heaped with golden-brown buns that glistened with a light glaze.
Juliet sank quietly back into her seat.
*I'll eat quickly. Then straight back to my compartment.*
---
"Sorry for the long wait!" Angie announced, her voice bright enough to cut through the dining car's anxious hush. "Dear passengers, I'll be coming to each of you one by one!"
The aroma hit like a wave—warm yeast, melted butter, a whisper of sweetness. Around the car, heads rose in unison, drawn by the scent with an almost comical synchronicity. The passengers sat straighter in their seats, waiting their turn with the patient obedience of well-mannered children promised a treat.
Angie wove between the tables, distributing buns with cheerful efficiency. She was nearly at Juliet's table, the tray tilting toward her, the closest bun practically within reach—
**CRASH.**
The door of the dining car slammed open with enough force to rattle the brass fixtures on the walls.
"Nobody move!"
Armed men in black poured through the doorway, swords drawn, faces hidden beneath dark hoods that hadn't been there before.
*So they've made their move.*
Juliet's hand stilled above the table. Her expression didn't change.
Around her, chaos erupted. A woman screamed. A man toppled from his chair, scrambling beneath his table. The little girl from earlier buried her face in her mother's chest, her small body shaking.
The bandits fanned out across the dining car with practiced coordination, their curved swords—sabers, Juliet noted with clinical detachment—leveled at the cowering passengers.
"Stay in your seats! Hands where we can see them!"
One of the hooded men shoved past Angie. The girl stumbled, her grip on the tray faltering—
The buns tumbled to the floor.
Golden, glazed, still warm from the oven. They bounced once, twice, and rolled across the dirty carriage floor like small, tragic casualties of war.
Juliet stared at them.
Her jaw tightened. Imperceptibly, but it tightened.
"Hey, guys, let's all calm down," one of the braver passengers ventured, raising his palms in a placating gesture. "Maybe you could put those swords away and tell us what you—"
"***Shut up!***"
The man recoiled as a blade swung toward his face, missing by inches.
Silence fell—thick, suffocating, broken only by muffled sobs and the distant rumble of the train.
Then one of the bandits moved.
He needed a hostage. Someone to hold at knifepoint, someone whose terror would keep the others docile. His hooded head swiveled, scanning the car for the most vulnerable target.
His gaze settled on the slender young woman sitting alone at a corner table, a small dessert plate held uselessly in her hands. She was slight, pretty, utterly unthreatening.
*Perfect.*
He crossed the distance in three strides, seized her by the arm, and pressed the edge of his knife against the pale column of her throat.
"If you don't want to see me slit this pretty neck," he snarled, his voice carrying across the silent car, "then you'd better ***not move!***"
The passengers froze.
The bandit grinned beneath his hood.
He did not yet know that he had just made the worst mistake of his life.
---
The dining car fell deathly still.
Every passenger sat hunched in their seat, foreheads pressed to their knees, exactly as the bandits had commanded. No one dared look up. No one dared breathe too loudly.
"***AAAAAGH!***"
The scream tore through the silence like a blade through silk.
The passengers flinched as one, squeezing their eyes shut, hearts hammering against their ribs. *The woman,* they thought. *The poor woman they took hostage.* Someone had resisted, and now—
*What a terrible way to die.*
Behind their closed eyelids, they mourned her. They prayed she hadn't suffered. They cursed their own cowardice for not intervening, even as they knew intervention would have been suicide.
Then—footsteps. Frantic, stumbling, *fleeing*.
One of the hooded bandits lurched into view, his sword clattering forgotten to the floor. His hood had fallen back, revealing a face drained of all color, eyes bulging, mouth stretched wide in a rictus of absolute ***terror***.
"Aaaah—! Please—*save me*—!"
He made it perhaps two meters before his legs gave out and he crumpled to the floor, unconscious. His body hit the ground with a heavy, graceless thud, and he did not move again.
Silence.
Then, slowly—cautiously—the passengers raised their heads.
What they saw made no sense.
Every armed bandit in the dining car lay sprawled across the floor, motionless. Swords had slipped from limp fingers. Hooded heads lolled at unnatural angles—not broken, but *emptied*, as though whatever animating force had driven these men had been drained away in an instant.
And standing directly above them, composed as a portrait, was the slender young woman.
Not a hair out of place. Not a scratch on her skin. The small dessert plate was still in her hand.
She looked less like a woman who had just neutralized half a dozen armed men and more like someone mildly inconvenienced by a change in the dinner menu.
The passengers gaped.
Juliet did not explain.
"Ah…"
A soft, regretful sigh escaped her lips. Her gaze drifted downward—not to the unconscious bodies at her feet, but past them, to the floor where the tray of buns lay scattered and ruined.
*What a waste.*
---
She set the dessert plate on the nearest table, stepped over a fallen bandit, and moved to the door connecting the dining car to the next carriage.
Pressing it open just a crack, she peered through.
As expected, chaos reigned beyond. The corridor was a tangle of struggling bodies—black-clad swordsmen clashing with the massive, unarmed men from the second group. Shouts ricocheted off the narrow walls. Someone crashed against the window hard enough to crack the glass.
Juliet released five butterflies through the gap.
They slipped through the crack like wisps of dark silk, their delicate wings catching no light, their forms barely visible against the dim interior of the train.
"…What the *hell*?"
"What is—***AAAAAGH!***"
The butterflies descended upon the bandits like a plague of whispered nightmares.
They were *hungry*.
Each one settled above a hooded head and began to feed—drawing out the darkest fears buried in the recesses of each man's mind, inflating them, amplifying them until reality itself warped beneath the weight of terror.
These bandits were hardened men. Killers who had taken lives without flinching, who had threatened women and children with steady hands. Their hearts were steeped in cruelty, their consciences long since cauterized.
Which made them a *feast*.
The butterflies gorged themselves on the rich, black marrow of their fears—growing stronger with every scream, every whimper, every body that hit the floor.
Juliet didn't know how long it would take for the butterflies to work their way through the entire train. Given the apparent number of bandits, she suspected they wouldn't return anytime soon.
She listened to the muffled screaming for a moment longer, then calmly closed the door.
*Now then.*
Her mind shifted into the precise, analytical mode that had kept her alive through far worse than a train robbery.
*Something doesn't add up.*
Two groups. The first—swordsmen in unmarked black, boarding before the others, carrying concealed weapons. The second—unarmed giants, searching urgently for someone called Roy.
The swordsmen had taken hostages. The giants were trying to recover someone.
*The men in black are kidnappers,* Juliet concluded. *They boarded earlier, likely with their captive already secured somewhere on the train. The second group followed—a rescue party.*
So this wasn't a simple robbery at all.
It was a kidnapping. And a botched rescue attempt.
"Thugs and kidnappers," she murmured.
The situation had nothing to do with her. She was Mrs. Helena Ashford, a young wife traveling east to meet her husband. None of this was her concern.
*Except that the train will never reach its destination if this chaos continues.*
That fact was *very much* her concern.
Juliet weighed her options. The simplest solution would be to locate the kidnapped man and return him to his rescuers. Once they had what they came for, the fighting would stop. Order would be restored. The train would resume its journey.
*But where would they keep him?*
She paused, a memory surfacing.
Before the hooded men had boarded, she had watched from the dining car window as something large and heavy was loaded into the rear cargo hold. The carriage had shuddered beneath her feet from the weight of it.
*The luggage compartment at the back of the dining car.*
Her eyes narrowed.
*That's where they've hidden him.*
---
A groan rose from the floor behind her.
One of the fallen bandits stirred, his fingers twitching, his hooded head lifting weakly from the ground.
Juliet turned. She regarded him for a single, unimpressed moment.
Then she released another butterfly.
It settled on him like a dark blessing, and the man's eyes rolled back in his head. He collapsed again, twitching, a thin whimper escaping his lips.
*That's for the buns,* she thought viciously, and turned toward the rear of the car.
---
The door to the luggage compartment opened without resistance.
Beyond it lay darkness—thick, absolute, far deeper than she had anticipated. The mana-stone lamps that lit the passenger carriages did not extend here. The air smelled of iron, dust, and something else. Something animal.
Juliet stepped inside, leaving the door ajar to admit a thin blade of light from the corridor.
She waited for her eyes to adjust.
Shapes emerged slowly from the gloom. The compartment was nearly empty—no trunks, no crates, no ordinary cargo. Just bare metal walls, a riveted floor, and—
*Iron bars.*
Juliet's breath caught.
In the center of the compartment stood an enormous cage. Not the sort used for luggage or freight, but the kind designed for transporting large, dangerous animals. The bars were as thick as her wrist, the frame bolted to the floor with heavy chains.
A grinding sound echoed through the darkness—the scrape of iron links dragging across metal.
Something moved behind the bars.
Juliet's pulse quickened. She took a half step closer, straining to see through the shadows.
Then two eyes opened in the dark.
***Golden.***
Burning with a fierce, untamed light, they locked onto her with an intelligence that was not entirely animal. They did not blink. They did not waver. They simply *watched*—fixed on her with a predatory focus that pinned her to the spot.
The beast was enormous. Even crouched in the cage, its outline suggested a body of terrifying size and power. The faint light caught the edge of dark fur, the curve of a massive jaw, the gleam of teeth.
Juliet stared back, her lips parting in stunned disbelief.
"…Is that a ***wolf***?"