"Damn it — *how could you let him slip away?!*"
Cayman's boot connected with the cage so hard the iron frame shrieked across the stone floor. The battered thing — its door twisted open, its bars bent at grotesque angles — spun once and crashed against the far wall in a shower of rust.
On the opposite side of the basement, the small prisoners in the larger cage flinched as one. Several whimpered. A rabbit-eared girl buried her face in the shoulder of the boy beside her, and the whole group shrank toward the corner like a single trembling organism.
"If you don't want to die down here," Cayman snarled, wheeling on them, "*shut up.*"
Silence fell — the wet, trembling kind.
He turned back to the man kneeling before him and drove his fist into the side of his face. The crack of knuckle against cheekbone echoed off the low ceiling. The captive children pressed themselves tighter together and said nothing more.
The man who had erupted into this wild fury was Viscount Cayman, head of the Red Chariot Guild.
And the man now prostrate on the floor before him, forehead nearly touching the damp stone, was Baron Khilben — his most trusted lieutenant.
"…I'm sorry, sir." Khilben's voice was barely audible. "I have nothing to say in my defense."
Cayman exhaled through his teeth and planted his boot on the back of Khilben's skull, grinding it slowly from side to side as if testing the weight of his patience.
"Tell me, Khilben. How exactly do you intend to make up for this loss?"
"I… how could I possibly—"
"I don't care *how* you do it." Cayman's voice dropped to a cold, precise register that was somehow worse than his shouting. He jerked his chin toward the cage full of young captives. "Even if you brought me *dozens* of those, their price would never compare to his. Do you understand that, you useless fool? Or not?"
The young rabbits huddled in the cage were gentle creatures — wide-eyed, soft-eared, and far too trusting of humans. They were easy to catch, and easy to catch meant cheap to sell.
The vast eastern forests teemed with dozens of subhuman races. And while the buying and selling of sentient beings had been strictly prohibited by imperial law for over a century, there were always wealthy collectors who could not resist the allure of the forbidden.
Most guilds avoided the trade entirely. The Red Chariot Guild had seized control of it.
They raided the Sacred Forest — the ancient woodland where humans were forbidden to tread — captured young individuals of the various races, and sold them at staggering prices through a network of underground auctions. In barely two years, they had risen from an obscure outfit in the eastern provinces to one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the region.
The rule was simple: the harder a species was to catch, the higher its price.
And at the very top of the market — spoken of in hushed, almost reverent tones — sat two species that had never once appeared at auction since the slave trade was officially abolished.
Mermaids. And werewolves.
No human vessel could navigate the treacherous reefs and towering waves surrounding the mermaids' island. And the werewolves — the Lycan folk, as they were sometimes called — were simply too strong. Though they dwelled in the Sacred Forest at the heart of the East, they were faster, more powerful, and far more savage than any human hunting party Cayman could assemble.
Which was precisely why it had taken a betrayal to acquire one.
Several months ago, a small delegation from the Silver Forest had appeared at Cayman's door, disguised as minor aristocrats. They had come to sell one of their own.
*Their own kind.*
Cayman had marveled at it. For all their vaunted pride, for all their snarling contempt toward humans — whom they called vulgar and ignorant — the wolves were, in the end, no different from the creatures they despised. Greed and treachery knew no species.
What followed had been months of painstaking preparation. A cage reinforced with enchanted alloys. Sleeping draughts calculated at concentrations tens of times higher than any human dose. Chains commissioned at ruinous expense from the most renowned artificer in the Wizard Tower — each link woven with dozens of binding spells.
And it had *worked.*
The day Cayman first stood before the unconscious wolf — a fully grown adult specimen of the race the world called the greatest — he had felt something close to religious ecstasy. The creature was enormous, magnificent, *beautiful* in a way that almost made him understand why the nobles were willing to pay fortunes for such things.
Almost.
Because Viscount Cayman had his own doubts about the so-called great race.
"***How could you let him escape?!***" he screamed again, his composure shattering like glass. His voice ricocheted off the basement walls.
It should have been *impossible.* The sedatives they injected around the clock kept the wolf perpetually balanced on the razor's edge between sleep and death. He practically never regained consciousness. And the chains — *those chains* — the fortune he'd spent, the favors he'd called in, the months of waiting for the wizard to complete them —
The wolf had picked the locks. Every single one.
And walked out.
Cayman pressed his palms against his temples and breathed.
"…It was because of that woman."
Khilben's voice came from below, quiet but steady. He had not lifted his head from the floor.
Cayman blinked. "What woman?"
He dropped heavily onto a nearby iron cage, the metal groaning under his weight, and fixed his subordinate with an exhausted, dangerous stare.
Khilben raised his head carefully, choosing each word as though handling something fragile and volatile.
"There was a woman on the train. She used… some kind of trick. Something I've never seen before."
"A *trick.*"
Cayman was on the verge of laughing — of telling Khilben to spare him such pathetic excuses — when he noticed the man's chin trembling. Not the ordinary tremor of a subordinate fearing punishment. Something deeper. Something that looked very much like genuine terror.
He narrowed his eyes. "Explain. Be specific."
"W-well, she appeared out of nowhere — I still don't understand how. And then she used some form of dark sorcery. A creature materialized in the air. A *monster.* The entire car was thrown into chaos, and in the confusion, she freed the wolf and—"
"Hold on." Cayman held up a hand. "You're telling me she used a hallucination?"
"Yes! Some kind of illusion — but it felt *real*, sir. And then she released the wolf from the cage, and—"
The explanation was so outlandish that Cayman's first instinct was simple: *This idiot is trying to make a fool of me.*
He let Khilben finish his rambling account with an effort of patience that felt almost superhuman, then called in the rest of the men who had been riding in the same train car.
One by one, they told the same story.
"So let me understand this correctly," Cayman said slowly, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. "You're saying she summoned… a *butterfly.*"
"Yes! But it wasn't an ordinary butterfly — it was a *demon* butterfly! The size of a—"
"Enough."
Cayman studied their faces. Three men, all telling the same impossible tale with the same pale, shaken expressions. If Khilben alone had spun such a story, he would have assumed the baron was fabricating an elaborate excuse to deflect blame. But the others corroborated every detail without hesitation — speaking the same absurd, consistent nonsense.
"You see!" Khilben scrambled to his feet, a note of vindication breaking through his fear. "I'm telling the truth! Do you believe me now?"
Cayman was silent for a long moment.
"If what you're describing is accurate," he said at last, "then this woman is a demon contractor. A summoner."
"A… summoner?"
"The true demon masters have been extinct for centuries. What remains are imitators — people who artificially heighten their affinity for mana in order to tear open a passage to the other world and call something through." He paused. "Most of them are unstable. And most of them die badly."
Before founding the guild, Cayman had spent half his life wandering the eastern territories. He'd encountered summoners twice — both times wretched, hollow-eyed creatures burning through the last of their sanity.
The pampered aristocrats of the imperial capital might faint at the sight of such a person's parlor tricks. But Cayman was not some sheltered nobleman. He had seen what the East truly contained.
In rare cases, the scenario Khilben described was not entirely impossible.
*But a butterfly?*
That was the part that gnawed at him. No summoner in their right mind — and admittedly, few of them *were* in their right mind — would choose a butterfly from among the countless demons inhabiting the other world. A summoner's power was measured by the magnitude of the creature they could drag across the dimensional threshold. If you had gone through the agony and madness required to open that door, you summoned something *terrifying.* Something immense. Something with claws and fire and the kind of presence that made men soil themselves.
You did not summon a butterfly.
And yet, the illusionary sorcery they described troubled him. Hallucinations potent enough to incapacitate an entire train car full of armed men — that was not the work of a minor talent.
He turned the problem over in his mind for a moment longer, then discarded it.
"She uses a butterfly demon," he said flatly. "That shouldn't be difficult to track. If she was on a regulated train, there will be passenger records. Names, destinations, descriptions."
"But sir—" Khilben's voice cracked. The thought of confronting that woman again had drained every trace of color from his face.
"I said *forget it* for now!" Cayman snapped. "She's not our priority."
He rose from the cage and straightened his coat, forcing his expression into something resembling composure. There were larger matters at hand — matters that could reshape his entire future.
"You know Lord Akitas of Aquitaine?"
Khilben blinked at the abrupt shift. "The… the Great Lord? Of course."
"The old man has requested a meeting. With me. Personally." Cayman let the weight of that sink in before continuing. "He intends to introduce me to a distinguished guest from the North."
Khilben's eyes widened. Whatever fear still lingered in them was momentarily eclipsed by surprise. "From the *North?* Why would Lord Akitas—"
"That," Cayman said, already moving toward the stairs, "is exactly what I intend to find out."
He paused at the bottom step and glanced back at the cage full of trembling children, then at Khilben.
"Find the wolf. Find the woman. I don't care which you locate first." His lips curved into something that bore only a passing resemblance to a smile. "But I don't forgive people who touch what belongs to me."
---
## — Aquitaine —
The palace of Aquitaine was the largest and oldest seat of power in the East. In sheer scale, it rivaled even the Duke's fortress in the North — a comparison that would have flattered Lord Akitas greatly, had it not also invited unfavorable ones.
Because where the northern stronghold radiated authority and purpose, Aquitaine exhaled decay. The green banner of the house still flew above the walls, but its colors had faded to the pale, washed-out hue of something left too long in the rain. The stonework was stained. The gardens, once legendary, had grown wild in places no one bothered to tend.
Lord Akitas had long since lost his dignity as ruler. The palace remembered it, even if he did not.
Three men stood on the observation deck of the ancient fortress, watching the courtyard below.
Lennox tossed a small ivory plate into the air with a flick of his wrist, let it spin once, and caught it cleanly.
The Eye of Argos.
Just that morning, the sacred artifact — the one that had reliably pointed toward Juliet's location for days — had begun to malfunction. Its guiding beam, normally steady as a lodestone, had started spinning in erratic circles, flaring in every direction like a compass that had lost the concept of north. Then it had blazed white — one final, brilliant pulse — and gone dark.
Now it was nothing more than a hand-carved ivory disc. Elegant. Useless.
"Is it broken?" Jude asked, eyeing the artifact with a sideways glance.
"It's not that the sacred relic is *broken*, Jude," Hardin replied. The faintest hint of condescension threaded through his otherwise neutral tone.
Jude opened his mouth — visibly affronted — to fire back a retort, but before he could, Lennox flicked the dead artifact toward him without warning.
"Catch."
"Whoa—!"
Jude snatched it from the air with reflexes that were, admittedly, excellent. He held it up and examined it, then allowed himself a small, satisfied grin at his own dexterity.
Lennox suppressed a quiet laugh at the man's simplicity, then turned his gaze back to the courtyard below. A line of carriages was departing through the palace gates.
"That's Juliet," he said.
"Huh?" Jude looked up sharply. "Miss Montague?"
Lennox had been watching the carriages for some time now, tracking the patterns of arrival and departure with the patient attention of a man accustomed to reading movement the way others read text.
"It seems she found what she was looking for faster than I expected."
A flicker of something — curiosity, perhaps, or something adjacent to it — crossed his expression. Sacred artifacts were not trinkets one stumbled upon by chance. They could not be purchased like mana stones at a market stall. They were rare, jealously guarded, and deeply entwined with the temples that housed them.
*What exactly did you do, Juliet?*
"So the thing's useless now," Jude grumbled, tucking the ivory plate under his arm with the resigned air of a man holding someone else's luggage. "Great."
"It's still the temple's property," Hardin noted. "It will need to be returned."
"*Ahem.*"
The soft, deliberate cough came from behind them. All three turned to find a servant standing at the entrance to the observation deck, dressed in the flowing eastern style of the Aquitaine household.
The man bowed precisely.
"The lord is waiting for you."