Elise's face went serious.
"It can't be helped anymore," she said. "We'll have to use the last resort."
Across from Lraine Street, where the luxurious mansions line the road as though they are showing off to one another, there is a small bar that looks entirely out of place.
It is the sort of establishment that butlers from the surrounding estates slip into quietly after their work is done. The outside is shabby. The food, honestly, is the kind of food that makes a person review their life choices while looking at it.
None of that matters, because nobody comes here for the food.
This bar is the secret shop of a legendary smuggler — a man who can obtain anything at all, provided you have the money.
Which was exactly why Elise and May were standing in the doorway that afternoon. They needed a very specific product, and they needed it obtained quietly.
Unfortunately, things went downhill immediately after their dramatic entrance.
They did not even get the chance to explain themselves properly. The owner took one look at the pair of them and threw them out like a man clearing pests off his step.
Elise stood in the street, completely stunned, with the expression of someone who has just been evicted from her own house.
May was already tearing up. If this went on, their contract with the baby ladies was going to fall apart entirely, and she was not at all sure the empire would survive it.
Elise pulled herself together and patted her arm.
"They'll regret this," she declared. "Turning away major players of the smuggling world — they'll be sorry soon enough." She lifted her chin, radiating confidence. "Don't worry. I have a whole list of trusted dealers in this area."
May cheered her on from the side, believing in her completely.
So off they went, one option after another.
Every single one of them refused.
By the end of it, even Elise had not expected things to go quite this badly. She slid down onto the floor in defeat, short legs stuck out in front of her.
"Maybe," May said, trying to stay hopeful, "we could renegotiate the contract instead?"
Elise shut that down at once, shaking her head hard.
"You don't understand how obsessed the baby ladies are with that powder. Just imagine angry toddlers charging at you like starving zombies." She paused. "Except there are a lot of them. And they're furious."
Still, they were not completely out of options.
There was one last person they could turn to.
Duke Cedric.
After listening to the whole explanation, Cedric summarised it neatly.
"So. You need to smuggle something. And you want me to do it."
"Yes!" Elise said, proudly, with an enormous grin.
Cedric did not answer her right away. Instead he looked straight at May.
May avoided his eyes instantly. To be fair, none of this had been her idea.
With a sigh, he said he would agree — on one condition.
Elise immediately threw a tantrum like a child who has just been told no about something enormous.
Cedric did not budge. The job was too dangerous, he said. He and May would handle it together, and Elise would remain quietly in her room.
Elise leaned over and whispered urgently, "Are you really all right doing this alone with my brother?"
May answered without words. She crossed her fingers hard and signalled absolutely not.
That did not help Elise in the slightest. She switched tactics, called Cedric big brother in her sweetest voice, and added a wink for effect.
It did nothing this time. His decision stood.
So in the end, only May and Cedric set out on the smuggling run.
Back at the palace, Reheim was working through a stack of reports and was visibly impressed.
They concerned the officials May had personally recruited, and the results spoke for themselves. Reading them, he found himself smiling as he remembered how confidently she had asked the prime minister for one week.
Now it made sense why she had spoken with such certainty.
Then another memory cut across it. The quiet moment when it had been only the two of them, talking after she regained consciousness.
Reheim put a hand flat against his chest, frowning.
Ever since that day, his heart had been behaving strangely. Sometimes it tightened for no reason he could identify — in the middle of a meeting, in the middle of a corridor, in the middle of nothing at all.
And the most troubling part was that it almost felt as though he were growing used to it. As though he were slowly becoming addicted.
May, meanwhile, was sitting inside a carriage with Duke Cedric, and the silence between them was doing most of the talking.
People said the Northern Duke hated women and possessed the personality of a frozen wall. So May had reasonably concluded that if she opened her mouth she might trigger her own execution.
In the end she decided silence was the safer investment and sat there stiff as a board.
Then Cedric spoke, out of nowhere.
"If you want me to obtain that powder for you, as I promised my sister, I want one thing in return." He did not look at her. "For the entire duration of this business, there will be no unnecessary social interaction between us."
In short: he wanted peace and quiet while he worked.
Before May could finish processing that, Cedric opened the carriage door.
"Stay hidden inside until this is settled. Do not move. Do not draw attention. And do not cause trouble that could ruin this from the start."
Then, without another word, he stepped out and swung his sword at the two assassins waiting beside the road.
From where he stood, it was simple enough to read. Their eyes were fixed on the carriage, not on him — which meant May was the target.
More of them came out of the dark, and Cedric met them head-on while May watched from behind the window.
As it unfolded, she found herself remembering what Elise had once told her about what it means to be a Northern Duke.
According to her extremely enthusiastic master, a Northern Duke is a man with the strongest swordsmanship alive and an equally tragic quantity of loneliness, because he has far too much to protect. He regards most women as background decoration — but his woman is the one exception to that rule.
Elise had gone on about it so dramatically, and for so long, that May had nearly lost her hearing, insisting the whole time that as long as May stayed beside Cedric, no assassin and no thug alive could lay a finger on her. All she had to do was stand there gracefully and watch the bloody mess get cleaned up.
Now that it was happening in front of her, May realised her master had not been exaggerating. Cedric was cutting down trained assassins on his own as though it were a chore on a list.
Then one of them came around from behind and smashed the carriage window.
Before May could react, the man swung his sword toward her seat. She tried to throw herself sideways; he caught her hand and dragged her back, and she screamed Cedric's name.
His hand closed around her throat. For one split second everything seemed about to end right there, in a carriage, on a road, over a sack of powder.
Then Cedric was at the window and the man was down.
May was shaken but unharmed. Another attacker rushed in from the road, and Cedric had to go back out to finish his cleaning work.
Left alone again, May decided she could not simply sit there. What if another one came in from the other side?
She needed to be able to defend herself.
Spotting a sword lodged in the carriage frame, she grabbed the hilt and pulled with everything she had. It did not move. She braced her foot and hauled again, and when it finally came loose, she lost her balance completely and crashed onto the floor with a noise like a cupboard falling over.
The sound brought Cedric back at a run, fully prepared to kill another assassin.
Instead he found May upside down on the carriage floor, clutching a sword, looking considerably more confused than threatening.
He tried not to react. Then he noticed the bruises coming up on her neck and along her arm, and concluded silently that this was, without question, a very high-maintenance lady.
May scrambled upright and started apologising for making him worry over nothing.
To her surprise, Cedric knelt down in front of her, held out her shoe, and told her to be careful — the floor was covered in broken glass.
Just as May reached out to take it, still apologising, Cedric pitched forward and landed face-down in her lap.