The next day was a frantic blur of stop-and-start motion. We wanted to get back to New Alderburg as fast as we could, afraid that Tersine would try to catch us while we were still unprotected. The fight and the journey had already drained us, and every time we traveled for more than a couple of hours at a time, the drivers of the Ogre would inevitably hit their limits. While Laura and Tillie slept, it fell to Unity and I to keep a constant watch on the moonlit horizon, desperately scanning for any sign of moving vehicles or wolves on patrol.

I don’t think that fear was ever something we actually had to worry about. We never saw a single sign of Tersine, and although the wide open expanses of the Great Desolation could allow sounds to carry for miles, we never heard any trundle of machines besides that of the Ogre. She must have had some other staging ground to return to besides New Alderburg, but that was only a guess. And the fact that we were almost certainly in no real danger did nothing to change the fact that we were all hungry, dehydrated, and exhausted both physically and mentally when we returned to the city. Even that wasn’t the end, though. We left the Ogre just on the outskirts of New Alderburg, with a handwritten sign telling whoever found it to contact the University to return it. From there it was a long and awful walk through the city streets, all the way back to the squat where this terrible plan had begun.

Getting to sleep on a mattress on a wooden floor felt like a luxury. Two nights slept curled up in the hard metal bed of the Ogre had left me craving sleep, such that I didn’t even have time to undress before falling unconscious, and I woke up with all sorts of odd red marks and sore spots as a consequence. It still felt like I’d been born anew.

And Laura was there as well, if anything even more exhausted than I was, sleeping right at my side. After finally awakening, I spent a minute just sitting next to her, running my fingers through her hair. For as much as Delilah’s death was still sitting with me, it was impossible to express how glad I was that Laura was still there. As long as she was at my side it felt like nothing would ever be really impossible. Then she woke up, eyes still unfocused, stirred by the gentle motion of my fingers on her scalp. She called me a softie, then went back to sleep.

A little while later, there was a knock on the door. It was Tillie.

“We need to talk. About what happened. The others, too, Anna and Unity.”

I nodded, looking back to Laura. “Hey, Laura. Get the fuck up.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” Laura said. She rolled over, sat up, stretched, and only then opened her eyes wide enough to notice Tillie. She immediately stilled. “Give me just a few minutes.”

We had to search most of the squat to find which room Anna and Unity had settled down in. I couldn’t imagine how much Anna had been missing Unity; at least I had had the benefit of being in the same place as Laura for the whole trip. Once they were dressed and ready, we found that privacy was going to be impossible to find inside the building. We retreated into the alleyway outside.

Tillie wasted no time in getting to the point. “I’m out. I don’t care how much of a danger this Doc Tersine might be, I don’t care what you need from me, I’m out.”

My head sagged. I understood her perfectly.

“Sorry we dragged you into all of this,” Laura said. “I hope this still means things are good between us?”

“They’re fine,” Tillie said. “Hell, I got myself into this. Heard we were sticking it to someone rich and jumped in. But… no. No more. Not after Delilah, not after that. I’ve got an education to finish, work to do, and I’d rather not do that as a ghost.”

I sighed. “Do we know anyone who knew Delilah? Friends, family, anything like that?”

“No,” said Unity. “We-we can look. I can look. But I dunno that’s the best thing to be thinking about right now.”

“Someone is dead!” I said. “What the hell else should we be thinking about?”

Laura folded her arms over her chest, building up to an angry expression. “Tersine, maybe? We barely knew Delilah, we can’t do shit about her death. So the way I see it, the best thing we can do is learn from our mistakes. No more rushing, we need an actual plan.”

I looked back and forth between her and Unity, caught between my own guilt and the logic of what Laura had said. “Violet and Alexis knew her, right? Can you at least find them?”

Unity shrugged. “Could. Who knows.”

“We could try for the newspapers. Put out a notice of her death, hope that catches attention.”

“That…” I hesitated, wondering if we might need the element of secrecy. “That makes sense. Better to keep it safe.” I turned to Tillie. “Was there anything else you wanted to say?”

“You people are absolutely mental. Brave, but mental. And if you’re expecting me to leave, reminder that I live here.”

“Thank you, Tillie. So. Planning?”

“Well, as of right now, it’s just the four of us,” Laura said. “Three of us can actually fight, and only one of us actually has any kind of real contacts.” She nodded in my direction. “Tersine has… how many wolves would you say made it out of there alive?”

“Between the ones we saw in the ruin and the ones we left behind at her lab?” I shrugged. “Call it two dozen.”

“Oh, yes, the lab. I’d almost forgotten about that one. So Tersine has two dozen nigh-unkillable wolf-people, an even more unkillable robot minion, a laboratory full of cutting-edge bioelectric tech, and the backing of the Cassandran fucking Empire. Oh, and a map to something called the ‘Great Mind’ that she values enough to kill over, whatever that may be.”

We all took a nice long moment to consider our position. There were other factors that Laura hadn’t mentioned, of course, like the fact that we had no idea where Tersine was, or that she also had access to all of the shit she’d been using to excavate the ruin. These facts and more passed calmly and rationally through my thoughts, and presumably those of my co-conspirators as well.

“We’re so done-done for,” Unity said.

“A bit in over our heads,” I said. “Yeah.”

“Bit of a miracle only one person got killed, if I’m being honest,” Laura muttered.

Anna tapped her cane against the wall of the alleyway to draw attention. “Have we considered that this might be entirely beyond our ability to do anything about? Let the Blackbird know about what we’ve found and then go back to our lives, it’ll be safer.”

I gave her a look. A deep look, one that hopefully conveyed how strongly I felt about the matter. Unity turned to look at her too, throwing an arm around her lover’s midsection.

“Why do I deceive myself, even I’ve started getting used to all of this. Clearly what we need is a way to even out the odds.”

“Well, like you said,” I nodded at Laura, “the primary difference between us and her is resources. She has numbers and she has supplies. And much more information about the situation than we do. So if we’re going to even the odds, we need those things: resources, numbers, and information.”

I frowned at myself. I knew where resources could be found in abundance, but I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I tried to acquire them from their current owner. Laura seemed to be going through much the same thought process, judging by her expression.

“I suppose… I could go back home,” she said.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I said quickly. “There are other ways.”

“Listen, Shortcake, I don’t like the idea of crawling back to my mothers any more than you do, but this isn’t about my pride.”

I nodded, looking over to Anna and Unity. “Should we…?” I shook my head. “Lady Halflance needs to know about this. I’m sure she can do something.”

My eyes were fully on Anna and Unity, but even out of the corner of my eye I could see Laura’s entire posture shift, her eyes going wide as every muscle grew tense. Before I could even react she was on the offensive, stepping forward with a growl to her voice.

“You know Sarah Halflance?” she said. It was an accusation.

“Uh,” I said. She sounded like she was about to kill me. I briefly considered lying, downplaying it. But that could only lead to bad things, and if Halflance was going to get brought into this anyway, any deception would fall apart fast. For the sake of safety, I stood next to Unity, not quite touching her but resting my shoulder against the wall right next to hers.

“I’m the… ward, of the Halflance family,” I explained. “They found me right after I arrived here from Earth, took me in. Lady Halflance has been—”

Laura punched me to the floor. It was faster than I’d ever seen her move, much faster than I was prepared to react to. One second I was on the wall, the next second Laura was rushing towards me, and the second after that I had taken a punch to the jaw and a stinging bash from landing on the cobblestones. Laura had hit me so hard it bruised her knuckles, and she clasped the injured fist with her off-hand while she commenced screaming at me.

“You’ve been lying to me the entire time!” Her voice sounded on the verge of breaking from the strain. “Did she send you here? She really can’t leave me alone and let me have my own life, so she had to send one of her goddamned minions over here to keep an eye on me, is that it?”

I lifted myself up onto the heels of my palms, choking on words as I tried to wrap my head around what was happening. “Laura, Laura, no, it’s not, I didn’t, I have no idea you—”

Laura gritted her teeth and moved for me again, ready to kick me while I was down. It was a good thing that Tillie was still there, because I don’t know that Unity would have been able to restrain her on her own. As it was, with one person holding onto each of her arms, Laura was kept just out of thrashing distance. My chest hurt with fear. I’d never seen Laura this furious before, screaming as loudly as she could, face fully red with exertion as she tried to break free and attack me.

“You really expect me to believe that, you bastard? This is all just a big coincidence, that the one woman who worms her way into my fucking life, gets into my bedroom and gives a fuck about me, happens to be here because of my mother?” Laura’s cheeks were wet. “I should have fucking known it wasn’t real.”

“Mother?” I said breathlessly. “Lady Halflance is your mother?”

I tried to reason against it, but too much of it made sense. Laura came from a rich family, nobility and industry, and I’d never heard her mention their names. She’d mentioned growing up in Amrinval, and New Alderburg was far enough away that I could believe the Halflances wouldn’t have been able to find her, if they’d even meant to look.

I grasped at the first inconsistency I could find. “The Halflances have only three kids,” I said. “Norma, Felicia, and P—”

Laura lunged for me again, screaming through a raw throat as Tillie and Unity both lurched forward, about to lose control of her. She knew those names. And then I remembered the third one. Parker. Parker Halflance, the product of Sarah Halflance’s out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancy. She had never told me the story, besides the fact that Parker had been gone for years.

Parker Halflance was twenty-two years old. Just the right age to be a senior in the archaeology department of the University of New Alderburg. I gazed at Laura’s face again but with new eyes. She had none of Sir Margaret in her, but the set of her eyes, the shape of her nose, it was all Lady Halflance.

By that point, Laura had worn herself out. She hung limp in the grasps of the two people on either side of her, sobbing inconsolably. I rolled forward, slowly standing up.

“Please believe me,” I said. “I didn’t know. This is all, all some massive coincidence.”

For a while, Laura didn’t act as though I was there. She just cried and cried, caught between misery and rage, as the two women holding onto her grew increasingly embarrassed. When she finally regained the strength to speak, it was with her head hung low, eyes focusing on nothing but the cobblestones right in front of her.

“I don’t know if I can believe that,” she said. “And even if I do… You let my first mother support you? You saw everything she did, and who she is, and you decided that you were fine with taking her money and living in her household and even—” She jerked her head in the direction of Anna “—hiring on her servants?”

“I didn’t have a choice. When I came here I had nothing. No family, no money, quite literally not even clothes on my back. If Sir Margaret hadn’t taken me in—”

Laura snorted. “Oh, so she shows you mercy. Takes pity on you. Couldn’t see her own step-daughter for anything but evidence of her wife’s sordid past.”

I stammered, uncertain and burning with guilt. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you are.”

We remained there, frozen, Laura crying and me unable to wrap my head around the magnitude of what had just happened. My hand went to the side of my cheek.

“You hit me!”

“Yeah, and I’d do it again if I…” Laura looked to either side, at Tillie and Unity holding her back, and sighed. “Look into my eyes, Shortcake. Really look.”

I did as she asked. Her expression was totally unreadable, or more likely she was feeling so many contradictory things so strongly that even she wasn’t sure how she was feeling.

“Tell me, honestly, that my mother didn’t send you here to spy on me. That she had no idea I was here, that this is all just a big coincidence.”

I spoke the truth, and I said it so quickly that I kept stumbling over my words. “Lady Halflance didn’t even send me here, her personal doctor, Doctor Charcharias, she was the one who said I should go here to investigate my regeneration. I told Halflance I was going to New Alderburg, and she agreed to send Anna and Unity with me—they were already my personal maids besides—but none of this was her idea. None of it. I swear.”

Laura raised an eyebrow, smirking slightly, and for a moment I hoped that that was all it was going to take to put things right. Her expression quickly returned to neutral.

“I’m sorry for hitting you. I’m really sorry.”

“I… forgive you. For now. Just don’t make a habit of it, yeah?”

She turned to Tillie. “Can you two let go of me now?”

Tillie and Unity shared a look, shrugged, and let Laura go. She returned her attention to me, her arms folded below her chest. “If you’re really as involved with the Halflances, with my family, as you say you are…” Laura sighed. “Then you need to get the fuck away from me. Stay in the city if you want, ask my mother for help with Tersine if you want, I don’t care. But I didn’t run all the way out here just so I could have them back in my life.”

It felt like having a gate crash down onto my soul. I felt… empty, all of a sudden. Empty and cold, like something warm had been horribly ripped away from me and I was left completely exposed to the chill wind.

“Oh. I… Laura…”

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “You’re telling the truth, I think, that you’re just some random girl who got swept up by my step-mother because she saw you were in trouble. And I’m sure they didn’t let you in on their dark sides, but… No. Leave. Go.”

Neither of us was willing to leave for a long time. We just stared at each other, as though each of us was daring the other to change their mind or start yelling again or something. But what could I have said? Laura had put her foot down. She didn’t want me any more, she didn’t want to be involved with me, we were done, finished, it was over. Trying to fix that would just be denying her wishes. I couldn’t stand to be the kind of person who would do that.

Always move forward.

“I’m going to need the map,” I said. Laura still had it in her pocket. She shoved it into my hand without a word.

“There’s a streetcar stop near here, isn’t there?” I said to Anna. “We can go back to my place now.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, trying to cover up the melancholy in her voice and doing a poor job of it. “Let’s go. Unity, I may need your help, I’ve been standing in one spot for entirely too long.”

Unity might as well have teleported with how she showed up at Anna’s side. “Any time of the day. Let’s go.”

I couldn’t walk away from Laura and Tillie without looking back. Every time, I hoped that the cliche would come true, that she would change her mind, run forward, tearfully apologize and confess. It didn’t come true. None of it came true. The three of us, Anna, Unity and I, walked around the corner while Laura stood in the alleyway and watched us leave. I made it back to the apartment and had just enough time to take off my shoes before I collapsed onto the bed and started crying.

The worst part was, by that evening, I wasn’t able to mourn any longer. I had other things to do, arrangements to be made. There was no time to think about Laura.

SaffronDragon

Starting up college again and you know what that means! That's right, almost forgetting to upload chapters (it's still technically Thursday where I am so shush this is on time). Only one chapter left, but hopefully I'll be able to start uploading chapters from my next novel, a new original in a similar vein to The Chained Flame, sooner rather than later. See you in two weeks for Epilogue: Return to Halflance Manor.

If you want updates on a more up-to-date basis, to find out when I've written a new chapter as soon as I'm finished with it instead of on a several-day delay, you can always check out my Patreon, where $3 and up patrons get early access to all of my book chapters. The $5 tier also has further benefits, in the form of exclusive short stories and polls, the most recent of which is a romantic novella called New Girl that I'll be releasing the epilogue of in just a couple of days.