Chapter 10
Before Mingxi could respond, a faint noise whispered from the back corner of the storeroom. Not the dragging scrape of a revenant. Not the cold, wet sound of something undead.
A breath.
A single, hitching, ragged breath.
Penelope’s head snapped toward the sound.
The Guardian moved first, blade drawn, boots crunching over broken wood as she edged toward the shadowed corner behind the overturned shelving.
“Councilor,” she began.
The sound came again. A muffled sob.
Mingxi lifted a hand. “Alive,” he murmured.
The Guardian blinked and then shoved aside a heap of collapsed linens.
A woman jolted upright from the darkness with a scream. “Don’t. Please no. Stay back. Stay back.”
She was young, perhaps twenty. A maid, judging by the torn uniform and the blood smeared across her apron, where she placed her shaking hands against her ribs.
Her face was streaked with tears. Her hair was wild. Her eyes were huge and glassy with terror. She shrank into the corner, hands raised as though warding off a blow while begging for rescue.
Penelope did not move. Her expression did not crack. Not even a flicker.
The contrast was immediate and brutal.
“M-my lady,” the maid sobbed. “Please. Please don’t let it get me.”
Penelope stepped forward with the poise of someone entering a ballroom, not a slaughterhouse.
Her voice was level. Calm. Eerily so. “What did you see?”
The maid flinched. A fresh sob tore from her throat.
“It wasn’t human,” she choked. “It came through the hall. Dragged Mr. Carson. Ripped his throat. Mrs. Hale. Mrs. Hale didn’t even have time to scream.”
Her hands flew to her mouth, shoulders shaking violently. The Guardian winced, color draining from her face.
Penelope remained composed. “What did it look like?” she pressed.
The maid shook her head frantically. “I didn’t see its face. Just shadows. And eyes like… like…” She gagged. “Like pools of pitch-black water.”
Mingxi exchanged a look with the Guardian. That was not a revenant. Not even a necromancer’s work. This was something else entirely.
The maid’s panic spiraled as she looked around the storeroom, breath coming in sharp gasps. “Please. I can’t. Please get me out of here. I can’t be in this house.”
She reached toward Penelope as if grasping for something solid. Something human. Penelope stepped neatly out of reach. Not cruel. Simply composed. Untouchably so.
“Guardian,” Penelope said, clipped and precise. “Get her outside. Now.”
“Yes, Lady Penelope.”
The Guardian sheathed her blade and hurried to the maid’s side. The girl clutched the woman like a lifeline, sobbing into her armor as they left the room.
Mingxi watched Penelope instead. Watched the way she observed the evacuation with steady, detached calm. No one touched by such violence should possess such calm.
He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “That girl is on the edge of collapse.”
Penelope turned to him, her coolness sharp enough to cut stone.
“And what good would it do,” she asked, “if I joined her?”
The answer struck Mingxi with weight. Not because of what she said, but how simply she said it. Emotionless. Pragmatic. Standing in the center of catastrophe and still functioning with aristocratic precision.
“Lady Penelope,” Mingxi said quietly, “most people do not hold themselves together like this.”
Her gaze sharpened, something dangerous flickering through it.
“I am not most people, Councilor Shen.”
He believed her. More than that, he understood how true the statement was.
“We need to get you out of here,” Mingxi said.
“By all means,” Penelope replied.