Chương 163: It's Only a Race

Vicky's POV, London Vicky heard today's paper slide under the door of her hotel room. The soft whisper of newsprint against hardwood. Someone on Hilda's staff, probably. Delivering the morning's damage report like clockwork. She walked over and picked up the paper. The headline made her laugh. UNBRIDLED PASSION: Lovesick Ever Enduring chases Windsor mare to Heathrow Below that, a photograph from yesterday's race. Ever Enduring mid-gallop, his considerable bulk silhouetted against the clouds.

The stallion looked triumphant. Satisfied. Like a horse who had achieved everything he'd ever wanted in life. Stewards launch investigation into "pharmaceutical irregularities." Twelve punters nicked in illegal betting bust. Palace demands answers as mare remains at large. No mention of debutantes. No rankings update. No anonymous sources calling anyone difficult or unpolished. For the first time in two weeks, the British press had found something more interesting than young women in white dresses.

A fat horse had saved her from the tabloids. She should send Ever Enduring a fruit basket. Her phone buzzed. Miss Walton. This is the Office of the Royal Household. An individual identifying himself as your cavalier has been detained following yesterday's incident at Ascot. He is currently held at St. James's Palace pending interview. Please confirm your association at your earliest convenience. Vicky stared at the message. Leo. In custody. At St. James's Palace.

She thought about his face when he'd walked into the Windsor box yesterday. That flicker of guilt she hadn't been able to place. The way he'd vanished during the chaos. Her thumb hovered over the reply button. She could go get him. Flash her credentials, make some calls, have him out within the hour. Or. He could stew for a bit. Build character. Learn a lesson about keeping his nose clean. Besides. She had more pressing problems.

She had just told Hilda Walton that she wanted to withdraw from the Queen Charlotte Ball.

The knock came twenty minutes later. Vicky didn't move from her seat by the window.

"It's open." Hilda stepped into the room, her silver hair pinned in a practical knot. She looked tired. She looked like she'd crossed an ocean for this conversation. Which she had. Because Hilda didn't delegate anything that mattered.

"Grandmother."

"Victoria." Hilda crossed to the small sofa by the window and settled into it without asking. Folded her hands in her lap.

"Tell me." So Vicky told her. She wasn't a socialite. She wasn't built for garden parties and tabloid rankings and curtsying under Deity Transformation pressure while strangers decided if her blood was old enough. She'd tried. She'd shown up to the events, worn the dresses, smiled at people who looked through her. And none of it fit. None of it would ever fit. She fought. That was her thing. Let her go do her thing. Hilda listened. She didn't interrupt. She didn't counter.

She didn't do any of the things Hilda normally did in conversations, which was to treat every second of silence as a concession and every pause as an opening. She just listened. Vicky trailed off. Hilda was still watching her with an expression Vicky couldn't read. That was wrong. Hilda always interrupted.

"You're right," Hilda said. Vicky waited.

"You're not a socialite. You're not built for garden parties. The tabloid rankings mean nothing, and the women you're competing against have been training for this room since childhood while you were training for a completely different arena." Hilda's voice was calm.

"You're correct on every count." Here it comes. The pivot. The word but that would undo everything Vicky just said.

"So why do you think I sent you?"

"Because it's what the family does." Vicky kept her voice flat.

"Because great-grandmother expects it."

"Great-grandmother doesn't waste resources on tradition." Hilda's eyes were steady.

"If the Season were just a formality, we would have sent you to a smaller event. Somewhere regional. Somewhere that didn't require you to compete against Windsors and Mas and every other major house in the cultivation world." Vicky's jaw tightened.

"Then why am I here?" Hilda didn't answer. She turned toward the window, watching the London skyline for a long moment.

"The Waltons are wealthy," she said finally.

"But wealth hits a ceiling. There are only so many Walmarts you can build. Amazon blew past us in the tech boom. I watched it happen. I told your uncle in 2004 that we needed to pivot to logistics, and he looked at me like I'd suggested we sell the stores." She shook her head.

"Family's been running on momentum ever since." Vicky knew this. Everyone knew this. The Walton fortune was still vast, but it wasn't growing the way it once had. She didn't need a finance degree to see the trendline.

"The Waltons have no Deity Transformation allies," Hilda said.

"We bid at the table without a seat at the table. Our Nascent Souls deploy with worse assignments. Thinner support. Higher casualty rates." She stopped. For a moment, something in her composure flickered.

"Jerry died in the major operation three years ago. You remember the operation. You fought in Boston, at the Battle for Fort Cambridge." Vicky remembered. The deployment orders and the casualty lists and the way the family went quiet for three days afterward.

"He didn't come back," Hilda said.

"And when a family loses a Nascent Soul in the field, the family gets the next pill. That's the deal. That's how it's always worked." Her voice went flat. Hard.

"Google got it instead. They sat across the table from me, looked me in the eye, and told me their 'strategic portfolio' took priority over our dead." The flat was quiet. Vicky could hear traffic from the street below. London going about its morning.

"This isn't about tradition," Hilda said.

"It's about survival. The families that forge Monarch-level alliances now are the ones that survive the next century. Everyone else gets squeezed out as cultivation advances and the spots narrow."

"So the marriage is politics."

"The marriage is whether the Waltons still exist in a hundred years."

"So I'm supposed to marry some aristocrat's idle heir. Some Windsor boy who's never held a weapon. Get packaged as a trophy wife so the family can climb a rung on the social ladder." Hilda didn't interrupt.

"I'd rather earn my Nascent Soul through deployment merit. Let the family benefit from my advancement directly instead of trading me like livestock." Hilda still didn't interrupt.

"I'm not going to spend my life standing behind some useless husband while he takes credit for the alliance my body purchased." She was breathing hard. Her voice got louder than she meant it to. Hilda waited until she was finished.

"You've got it backwards." Vicky stared at her.

"Do I."

"We didn't send you to London because you're a great debutante, Vicky. We sent you because you're a great flyer." That didn't make sense. The Windsor sons married debutantes. Women who spent years learning court etiquette and social choreography. The Queen's standards for her bloodline were legendary. Combat ability had nothing to do with it. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"There is a Windsor prince," Hilda said.

"T4. 5 Flyer." Vicky went still.

"He runs his own expedition team in the Catacombs. He's not looking for someone to stand behind him. He's looking for someone to fly next to him. Proven composure. Combat-tested. Ready to advance to Gold Core." The description was specific. Too specific. It sounded like a job posting someone wrote with her resume already on the desk.

"He wants a fighter. His grandmother demands a debutante. They've been at an impasse for years." Vicky's mouth was dry.

"Which Windsor?" Hilda paused. A fraction too long.

"Edward." Vicky's breath caught. Edward Windsor. Everyone knew him. Gold Core combat genius. CFL legend of his generation. The flyer who led his team to a national championship and then made his name in the Catacombs like flying aces was a warm-up. The memory surfaced before she could stop it. She was seven. Cross-legged on the floor of the living room. The CFL finals on the screen. Edward Windsor was twenty-two, and he moved through the air like gravity didn't apply to him. She remembered his sword work.

The way he read the field three moves ahead. The way he made everyone around him look slower just by existing in the same frame. Her parents watched too. They talked about him constantly that season. Asked whether Vicky was paying attention. Whether she liked the game. Whether she thought she'd want to play someday. She had his poster on her wall. Him on the victory platform, sword over his shoulder, the championship trophy floating beside him on a disk of spiritual light. She thought she had a crush.

She was seven. It was the kind of thing seven-year-olds did. Three weeks after the championship, her great-grandmother visited. The old woman almost never left the family compound, and when she did, it meant someone important was about to have their life rearranged. She sat Vicky down in the sunroom. Just the two of them. You could play in the CFL someday. You have the discipline for it. But the path is hard. You would need to advance to Qi Refining as a child.

Spend years grinding your divine sense through formation training and martial arts. Vicky took the deal. She remembered the exact moment. The swell in her chest. The feeling of being chosen. Being special. The most powerful person in her family seeing her and finding her worthy of something difficult. Eleven years of divine sense training. The hardest work of her life. While other kids played, she sat at the formation desk until her spiritual sea ached.

While other teenagers dated and went to parties, she drilled combat forms until her muscles screamed. She thought she was earning something. Building something that belonged to her and nobody else. Now she saw the timeline. Edward Windsor's CFL breakout. Her parents' sudden interest. The great-grandmother's visit, three weeks later. The "opportunity" that just happened to build Vicky into exactly the kind of cultivator Edward Windsor would want as a combat partner seventeen years down the line.

The great-grandmother didn't see something special in a seven-year-old girl. She watched a Windsor demonstrate his combat talents on national television and started building a product to match. Vicky stared at her hands. She'd heard about this. In the Catacombs, where divine blood was everything, families raised children to be the perfect brides and grooms. She always thought it was an interesting story. Always sounded medieval when other people did it. The flat was quiet. Vicky stood. Looked out the window.

Looked out at London, gray and damp and completely indifferent to what was happening inside this room. Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against the glass until they stopped. She thought about Harry's team. The expedition roster she'd committed to. The people who wanted her because of what she could do, who'd built their deployment plan around having her at their side. If she married Edward, she'd join his team. His war. His expedition structure.

She'd back out of Harry's squad and call him to explain that she was withdrawing because her family had a better offer. Harry trusted her. She didn't move. The thought added its weight to the silence. She could walk away. Hilda would let her. But Vicky had never walked away from something that mattered to the people she loved. Even now. Even knowing what she knew. She couldn't say no. Vicky straightened. Her hands came off the glass. When she turned around, the mask wasn't quite back in place.

"I'll stay," she said.

"I'll compete at the ball." Hilda's expression didn't change.

"But I have a condition." Vicky crossed her arms.

"I meet Edward before I agree to anything. Face to face. I'm not marrying a poster." Hilda nodded. Once. Like she expected exactly this.

"Nobody in the family will force you to marry someone you don't want. I made sure of that before I sent you here." Her voice was calm.

"All we're asking is that you give it a genuine chance. Do your best at the ball. Let Edward see who you actually are." Who she actually was. Vicky almost laughed. She wanted to say something cutting. Something sharp enough to make Hilda flinch. What came out was nothing. Because the honest answer was that she didn't know anymore.

Leo's POV Leo sat on a wooden bench that had probably been uncomfortable since the Victorian era. The cell smelled like old stone and older grievances. The walls were gray brick. The door was iron. A single light buzzed overhead, casting the kind of pale glow that made everyone look guilty. Three Foundation Establishment guards stood in a row outside the bars. Red tunics. Gold buttons. Bearskin hats that added two feet to their height. The Queen's Guard.

Leo had seen them in photographs, standing motionless outside Buckingham Palace while tourists posed for selfies. He'd assumed they were ceremonial. They were not ceremonial. The one in the middle hadn't blinked in four minutes. Leo had been counting.

"Let me explain again," Leo said.

"I was looking for someone."

"You were observed, sir, moving through the service corridors." The guard's voice was measured and unhurried.

"Behind the stables. In the vicinity of the restricted formation arrays."

"Yes."

"Without authorization."

"I had a box pass."

"A box pass does not extend to restricted areas, sir. I should have thought that was rather self-evident."

"I understand that now." The guard on the left shifted. His bearskin hat tilted forward half an inch, which Leo interpreted as disapproval.

"You were further observed," the center guard continued, "passing through three separate security perimeters whilst conducting what witnesses were good enough to describe as 'rather deliberate divine sense sweeps of the surrounding area.'""I was trying to find someone."

"Whom, sir?"

"Kenji Morimoto. Japanese. Seventy-six years old. Spectacles. Probably running."

"And might I ask why you were pursuing this gentleman?" Because he owes me seven million pounds and I'm going to wring it out of him personally.

"Because he's responsible for what happened to the race."

"You're suggesting, sir," the center guard said slowly, "that you were in pursuit of the individual responsible for the Windsor's Pride incident."

"I really am trying to help." The guard on the right produced a small notebook. He flipped it open.

"At approximately fourteen thirty-two, the gentleman was observed departing the Windsor family box. At fourteen thirty-five, the gentleman entered the service corridor behind the eastern grandstand. At fourteen forty-seven, the gentleman attempted to gain access to the formation control room by means of, and I quote, 'walking in as though he owned the place.'""The door was open."

"The door was locked, sir."

"It opened when I pushed it."

"Because you disrupted the locking formation with your divine sense, sir. Which is, if I may say, rather the point." Leo considered this.

"I was looking for Morimoto." The center guard stepped closer to the bars. His bearskin hat blocked out the light, casting his face in shadow.

"Mr. Chen. You are an American citizen. A professional athlete. A guest in this country." His voice was quiet now.

"Windsor's Pride is not merely a horse. I wonder whether you quite appreciate the gravity of the situation. Her humiliation on the international stage constitutes a diplomatic embarrassment of very considerable magnitude." It's only a race. Why do you have to be mad?

"Look," he said instead.

"I understand you're upset. I would be upset too. But I'm telling you the truth. The man responsible for this is Kenji Morimoto. He was in the stables before the race. He did something to Ever Enduring. I was trying to track him down before he..." Leo caught himself.

"Before he escaped."

"Before he escaped."

"Yes."

"And your personal interest in apprehending this gentleman, sir?"

"Justice." Leo kept his face neutral.

"I care deeply about justice." The guard's expression suggested this was not compelling testimony. Leo tried a different approach.

"Is Victoria Walton here? She can vouch for me. She's my... I'm her cavalier. For the Queen Charlotte's Ball." The center guard's eyes narrowed.

"Victoria Walton," he repeated.

"The American lady who caused the incident at the Pemberton Tea."

"That's not really relevant."

"You're suggesting she's involved in this matter, sir?" Leo's jaw tightened. This was going nowhere. Every minute in this cell was a minute Morimoto was getting further away. Probably on a boat. Probably laughing. The door at the end of the corridor opened. Footsteps. A Gold Core spiritual signature. A man approached the door. Late twenties in appearance, but Gold Core cultivators aged slowly. His smile stood out first. The kind that put a room at ease before you'd worked out why. The three guards turned.

Their bearskin hats swiveled in unison. Then they saw who it was.

"Superior." The center guard's voice cracked.

"We weren't informed you would be visiting, sir."

"No, well, I hadn't planned on it. Then I heard you'd gone and locked up someone rather interesting." He looked past the guards, directly at Leo.

"Leo Chen. The Giants' new signing." His eyes lit up with what appeared to be genuine pleasure.

"I followed your championship run, you know. Brilliant stuff. Coach Williams never quite shut up about you when I saw him last. Said you see things on the pitch that simply aren't there for other people." Leo stared at him.

"You know Coach Williams?"

"Know him?" The man laughed. It was a generous laugh.

"He coached me. Centre position, class of 2013. We took the championship that year. Best four years of my life, and I include several rather hairy deployments in that comparison." The tension in Leo's shoulders released. He stood up from the bench.

"You're a Bulldog."

"One doesn't forget New Haven." He nodded. Then he turned to the guards.

"Would you give us the room, please?" The center guard hesitated.

"I'm afraid the gentleman hasn't yet been cleared, Superior. Standing protocol does require..."

"I'm asking politely." A beat of silence. The three guards exchanged glances.

"Of course, Superior." They filed out. The door closed behind them. The man produced a key from his coat pocket and unlocked the cell. The door swung open with a creak. Leo stepped out.

"I don't know how to thank you. I've been trying to explain that Morimoto is the one responsible. He was in the stables before the race. He did something to Ever Enduring. I need to find him before he..." Leo stopped himself.

"Before he gets away."

"Before he gets away." The man's smile turned knowing.

"You do seem terrifically keen to find Mr. Morimoto."

"He made a mess of everything. I want to help track him down. Whatever you need."

"Good." The man extended his hand.

"Then let's see what we can do." Leo shook it.

"I didn't catch your name."

"Edward." The smile widened.

"Edward Windsor."