He cut through side streets, following the narrow, twisting roads like a man made for this. Carriages rattled past. Torchlight flickered against brick. The noise of London rose and fell around him, but none of it reached him.
He listened for one thing only, the rhythm of the carriage he had chased. Two horses. Hard driven. The right one with a sharp, uneven exhale. He had heard it when he pursued the carriage.
He would know that rhythm anywhere. Even at the edge of the world.
He kept closing in on them.
A cutpurse darted into an alley as he rode past. Marcus did not turn his head. A drunk slumped near a tavern door. He did not slow. A coal wagon clattered by, and he shifted aside without losing speed.
Everything narrowed to a single imperative.
Find her.
The streets branched, then branched again.
He sifted them by instinct alone. He hunted the echo of weight in dirt, the faint arc of wheels scraping a curb, the thin drift of lantern soot carried downwind.
A sound. Too slight for any ordinary ear.
Marcus slowed.
Two men argued through open shutters somewhere ahead.
He turned toward the far side of Bruton Street, where a narrow lane curved behind a row of neglected houses. The sort landlords forgot. The sort men used when they wished not to be seen.
A faint glow leaked beneath one warped door.
The voices sharpened.
“…told you not to touch her—Fenwick said leave her—”
“She kicked me! Nearly broke my damn ribs—”
Marcus’s pulse went still.
No more searching. No more guessing.
Here.
He dismounted and stepped into the alley, every muscle shifting from pursuit to calculation. He moved along the wall, boots soundless on dirt. At the back of the building, a small iron grate sat half buried beneath grime.
A street vent.
Marcus dropped into a crouch and listened.
Not for words. Not for movement.
For her.
A single, sharp burst of air, like someone testing the space around them. A faint scrape of fabric. The near-silent shift of weight he had learned without realizing it.
“Lila,” he breathed, the sound no louder than a heartbeat.
He pressed his palm to the wall. Stone cold against his skin.
Stay with me. Just a little longer.
A footstep thudded inside. Then another.
