Read Chapter 31: The Reunion

The chapel door groaned on rusted hinges, and Tom slipped through with the box clutched to his chest like a newborn. St. Dunstan's interior was a cavern of shadow, the stained glass shattered, the pews reduced to charcoal ribs. Candlelight bled from behind the altar, where a figure knelt—robed, hooded, still as a grave marker.

Alice was not there.

Tom's heart seized. The monk had lied. Or worse—the monk had moved her. Then the kneeling figure turned, and Tom saw the face beneath the hood: hollow cheeks, eyes like burned-out sockets, a smile that belonged on a death mask.

"You came," the monk said. "I knew the blood would call to blood."

"Where is she?"

The monk rose, unhurried, brushing dust from his robes. "Safe. Closer than you think." He gestured to the wall behind the altar, where a confessional stood—not a proper one, but a wooden frame patched into the stone, its door sealed with fresh mortar. "Your sister has been my guest for three days. She talks in her sleep, you know. She dreams of a mother who taught her to read by candlelight, who smelled of smoke and lavender."

Tom's grip tightened on the box. "Let her go. Take this. Take me. Just—"

"Take you? What would I do with a flea?" The monk laughed, a dry rasp. "I need what's in that box. And you need what's behind that door. A fair trade, I think."

He reached into his robe and produced a chisel. One stroke against the mortar, then another, and the door cracked open. A pale hand reached through the gap, then an arm, then Alice's face—smudged with grime, her dark hair tangled, but alive. Her eyes found Tom and filled with tears.

"Tommy," she breathed.

The monk moved before Tom could. He seized Alice by the wrist and dragged her out, holding her against him with one arm while his other hand produced a small knife, pressed to her throat.

"The box, thief. Now."

Tom hesitated—one heartbeat, two. Then he lunged, not away, but forward, swinging the iron box like a battering ram. It caught the monk's knife hand, knocking it wide, and the momentum sent Alice stumbling free. She scrambled toward Tom, and he shoved her behind him, raising the box as the monk recovered and came at him again.

The blade scraped across the iron's surface, sending sparks into the dark. Tom swung again, caught the monk's shoulder, heard bone crack. The monk grunted but did not fall—instead, he hooked a foot behind Tom's ankle and sent him crashing to the stone floor. The box slid from Tom's grasp, skittering across the chapel, and the monk dove for it.

Alice screamed. Tom scrambled, catching the monk's ankle, dragging him back. They fought in the dust, two desperate animals, until Tom's fingers found a loose candle stand and brought it down across the monk's skull. The monk went limp.

Tom lay there a moment, chest heaving, then pushed himself up and retrieved the box. Alice was beside him in an instant, her hands on his face, checking for wounds.

"You're alive," she whispered. "I thought—Mother said—"

"Mother's dead." The words came out harder than he meant. "I found her letter. The key. I came back for you."

Alice's face crumpled, then steadied. She had their mother's resolve—Tom saw it now, the same set to her jaw. "Then you know what this is." She touched the box, her fingers tracing its seams. "Do you know what's inside? Truly?"

"Papers. A confession. Some man's hair."

Alice shook her head. "More than that. Mother told me—the night before she sent me away. She said the box contains a pardon, signed by the King himself. A full pardon, for any crime, for the one who carries it. But the lock is blood-bound, and not just any blood."

Tom already had the key out. He found the small seam he'd cracked open before, the one that had yielded the confession. "I opened it once. Partially. She said it needed royal blood."

"Not royal blood. The *correct* blood." Alice pulled a length of twine from her neck, and on it hung a small brass locket, tarnished and worn. She opened it, and inside was a tiny wax sigil, pressed with a crown. "Mother had this. She said it was given to her by a man who owed her a debt. A man who said it would open any lock sealed by the crown."

Tom's hand shook as he took the locket. "Why didn't she use it?"

"Because she wasn't the one the box chose." Alice bit her lip. "She said the blood must be from the same line that sealed it. The Stuarts. Mother served the old queen's household, before the war. She knew—she knew what was in the blood."

Tom stared at the sigil, then at the box. "So my blood won't work."

"Yours is half of hers. But half is not enough."

He pricked his finger anyway—a small, foolish defiance—and pressed it to the lock. Nothing. The mechanism stayed silent, stubborn.

"Then we find the other half." Tom tucked the locket into his shirt, next to the key. He glanced at the monk, unconscious on the floor. "Before he wakes, and before the red-cloaked man finds this place."

Alice nodded, and Tom helped her to her feet. Outside, the fire still raged—London burning, and the city's gates closing one by one. But Tom had a direction now, a purpose that burned brighter than any flame.

"What's Blackfen?" he asked, hoisting the box.

Alice blinked. "A village south of the river. Why?"

"Because that's where we're not going." Tom smiled grimly. "The gatekeeper sold me that name. Which means the red-cloaked man will be waiting there for me. So instead, we go north, into the heart of the fire. Where no one will think to look."

Alice looked at him, then at the burning sky beyond the shattered windows. "Mother always said you were the clever one."

"Mother said a lot of things." He took her hand. "Now move."

They slipped out through a side door, into the smoke and screaming streets, leaving the monk to wake alone in the ruins—with nothing but the sound of their footsteps fading into the inferno.