Read Chapter 24: The Fiend's Bargain

The care home’s fire exit opened onto a narrow service lane, gravel crunching underfoot as Eliza pulled Eleanor Voss’s papery hand along. Behind them, the front doors groaned—too soon, too fast. Wren’s men were inside already.

“This way,” Julian hissed, pointing toward a rusted gate at the lane’s end. Beyond it, a black sedan sat idling, engine humming, driver unseen.

Eliza’s lungs burned. She hadn’t run like this since she was a schoolgirl caught sneaking back into dorms. Eleanor moved with surprising speed for a woman who’d spent two decades in a wheelchair—or perhaps fear was the great lubricant.

They burst through the gate. The sedan’s rear door swung open before they reached it. A man in a charcoal coat stepped out, calm as a Sunday vicar.

Lord Wren.

“Dr. Hart.” He smiled, thin lips stretching over perfect teeth. “And the prodigal nephew. How convenient.”

Julian stopped dead. His hand went to his jacket—instinct, not thought. Wren’s two companions materialized from the sedan’s far side, silent and broad.

“Eleanor,” Wren said, his tone almost tender. “You’ve done well.”

Eleanor Voss released Eliza’s hand. She walked toward Wren without looking back.

“You said they’d come alone,” she murmured. “You said there’d be a chance to—"

“There is,” Wren said. “For you. Not for them.”

Eliza’s heart hammered against her ribs. Betrayal was one thing—she’d expected that. But this Wren, she realized, hadn’t come to kill them. He’d come to collect.

“You’re wondering why I haven’t simply had you shot,” Wren said, reading her silence with unsettling precision. “The answer is simple. I need what you have.”

“The Codex?” Eliza spat. “I don’t have it. I never did.”

“No. But you know where it is. You and your mother both knew. And now that Whitmore’s gone and Marcus is ash, you’re the last living thread to it.” He stepped closer. “Or nearly the last.”

Eleanor flinched at his side. Eliza saw it.

“You killed Whitmore,” Eliza said. “The same way you killed Marcus.”

Wren’s smile didn’t waver. “I arranged it, yes. Whitmore was a greedy man—he thought he could squeeze me for the Codex’s location, same as Marcus did. But Marcus was cleverer. He hid it where I couldn’t reach. Where only his blood could find it.”

His eyes flicked to Julian. Slow recognition dawned.

“And you brought him to me,” Wren said, almost admiring. “The last Hart standing, delivering the last Hart heir to my doorstep.”

Julian’s jaw tightened. He said nothing.

“Here’s my offer, Dr. Hart.” Wren produced a folded document from his coat. “A signed letter to the university and the Thames Valley Police, withdrawing all suspicion against you. Your name cleared. Your career restored.”

“And in exchange?”

“You leave Oxford. Tonight. You take nothing—no papers, no letters, no memories you could monetize. And you tell me where Marcus hid the Codex.”

Eliza stared at the document. It was thick cream paper, embossed with the Archai’s crest. A death sentence dressed in a pardon.

“Why do you need me to tell you?” she asked. “You killed Marcus. You could have tortured it out of him before he died.”

Wren’s eyes narrowed. “Marcus’s death was regrettably swift. As was Whitmore’s—though that was the point, to send a message.” He paused. “I admit, I underestimated how well Marcus had hidden his little confession. But you, Dr. Hart—you have the one thing I lack.”

“The ring,” she said, understanding.

“The ring.” Wren nodded. “The Hart line’s key to where Marcus’s forebears buried the truth. Your mother was meant to keep it safe. She failed. You won’t.”

Eliza’s hand went to her pocket, where the gold owl ring sat cool against her fingers. Weighted. Ancient. A key, Eleanor had called it, to a grove beneath the water—but also, perhaps, to something older.

“If I agree,” she said slowly, “how do I know you’ll keep your word?”

“You don’t. But you have nothing else. I could have you killed ten different ways before breakfast. This is the one where you live.”

It was the truth. She hated it.

“Fine,” she said. “The ring opens a compartment in the submerged chamber behind my mother’s house. The Codex isn’t there—but there’s a map to where Marcus’s father hid it. A church crypt near Abingdon. He used to say no one would hide a confession in a place of confession.”

Wren’s eyes glittered. “And you’ll show me.”

“I’ll tell you. And then I walk.”

“You’ll show me,” he repeated, soft steel. “Tonight. In person. So I know you’re not lying.”

Eliza hesitated. Then she nodded.

The sedan swallowed them. Eleanor sat in front beside the driver, silent as a ghost. Julian pressed beside Eliza in the back, hands clenched in his lap. Wren sat across from them, unmoved as marble.

“You’re making a mistake,” Julian said quietly.

“Shut up,” Wren said, without looking at him.

They drove in silence through Oxford’s amber-lit streets. Eliza watched the spires slide past like cathedral teeth. The Jericho house loomed as they turned the corner—dark windows, overgrown ivy. Wren’s men had already been here, she knew. The chamber had been swept, the chest taken. But the ring’s mechanism remained, hidden in the stone’s oldest mortar.

They stopped at the water’s edge behind the house. The Thames lay black and still, reflecting nothing.

“The compartment’s underwater,” Eliza said. “Roughly three metres down, behind the third stone to the left of the boathouse door.”

Wren gestured. One of his men stripped to his waist and waded in. Moonlight caught the pale curve of his back as he sank beneath the surface.

They waited.

The man surfaced gasping, a dripping red leather case in his hand. He held it up like a trophy.

Wren took it. His smile widened as he cracked the case open, revealing a slim codex bound in aged calfskin. Letters, numbers, formulas. The confession of a murder—or the recipe for poison.

“Excellent,” he breathed.

Eliza stepped forward. “My clearance letter.”

Wren pulled the folded document from his coat, flicked it to her feet. “As promised.”

She bent to pick it up—and heard the second car pull up behind them, engine dying with a choke.

Headlights blazed.

Julian moved.

He wasn’t fast—but the element was surprise. He swept Wren’s legs, sending the codex flying skyward. It spun end over end, pages fluttering like doves, before arcing down toward the Thames’s dark surface.

Wren screamed. His men scrambled.

Julian caught the codex one-handed at the water’s edge, mud splattering his trousers. And when he straightened, there was a badge in his other hand, glinting in the headlights.

“Lord Wren,” he said, voice hard as flint, “I’m arresting you for the murders of Marcus Hart and Daniel Whitmore.”

Eliza stared at him. At the badge. At the stranger wearing Julian’s face.

“I’m sorry,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I was never who I said I was.”