Read Chapter 23: The Veiled Woman Again

The world dissolved into smoke and thunder. Harrow was still in the Duke’s study, the letter crumpled in his fist, the name MARCHAND burning behind his eyes. The ten minutes Wellington had granted him had dwindled to nothing—the Duke had already been escorted out by red-coated aides, leaving Harrow alone with the echo of his own desperate warning.

Then the wall exploded.

He hit the floor as plaster and timber rained down. The shockwave rolled over him, hot and violent, and for a moment he thought the reset had come—that familiar wrenching sensation, the cold plunge into darkness. But the pain didn’t come. No crack of light behind his eyes. He was still here, still alive, ears ringing, chest heaving.

Bootsteps crunched through the debris. A figure knelt beside him, and through the haze of dust he saw a familiar face—lined, weathered, the pale eyes of a man who had seen too many dawns.

“Captain Harrow,” Dr. Bastian said. “We have very little time.”

Harrow blinked. “You—you’re the surgeon. From the field hospital.”

“That is what I am when I need to be.” Bastian pulled him to his feet. The study was gutted; the far wall gaped open to the grey morning, smoke curling through the breach. Outside, the world rumbled with artillery, but here, in this shattered room, there was only the two of them. “I have been watching you, Captain. Through every iteration. And I have seen what you have not.”

Harrow’s throat was raw. “What are you talking about?”

“The loop is not yours alone.” Bastian’s voice was low, urgent. “You believe you are the only one trapped in this day, the only one fighting to escape it. But you are wrong.”

The words landed like a blow. Harrow’s mind raced—Moreau’s knowing grin, the ring, the watchmaker’s network of agents asking about the serpent. He had assumed it was all connected, all part of one conspiracy. But what if—

“There are others,” Bastian continued. “Others who have been pulled into this moment, who have lived it as many times as you. Some are trying to fix the timeline. Others are trying to break it.”

“Who?” Harrow demanded. “Who else is looping?”

Bastian’s mouth tightened. “The man who orchestrated this entire affair, Captain. The true murderer. He is not a French officer. He is not a British traitor. He is a traveler, like you, hired to rewrite history—not by changing the outcome of the battle, but by eliminating a witness who would otherwise expose a crime that has already been committed. A crime that will unravel everything if it is allowed to surface.”

Harrow’s grip tightened on the letter. “The witness. The one in the farmhouse cellar. The woman who knows the name Marchand.”

Bastian shook his head. “No. The cellar was a misdirection—a trap laid for you, to keep you chasing shadows while the true witness was being moved.” He stepped closer, and his eyes were hard now, almost fierce. “The witness is not Fersen. It was never Fersen. The Count was a decoy, meant to draw your attention and your protection. The real witness is a young woman, Captain. She has seen what happened in that hidden room. She knows the identity of the man behind the serpent, and she knows what he did to Colonel DuPont.”

“Élise Marchand,” Harrow said, the name rising unbidden from the letter still in his fist. “She’s his sister?”

“She is more than that.” Bastian glanced toward the shattered window, where the smoke was thickening. Another shell screamed overhead, and they both braced. It landed somewhere distant, muffled by the roar of the battle. “She is the only living soul who can place the murderer at the scene. DuPont was killed in a duel—that much is true. But he was killed because he had discovered what Marchand had done. He was silenced, and his death was made to look like a matter of honor.”

Harrow’s mind spun. “Marchand killed DuPont to cover the crime. But the letter from DuPont said he confronted the scarred officer. If Marchand is the scarred officer, then he’s the one in the hidden room. He’s the one who has been hunting me.”

“He has been hunting you because you are the only variable he cannot predict,” Bastian said. “You were not part of his original design. You were not supposed to be here. But you arrived, and you began asking questions, and now the entire mechanism is in danger of collapsing.”

Harrow laughed, a short, bitter sound. “I’m not the one trying to rewrite history. I’m just trying to survive the day.”

“And that is precisely why he fears you.” Bastian seized his arm. “You are not trying to change anything. You are trying to understand. And understanding is what will undo him.”

Another shell struck the building, closer this time. The floor shuddered; plaster rained from the ceiling. Bastian’s grip tightened.

“Listen to me, Captain. The time you have been given is not a punishment. It is a gift—a chance to see what others have missed. But you must stop looking for the assassin among the French. Stop looking among the British. The assassin is not from this time at all.”

Harrow stared at him. “You’re saying the murderer is a time traveler?”

“I am saying that you are not the first to wear that ring.” Bastian’s eyes flicked to Harrow’s hand, where the serpent ring still glinted. “And you will not be the last. But the man who wants this timeline to fracture—he has been here for longer than you can imagine. He has tried many times to reach his goal, and each time he has failed. Do you know why?”

Harrow shook his head, mute.

“Because he cannot kill what he cannot find. And the witness—Élise Marchand—has been hidden from him in every iteration. In every loop, she has escaped him. But this time, the mechanism is different. This time, he has help.”

“Moreau.”

“Moreau is a pawn,” Bastian said dismissively. “A courier with delusions of grandeur. He knows about the loop because he was told about it, but he does not understand it. He is a blunt instrument.”

“Then who is the hand wielding him?”

Bastian’s pale eyes were unreadable. “Find the young woman. Find Élise Marchand. She is not in the farmhouse cellar—that was bait. She is in the village, hidden within the chaos of the retreat. There is a chapel, north of the church, half-ruined by shellfire. He has brought her there because it is close enough to the battlefield that no one will notice the commotion. He intends to kill her before the seventh hour, when the crime will be exposed.”

“What crime?” Harrow demanded. “What is so important that he would tear apart the timeline to hide it?”

Bastian opened his mouth to answer, and then the world went white.

The shell must have struck directly above them. Harrow felt no pain, only a vast, crushing pressure, and then nothing at all—a silence so complete it was almost holy. He was lifted, torn, scattered across the ruined room like ash from a fire.

And then the dark closed in.

He snapped awake on the hard ground of the farmyard, the morning air cool against his skin, the sounds of the battlefield a distant rumble. He was whole. He was alive. He was—

He sat up, his hand instinctively going to his throat, then to his belt. No injuries. No blood. The reset had come.

But the words were still in his head, carved there like stone.

*The name is Marchand.*

Harrow rose to his feet, his eyes scanning the horizon. The farmhouse stood intact behind him, the orchard undisturbed, the world teetering on the edge of the same bloody dawn he had lived a hundred times before.

And somewhere in the village, in a chapel half-broken by shellfire, a young woman was waiting to be killed.

He looked down at the letter in his pocket—DuPont’s letter, fresh again, as if it had never been read. He did not need to open it. He knew what it said. He knew the name, the place, the hour.

Harrow began to run.

He had lost count of how many times he had crossed this ground, how many times he had chased the thread of this mystery through the smoke and the blood. But this time, he was not running from death.

He was running toward it.