Read Chapter 29: What Must Change

The morning light over Mont-Saint-Jean was pale and thin, like watered milk. Harrow stood at the edge of the farmyard, watching the distant ridge where French guns would soon be positioned. He had stopped counting his deaths. The number no longer mattered. What mattered was that he was here again, and Auguste Whitworth was rotting in whatever makeshift cell Wellington had used, and the murder of DuPont—that careful, intricate crime that had consumed him across a dozen loops—now felt like a child's puzzle compared to the one before him.

*What pattern am I meant to understand?*

The question gnawed at him as he walked toward the hospital tents. He needed Élise. In the previous loops she had always died or disappeared before he could find her. But this time—this time he had arrived earlier. The surgeon's tent was crowded with the wounded from the skirmishes at Quatre Bras, but he found her kneeling beside a young soldier, pressing clean linen against his shoulder wound.

She looked up when his shadow fell across her. Her eyes widened. "You. The officer who kept asking about my brother."

"You're alive," he said, the words coming out rougher than he intended.

"Shouldn't I be?" She returned to her work, her fingers moving with practiced efficiency. "I was in Brussels when the battle started. I only arrived this morning with the supply wagons."

Harrow crouched beside her. The wounded soldier had drifted into unconsciousness, his breathing shallow. "Élise, I need to ask you something about your brother. Thomas."

Her hands stilled. "I've told you everything I know. He died at Quatre Bras, same as so many others. A musket ball—"

"No." Harrow lowered his voice. "He didn't die in battle, did he? Not from the front."

She turned to face him fully now, and he saw something shift behind her eyes—a guardedness that had not been there a moment before. "What do you mean by that?"

"Was there an inquiry? A surgeon's report?"

Élise glanced around the tent, then stood and walked toward the rear flap. Harrow followed. Outside, behind the canvas wall, the sounds of the army faded to a dull murmur. She crossed her arms, and for a moment she looked younger than her years—a girl carrying a weight she'd never asked for.

"I found a letter among his things," she said quietly. "From his commanding officer. It said Thomas was killed by a ball to the back while withdrawing from the field. They called it a tragic accident. The letter said he was a brave soldier who died in service to his king." Her jaw tightened. "But Thomas never withdrew from a fight in his life. He was a messenger. He carried dispatches. He had no business at the front line at all."

"A messenger." Harrow's mind raced. "What was he carrying?"

"I don't know. His satchel was empty when they brought him back. I assumed—" She stopped, shaking her head. "I assumed someone had looted the body. It happens after battles. Men take what they can."

Harrow felt the pieces beginning to slide into place, a pattern emerging from the chaos of all his loops. He reached out and gripped her arm. "Where is he buried? Your brother."

"Near the farmhouse at Papelotte. The burial detail didn't have time to dig proper graves." Her voice cracked. "Why does this matter? The battle—it's already begun."

"Not yet," Harrow said. "And if I'm right, it may never need to."

---

The burial ground at Papelotte was a scar of turned earth, raw and ugly against the green Belgian countryside. Harrow counted the fresh mounds until he found one marked with a simple wooden cross, the name THOMAS ABEL carved in unsteady letters. Someone had wept while writing it. He fell to his knees and began to dig.

The soil was still loose. It took him less than ten minutes to reach the body. The uniform was dark with dried blood, the face already waxy and unreal. Harrow forced himself not to look at it. Instead he searched the coat, the inner pockets, the waistband. Nothing. He turned the body gently, finding the wound Élise had described—a ragged hole in the back, just below the shoulder blade. Exit wound much larger, the ball having torn through lung and bone.

But it was what he found beneath the body that made him stop.

A folded paper, stained with blood, pressed between the corpse and the lining of the coat. It had been hidden with deliberate care. Harrow pulled it free and smoothed it open.

The handwriting was unmistakable. Looping, theatrical, utterly French.

*To His Grace the Duke of Wellington,*

*I write not as an enemy but as a soldier who has seen enough of war's futility. We have fought across Europe for twenty years, and yet the map has changed little. I propose a cessation of hostilities, an armistice to discuss terms. Lives need not be sacrificed for pride. Meet me under flag of truce at the farmhouse of Mont-Saint-Jean, two hours before noon. I will come alone.*

*Bonaparte*

Harrow read it twice, then a third time. His hands were trembling.

"Napoleon offered peace," he whispered. "He actually offered peace."

And someone had made sure the message never arrived.

He checked the body again, more carefully now. Thomas Abel had been carrying this letter from the French lines to Wellington's headquarters. It would have meant an armistice. A ceasefire. The battle might never have happened—the carnage, the slaughter, the thousands of deaths that would occur within the hour, all of it avoided. But the letter was stolen. And Abel was shot in the back to ensure no one knew it had ever existed.

He thought of the silver pocket watch he'd found in the first loop, the one with the hidden blade. It had belonged to Abel. The killer had taken it after shooting him, perhaps as a trophy, perhaps to make the death look like a common robbery. When Harrow found it in the twin's tent, he'd assumed it was the murder weapon used on DuPont. But it was never meant for DuPont. The watch was Abel's. The murder of DuPont at the seventh hour—that had been a distraction, a theatrical performance designed to confuse.

The real crime had already happened.

Harrow stood, the letter clutched in his fist. He could feel the weight of every previous loop pressing down on him—all those deaths, all those failed attempts, all the moments he had wasted pursuing a murderer when the true villain had been playing a much larger game. Auguste had killed DuPont not to avenge his brother, not to punish the French spy who'd exposed him, but to draw attention away from the stolen letter. To create chaos during Wellington's final preparations. To ensure that when the French guns opened fire, the British would have no reason to expect a flag of truce.

"I found the letter," Harrow said aloud, as if saying it would make it real. "I found the letter, and the battle doesn't have to happen."

But even as the hope surged through him, doubt crept in behind it. He remembered Auguste's gloating face in the interrogation room. *You've misunderstood everything. The loop will only break when you understand what you truly need to change.*

Stopping the murder was not enough. Auguste had told him that. But this—this letter—was something else. This was not about uncovering a crime. It was about completing a mission. He had to deliver the letter to Wellington. He had to let the Duke know that Napoleon wished to talk.

He began to run.

---

The road to Wellington's headquarters was clogged with supply wagons and columns of infantry. Harrow pushed through them, the letter clutched against his chest. Above him, the sky was clear and blue, and somewhere to the east he could hear the distant rumble of cannon fire—the first guns of the day, probing shots from Napoleon's artillery.

He had perhaps an hour before the battle truly began. An hour to reach the Duke, to explain the letter's origin, to convince him that it was genuine and not some French deception. But as he ran, another thought clawed at the edges of his mind.

If Auguste had stolen the letter, then Auguste knew about Napoleon's offer. Which meant Auguste had been working to ensure the battle happened. But Auguste was a twin—a murderer impersonating his brother, a man consumed by vengeance. Who was he working for? What larger purpose did his sabotage serve?

And if the letter never reached Wellington, if the battle happened exactly as history recorded—

Harrow skidded to a halt.

Ahead of him, blocking the road to the farmhouse headquarters, stood a row of British cavalry. Their uniforms were immaculate, their horses stamping impatiently. And at their head, sitting astride a black stallion, was a man whose face Harrow knew as well as his own reflection.

Major Auguste Whitworth. No—the twin. Alive, not arrested, not dead by his own hand.

It was not the same loop. He had been a fool to think it would be.

Auguste smiled down at him, and the smile was ice. "Captain Harrow," he called. "So good to see you again. I was beginning to think you'd lost your way."