The cold morning air hit Elenora's face like a physical slap as she burst through the bronze doors of the mausoleum. In her arms, she clutched the small leather box as if it were her own heart. Behind her, the heavy thuds of the struggle and the muffled shouts of men echoed from the stone walls, sounding like a dying beast.
Captain Miller and two guards immediately rushed toward her, their rifles drawn.
"Your Grace! We heard the shot," Miller shouted, his eyes darting to the box. "We must get you to the carriage immediately. It's not safe here."
Elenora stopped, her breath hitching in her throat. Every instinct of her aristocratic upbringing told her to run—to protect the asset, to save the Duchess, to preserve the Warwick name at all costs. That was the contract. That was the logic she had lived by for twenty-three years.
But the image of Darius—his storm-gray eyes, the way he had shoved her toward the pedestal, the raw, brutal sound of his fist hitting marble—refused to leave her mind. He was a commoner, a man who despised her class, yet he was the only person who had stood between her and the abyss.
"He's still inside," she whispered, her voice cracking against the wind.
"My orders are to protect you, Duchess," Miller pressed, grabbing her arm. "The Minister is a soldier. He knows the risks."
"The Minister is my husband!" Elenora snapped, wrenching her arm away with a sudden, violent authority. "And I am not leaving him in a tomb."
* * *
Elenora didn't wait for Miller's approval. She turned and ran back toward the mausoleum, the heavy box thumping against her ribs.
Inside, the shadows were chaotic. One of the attackers was down, groaning on the floor, but the second—the larger one with the jagged dagger—had Darius pinned against the side of a cenotaph. Darius's pistol was gone, kicked across the room, and he was holding the man's knife-hand back with both of his, his knuckles white, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Captain, now!" Elenora's voice rang through the vaulted ceiling.
The guards flooded in, the light from their lanterns cutting through the gloom. Realizing the tide had turned, the attacker made a desperate move to slice at Darius's throat, but Darius twisted, using the man's momentum to slam him into the marble edge. Before the man could recover, Miller's soldiers had him pinned.
Darius slumped against the tomb of Lord Edward, sliding slowly to the floor. His coat was torn, and a dark, blooming stain was spreading across his shoulder.
Elenora dropped to her knees beside him, the leather box forgotten on the floor for a brief, frantic moment.
"You're hurt," she breathed, her hands hovering over the wound, unsure whether to touch him.
Darius looked up, his face pale but his gaze still burning with that terrifying intensity. He let out a sharp, pained laugh. "I told you... to run. You are a terrible... listener, Elenora."
"And you are a terrible bodyguard," she retorted, though her hands were shaking. She reached out, pressing her silk handkerchief against his shoulder to stem the bleeding. "We have the box. We have it all."
* * *
They returned to the main house in a state of grim silence. Miller and his men remained outside, a ring of iron around Warwick House, while Elenora led a limping Darius into her private study.
She didn't call for the servants. She didn't want anyone else to see the Minister of the Crown bleeding, or the Duchess with dirt on her hem and blood on her hands. She brought a basin of water and bandages herself, working with a clinical focus that mirrored his own.
Darius sat in her father's high-backed chair, watching her. The silence between them was no longer a battleground—it was a shared exhaustion.
"Open it," he said, his voice raspy as she finished tying the bandage. "Let's see what cost us so much blood."
Elenora picked up the leather box. It wasn't locked; it was held shut by a wax seal bearing her father's personal signet. She broke it with a sharp snap of her fingernail.
Inside, there was a single, small logbook and a stack of letters. She pulled out the logbook first. The cover was embossed with a symbol she recognized instantly: a stylized swan.
"The Silent Swan's manifest," Darius whispered, leaning in despite the pain.
Elenora flipped through the pages. It wasn't just a list of cargo. It was a record of illegal arms shipments—weapons from the Crown's own armory, diverted to rebel factions in the colonies. Every entry was countersigned by the Admiralty.
And at the very bottom of the final page, there was a letter from her father, addressed to her.
— "To my dearest Elenora. If you are reading this, I am gone, and the weight of my shame has found you. I was not the architect of this treason—I was merely the banker. Lord Montclair holds the original contracts. He used my debts to turn Warwick House into a laundromat for his blood money. He killed Elmsworth because Elmsworth found the ship. He will kill me next. Trust no one, my daughter. Not the Crown, and especially not the men who claim to be your friends."
* * *
The room felt suddenly cold. Elenora dropped the letter onto the desk. Her father wasn't just a victim; he was a silent accomplice who had traded the family honor for a reprieve from debt.
"He didn't protect the name," she said, her voice barely audible. "He sold it."
Darius reached out, his uninjured hand closing over hers. His grip was surprisingly warm, a solid anchor in the storm of her realization.
"He did one thing right," Darius said, his gray eyes locking onto hers. "He hid this well enough for us to find it. With this manifest and Montclair's signatures, we don't just have a defense—we have a guillotine."
Elenora looked at their joined hands, then back at the man she had married out of spite and survival. The contract had been about power and archives, but now, they were holding a secret that could topple the government itself.
"Montclair will know the mausoleum was breached," Elenora said, her icy resolve returning. "He will come for us."
"Let him come," Darius replied, his voice hardening into the ruthless Minister she knew. "He thinks he's fighting a Duchess and a politician. He doesn't realize he's fighting us."
The word 'us' hung in the air—a new, unplanned clause in their contract.