Chương 165: Disguised

The next day, Leo noticed Vicky was in a suspiciously good mood at breakfast. She'd chosen a table by the window of the hotel's dining room, ordered tea she wasn't drinking, and spent the last ten minutes smirking at a copy of The Sun while he dug into his second plate. He had ordered a full English breakfast. The plates arrived and kept arriving. Eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, toast, black pudding, and something the waiter called "bubble and squeak" that tasted like a fried vegetable patty.

The whole arrangement covered most of the table. He'd been hungry since Foundation Establishment. The body refining protocols had accelerated his metabolism, and his cultivation demanded constant fuel. Back in New Jersey, he'd been eating three dinners a day and still waking up starving. He looked at the headline of Vicky's paper. ROYAL FLUSH: Prince Edward caught gambling in Leicester Square The photograph showed Edward mid-stride, hat knocked off, sunglasses askew, his face unmistakably visible.

Vicky set the paper down on the white tablecloth. Then she reached into her bag and produced yesterday's edition. UNBRIDLED PASSION: Lovesick Ever Enduring chases Windsor mare to Heathrow She placed it beside today's paper. Side by side. Two front pages. Neither one mentioned Victoria Walton.

"That's two days in a row." She picked up her tea.

"A new record." Leo focused on his eggs.

"You keep disappearing on me, Leo." She turned a page.

"Where did you end up yesterday?" The two newspapers sat there like evidence. Leo could feel them accusing him. The Ascot disaster on the left. The casino incident on the right. He chewed. Swallowed. Kept his voice casual.

"Made a new friend. Cool guy." Vicky raised an eyebrow.

"You made a new friend?"

"Yeah."

"In jail?" Leo's fork paused halfway to his mouth.

"Well." He set the fork down.

"Technically, yes."

"Technically."

"He was visiting. We hit it off." Vicky's expression didn't change. Leo's mind caught up with what she'd just said.

"Wait." He straightened.

"You knew I was in jail?"

"The Royal Household sent me a message."

"They sent you a message." Leo stared at her.

"And you left me there? Overnight?"

"I weighed my options." She set her tea down.

"On one hand, my cavalier was in a holding cell. On the other hand, my cavalier was in a holding cell." She smiled.

"It was a tough call." Leo glared at her. So she'd known. She'd known he spent the night before in a holding cell. She must have gone to bed, ordered room service, watched something on the hotel television. Slept eight hours on Egyptian cotton while he sat on a metal bench under fluorescent lights. Vicky picked up yesterday's paper and laid it flat between them. Ever Enduring. Windsor's Pride. The Royal Ascot in chaos. She pointed at the photograph.

"Did you have anything to do with this?" Leo looked at the photograph. The fat stallion mid-gallop, golden contrails streaming from his hooves. He remembered Morimoto's blue pill. The stables. The sound of Ever Enduring's hooves striking spiritual platforms as he abandoned the race to pursue love. He looked away.

"Hmm." Vicky tapped today's paper.

"What about this one?" Leo's attention snapped to the page. He scanned the article. Prince Edward. Leicester Square. Gambling establishment. Credit card receipt.

"Is my name in there?"

"No." She tilted her head.

"Why?"

"Then no." He picked up his fork.

"Wasn't my fault. Sounds like that Edward guy's problem." Vicky lifted an eyebrow. She didn't ask any follow-up questions. She just watched him eat, her expression suggesting she didn't believe a word of it. Leo worked through his sausages and thought about Morimoto. Seven million pounds. The old man had promised half the winnings, and he'd vanished with the full pot. Leo wanted that money. He needed that money.

His bank account was empty, his body refining debt was crushing, and somewhere in London, an old counterfeiter sat on a fortune that belonged to him. But it wasn't just the money. Morimoto's technique at the Hippodrome. The way he'd read the cards without seeing them. Inverse derivation applied to playing cards. Leo had spent years developing his divine sense, and he'd thought he understood its limits. Morimoto had shown him he had much more to learn. Leo needed to learn that.

Which meant he needed to find Morimoto. The Hippodrome was out. They had footage of him slipping past guards. He wouldn't go back there. Edward's words surfaced in Leo's memory. The proper establishments require memberships. Years of vetting. Background checks. Leo didn't have memberships. He didn't have years of vetting. He was an American footballer with an empty wallet and a morning coat he'd been wearing for three days in a row. He needed someone who could get him into the proper establishments.

He looked at Vicky. Vicky noticed immediately.

"What?"

"Do you have any uncles in London? Any that like to gamble?" Vicky set her teacup down. The porcelain clicked against the saucer.

"Spit it out, Leo. What are you scheming?" Leo weighed his options. He could lie. He could deflect. He could make up a story about wanting to experience British high society. Vicky would see through all of it.

"Morimoto," he said.

"The counterfeiter. I'm sure he's the one behind the Ascot disaster."

"And?"

"I want to find him. Bring him to justice."

"Justice." Vicky's voice was flat.

"You want to bring your former formation teacher to justice. Out of the goodness of your heart."

"Yes."

"What's your actual motivation?" Leo's mind raced. He couldn't tell her about the seven million pounds. He couldn't explain that he'd helped Morimoto rig the race and was now owed half the winnings. That would raise questions he didn't want to answer. He needed a reason that made sense. Something that would appeal to Vicky's current priorities. Her rankings.

"Think about it." He leaned forward.

"We catch the guy who ruined the Royal Ascot? That's huge. The press would love it.

'American debutante brings criminal to justice.' Your rankings would skyrocket." Vicky stared at him.

"Since when do you care about my rankings?"

"I'm your cavalier. Your success is my success." Vicky's eyes narrowed. She studied him.

"And what do you mean, 'we'?" She crossed her arms.

"I have Penelope's river cruise in three hours. I can't go chasing counterfeiters through London because you've decided to play detective."

"Penelope's river cruise?" Leo shrugged.

"That doesn't sound official. Skip it."

"Skip a ranked social event during the Season for a man who was in jail a day ago." She pretended to consider it." Tempting."

"Have you even had fun since you got to London?" Something shifted in Vicky's expression. A flicker he couldn't quite read.

"What?"

"Nothing." She looked away.

"I just... I have responsibilities." Leo watched her. Two days ago in the gym, she'd talked about earning her place through combat. She'd seemed ready to walk away from the whole Season. Now she was worried about missing Penelope's river cruise.

"You suddenly started caring about the rankings," he said. Vicky's jaw tightened.

"That's not... I have my reasons."

"What reasons?"

"The kind I keep to myself." She folded the newspaper.

"Ask me again in a decade." Leo held her gaze for a moment. Then he let it go. Whatever had changed, she didn't want to talk about it.

"Fine." He spread his hands.

"But Hilda sent me here to help you. Let me help you."

"Hilda will kill me if she finds out I skipped an event to chase a counterfeiter through London's gambling dens."

"We're not skipping an event. We're pursuing a lead." Leo gestured at the newspapers.

"Think about how high your ranking would be if you're the one who catches Morimoto. You've been playing this whole Season wrong, Vicky. You're trying to shore up your weaknesses. Competing in arenas where you're already outmatched." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Vicky's eyes narrowed. She was listening.

"Show off your strengths instead. You're a fighter. A problem-solver. The tabloids want to paint you as difficult? Give them a story where difficult is exactly what's needed." Silence stretched between them. Vicky picked up her tea. Set it down without drinking.

"Fine." She pushed back from the table.

"But I'm going in disguise."

"Disguise?" She pointed at the photograph of Edward in the casino. His face exposed. His reputation shattered.

"The Queen does not approve of debutantes with vices. If I'm photographed in a gambling establishment, I'll be kicked out of the Season entirely. No ball. No presentation. No anything." Leo's stomach dropped. He hadn't thought about that.

"Vicky. If this is too risky..."

"Meet me in the lobby in thirty minutes." She was already heading for the elevators.

"And Leo?"

"Yeah?"

"If this goes wrong, I'm blaming you." She disappeared into the corridor. Leo looked at his half-finished breakfast. Then at the two newspapers sitting side by side on the table. Three days in London. Two front-page disasters. Both connected to him. He picked up his fork and finished his eggs. What was one more?

Leo waited in the lobby, checking his watch. Thirty-two minutes. Vicky was late. He scanned the room again. Businessmen reading newspapers. A couple arguing quietly by the concierge desk. A woman in a navy blue dress sitting in an armchair, watching him with an amused expression. He looked past her. Checked the elevators. Checked the stairs. Where was she? Vicky was never late. The woman in the armchair stood up. Walked toward him. Stopped three feet away, her smile widening.

"Leo." He stared. The face was wrong. The nose was different. The cheekbones sat higher. But the voice was Vicky's.

"How long have you been sitting there?"

"Five minutes." She looked delighted.

"You looked right at me. Then you checked your watch and did this little worried face." She mimicked it.

"Like a puppy waiting at the door." Leo's divine sense brushed against her and found nothing unusual. No formation shimmer. No spiritual interference. Just a woman who looked nothing like Victoria Walton but shared her spiritual signature.

"How?"

"Spiritual makeup." She adjusted her hat.

"Spook-grade. Basically impossible to detect unless you've memorized someone's spiritual signature." Leo circled her. The transformation was perfect.

"Where did you get this?"

"Family connections." She was still smiling at his confusion.

"To make it perfect, don't use my name anymore. Call me Jane."

"Jane."

"Jane Smith. Boring. Forgettable. Exactly what we need." Leo nodded.

"Alright, Jane. Let's go find a counterfeiter."

The first casino was a Georgian townhouse in Mayfair, its entrance marked by nothing more than a brass number on a black door. Leo extended his divine sense through the walls. Foundation Establishment signatures clustered around card tables. Two Gold Cores in a private room upstairs. Staff moving through service corridors. No Morimoto.

"Nothing," he said. They moved on. The second casino occupied the basement of a building that looked like a private bank. Security formations hummed in the walls. Leo pushed his awareness through them, cataloging every spiritual signature in the building. Nothing. The third hid behind a gentleman's club. The fourth behind an art gallery. The fifth required them to walk past a restaurant and down an alley to a door that didn't exist unless you knew where to look. Leo scanned each one.

Morimoto's signature was burned into his memory. He would recognize it anywhere. The old man wasn't in any of them.

"This is taking forever." Vicky leaned against a wall, watching the street.

"How many exclusive gambling establishments does London have?"

"More than I expected." A figure caught Leo's attention. Across the street, walking with purpose, heading toward a nondescript building on the corner. The disguise was good. Spook-grade spiritual makeup, same as Vicky's. Leo's eyes would have slid right past him. But Leo had memorized spiritual signatures ever since Zhao taught him the Scholar's Finger. It was a habit he couldn't break. Edward Windsor's spiritual fingerprint was unmistakable.

"Eddie!" The figure kept walking.

"Eddie!" Leo cupped his hands around his mouth.

"EDDIE!" The figure's shoulders tightened. He didn't turn.

"EDDDDDIIIEEEEE..." Edward's hand shot up. He waved once, sharply, the universal gesture for stop talking and get over here before I kill you. Leo grinned and crossed the street. Vicky followed.

"Are you completely mad?" Edward's voice was a hiss.

"Shouting my name in the middle of Mayfair? What are you doing here?"

"Looking for Morimoto. Same as you, I'm guessing." Leo gestured at Vicky.

"This is Jane. Jane, this is Eddie." Edward studied Vicky's disguised face.

"Jane."

"Eddie." Vicky nodded slowly, the way someone acknowledges a fellow survivor.

"So he's latched onto you too."

"We've been scanning casinos all morning," Leo said.

"Nothing so far. You?" Edward smirked.

"We've taken a different approach. Rather than searching for Morimoto, we're going to let him come to us."

"How?"

"The bookie." Edward lowered his voice.

"We traced the betting network from the Ascot. The man who handled Morimoto's wager operates out of an establishment two streets from here."

"And?"

"The bookie couldn't pay out fourteen million in one go. Morimoto collected six, but there's eight million left in escrow. He'll return for it." Morimoto would have to show up eventually. The old man was many things, but he wasn't the type to abandon that much money.

"What's the plan when he arrives?"

"Containment formation. We've got specialists positioned at every exit. The moment he's identified, they activate. No escape." A man in a red tunic approached. Queen's Guard, Leo realized. One of the same soldiers from the jail. He'd swapped his bearskin hat for a bowler that didn't suit him at all.

"Mr. Chen." The guard's voice was clipped.

"A word, if you please." Leo looked at Edward.

"Standard procedure." Edward waved a hand.

"They need your account of yesterday's events. Help with the preparations."

"Now?"

"It shouldn't take long. I'll remain here with..." He glanced at Vicky.

"Jane." The guard was already walking. Leo hesitated, then followed. He looked back once. Edward and Vicky stood together on the corner, two strangers in perfect disguises, neither knowing who the other actually was. This would probably be fine.

Edward Windsor's POV Edward watched Leo disappear around the corner with the guardsman. Jane leaned against the wall beside him, arms crossed, watching the street with visible disinterest. She was striking. Dark hair, sharp jaw, blue eyes that caught the light. Edward had met a thousand beautiful women at a thousand palace events. Most of them blurred together. Jane wouldn't have.

"So." She tilted her head toward where Leo had vanished.

"You're Leo's new friend."

"We met yesterday. Rather unusual circumstances, I'm afraid."

"He mentioned jail."

"Briefly." Edward adjusted his collar. The disguise itched at the jawline.

"He was being held for questioning. I helped facilitate his release."

"That was generous. Bailing out a stranger yesterday and then chasing a counterfeiter through London today. That's a Tuesday for you?" Edward considered the question. The honest answer was complicated. Aurelia's fury after the casino incident. His mother's disappointed silence. The stack of newspapers on his desk this morning, each one featuring his face above headlines that made him want to crawl into the Catacombs and never return.

"My cousin was rather upset about what happened at the Ascot," he said.

"When she's unhappy, everyone in the family hears about it. At length. Tracking down the man responsible seemed the path of least resistance." Jane raised an eyebrow.

"You really have that much free time? Sounds like you're avoiding your responsibilities." Direct. Leo's friends were apparently as blunt as he was.

"More a case of avoiding my mother." Something shifted in Jane's expression. The teasing dropped away.

"Your mother."

"She's arranged something for me. A meeting. Someone I'm meant to impress. I'd rather chase a counterfeiter through London than make small talk with whoever my mother's selected this time." His mother had been strategic about her arrangements. She always was. The match had to satisfy the Queen. She'd spent years presenting debutantes who met that standard. Women who could curtsy and hold a wine glass at the correct angle and had never once in their lives done anything difficult. This year she'd changed tactics.

Victoria Walton. Yale flyer. American money. Combat-oriented. His mother had presented the match like she'd solved a puzzle Edward hadn't asked her to work on. Jane was quiet for a moment. Then she grimaced.

"Join the club. My grandmother shipped me across an ocean for a man whose biggest selling point is his grandmother." Edward's shoulders dropped a fraction.

"How's that going for you?"

"Fantastic." Jane's voice went flat.

"She's lined up some ancient cultivator who probably thinks electricity is a fad." Edward winced. Age gaps in cultivation marriages were common. Gold Cores lived centuries. The math got uncomfortable quickly.

"That's dreadful. I've never understood matches with that kind of gap. People should marry within their own decade, at minimum." Jane laughed.

"I'll tell my grandmother you said so. She'll be thrilled." A group of businessmen passed on the sidewalk. Edward angled his face away automatically, then remembered the disguise. Old habits.

"My mother spent years trying to pair me with women who cared about the wrong things," he said.

"Status. Appearances. Which fork to use at which course."

"Sounds exhausting."

"It was." He thought about the candidates his mother had paraded through the palace over the years. The ones who lit up when cameras appeared. The ones who asked about the succession before they asked about him.

"So now she thinks she's found someone different. Someone with substance, she says. A fighter." He paused. The word sat wrong in his mouth.

"But she's overcorrected. This one's apparently impulsive. Acts first, thinks afterward. If at all." Jane snorted.

"Sounds like my mother. Thanksgiving. Every year. Picks a fight with whoever's sitting closest and then acts blindsided when they leave the table."

"Good heavens." Edward stared at her.

"She is your mother. They're trying to marry me to your mother." Jane laughed hard enough that she pressed her hand against the wall to steady herself. Her shoulder brushed his. She didn't move away. Edward found himself grinning. He couldn't remember the last time he'd complained about this to someone who actually understood. Maybe he should go out in disguise more often.

"See, yours has personality." Jane caught her breath.

"Wrong personality, but personality. Mine is a museum exhibit. Stiff. Formal. Probably rehearses small talk in the mirror." Edward snorted. Jane pushed off the wall and turned to face him properly, hands moving as she talked.

"The worst part is he pretends he doesn't want the attention. Very private. Very humble. Hates the spotlight." She made air quotes.

"And yet somehow he keeps showing up in places where cameras are. Funny how that works." Edward's expression flattened. He thought of Aurelia. The exhausting performance of humility she maintained for the press while tracking her tabloid rankings like stock prices.

"I know the type," he said.

"Performs humility like it's a virtue while making sure everyone's watching. Exhausting people."

"Exhausting." Jane nodded slowly.

"Mine's exhausting and he doesn't even have the decency to be interesting about it." She waved a hand.

"Yours at least sounds like she does something. You said fighter?" Edward laughed. The irony of complaining about Victoria Walton to a stranger felt liberating. No consequences. No palace staff who would report back to his mother. Just honest venting with someone who got it.

"She plays Flying Aces," he said.

"But gets eliminated first. Every single match." Jane raised an eyebrow.

"Every match?"

"Without fail. The whistle blows, she charges in, and thirty seconds later she's watching from the sidelines." Edward shook his head. Jane lost it. She laughed until she had to wipe her eyes.

"And people still call her a fighter?"

"The worst part is, everyone keeps telling me she has potential. She just needs guidance." Edward leaned against the wall beside her.

"Do you know what that means? It means they expect me to fix her."

"Marriage as a renovation project." Jane's grin faded.

"Romantic." The word hung between them. Jane looked away, studying the street, and Edward watched her profile for a beat longer than he should have.

"Can I ask you something?" he said. Jane glanced back.

"Depends."

"If you could tell your grandmother no. Just flat refuse. Walk away from the whole thing. Would you?" She went still.

"No." Her voice was quieter.

"That's not who I am. I don't walk out on people who need me. Even when what they need is stupid." Edward didn't say anything. He didn't have to. That sentence described his entire life. Above them, a window shattered. A figure burst through, coat flapping, spectacles glinting. Morimoto. He hit the rooftop running and sprinted for the edge. Guards shouted. Formations flared. Someone activated a containment array. Too slow. Morimoto reached the rooftop's edge and leaped. His flying sword materialized beneath him.

A La Ferrari Monza. Tier Four. He landed on the blade without breaking stride, coat settling as the sword banked hard and climbed. Edward's stomach dropped. Formation counterfeiter. That was what the file said. But a Tier Four flying sword required divine sense most Foundation Establishment cultivators couldn't dream of. Edward knew Gold Cores who couldn't operate a Monza.

He watched Morimoto streak across the London sky and thought about all the Nascent Soul cultivators he could have called this morning and hadn't. A second figure shot up from the street below. Climbing to intercept. Leo.