Chapter Text
Bound by Pursuit
by m7udo
The cry rang out across the cobbled streets of London. "Seize him!" bellowed a man astride a white destrier, his voice cutting through the night like a blade. He was draped in a rich maroon justaucorps, his pantaloons of the same hue tucked neatly into white stockings, which were fastened at the knees with black bows. A black jerkin hugged his frame, secured at the throat by a cravat, its knot adorned with a blood-red gemstone that gleamed in the flickering torchlight. He yanked the reins, causing his steed to rear with a shrill whinny, but his storm-grey eyes remained locked on his quarry—a figure slipping like a shadow through the labyrinthine streets.
The rogue was a sight to behold. His deep blue coat billowed as he ran, a dark pink bow tied loosely at his throat, and a black mask obscuring his eyes, lending him the air of a jester who mocked the law itself. His dark hair jutted out in wild, gravity-defying spikes, each lock standing with rebellious defiance, as though even his very hair refused to be tamed. The jagged peaks framed his masked face, lending him an almost mythical quality—like a trickster spirit conjured from a minstrel’s tale. Even under the dim torchlight, his windswept strands remained untouched by sweat or disorder, a fitting crown for a rogue who thrived in the chaos of the chase.
Gold trim flashed at the tops of his fine black boots, and tucked beneath his coat were treasures plucked from the very coffers of the King himself. But most curious of all was his weapon of choice—not blade nor bow, but playing cards, which he wielded like a sorcerer’s charms to confound those who pursued him.
A cry of pursuit echoed through the streets as knights, clad in steel and bearing the crest of England, stormed after him. The thief twisted through the maze of alleyways, his boots barely touching the ground, until at last he reached a dead end.
Yet, as the knights drew their swords, the rogue merely chuckled. "Shall we have a bit of sport, gentlemen?" he taunted, flicking a deck of cards between nimble fingers. He extended his hand, fanning the cards before them. "Come, pick one."
The foremost knight hesitated, but seeing no escape for the scoundrel, he allowed himself the indulgence. He plucked a card from the deck, eyeing the masked man warily.
"Keep it hidden," the thief instructed, amusement lacing his voice.
The knight scoffed. "Enough of this folly! You are under arrest!"
The rogue only smirked. "Then perhaps you should check your hand."
The knight glanced down—and his card had vanished. His grip on his sword faltered for the briefest moment, his eyes widening in stunned disbelief. That was all the thief needed.
With a swift, brutal strike, his fist connected with the knight’s jaw, sending him sprawling backward. He crashed into his comrades, the steel of their armor clattering like church bells in disarray.
From the mouth of the alleyway came the sharp clatter of hooves on stone. The King’s personal knight—the Esquire of the Body—had arrived. His silver hair gleamed under the moonlight, and his storm-grey eyes burned with fury as he reined in his steed, a living shadow of royal authority and wrath.
The thief wasted no time. Darting toward the wall, he found footholds in the crumbling mortar, using jagged stones and window ledges to hoist himself upward. He reached the rooftop in seconds, pivoting once to glance down at his pursuers. With two fingers pressed to his forehead, he flicked them outward in a mocking salute.
"Until next time, Lord Edgeworth!" he called, laughter dancing in his voice before he turned and vanished into the night.
Edgeworth’s hands clenched into fists, his grip on the reins turning white-knuckled as he ground his teeth. "Imbeciles!" he barked at his men, watching as some scrambled over the wall while others sprinted from the alleyway in vain pursuit. He turned his horse sharply, the sting of failure sinking deep.
This was not the first time he had chased that wretched rogue—nor would it be the last. And now, the scoundrel had dared to steal from the King himself—King Manfred the Ironfist.
Edgeworth swore under his breath. Next time, there would be no escape.
The rogue—known by the law as a phantom, but by the poor as a savior—bore the name Phoenix Wright.
By night, he was a specter in blue, a thief who pilfered from coffers fat with royal excess; by day, he walked humbler streets, blending into the common folk with the ease of a practiced charlatan. His deeds echoed the tales of Robin Hood, though whispered with greater reverence among the Slums of Southbank—a tangled sprawl of crumbling stone and timber huddled along the southern bank of the Thames, where the air always smelled faintly of soot and saltwater, and hope clung to the alleys like ivy on brick.
Southbank was the forgotten limb of London, cut off from the riches of Whitehall and the judgment of its gilded halls. Its people built with what the city discarded: patchwork roofs, leaning shanties, makeshift markets of spoiled produce and stolen goods. Here, children played in gutters, and mothers bartered bread for candle wax. But they had each other. And they had him.
He was no myth—he was flesh and blood, and he gave where the Crown only took.
With the moon glinting on the slate rooftops, Phoenix bounded across the crooked spine of the city, slipping from tile to tile with a dancer’s grace. Ropes strung between chimneys and timbered beams bore his weight as he crossed them like a tightrope walker. Smoke curled from hearths below, and the laughter of drunkards and merchants echoed faintly from the taverns. But he moved unheard, unseen, until at last, he reached the place he called home.
Sliding down the weathered side of a crumbling tenement, Phoenix landed lightly in the narrow alley behind the slum’s chapel—its cross half-crooked, its bell long since rusted silent. He tugged the black mask from his face and tucked it into the folds of his coat, just as two small figures came darting out from the shadows.
“Oh, Nick! Thank the saints you’re safe!” cried Maya, her voice bright with relief. She wore a simple homespun dress of rough-woven canvas and faded purple dye—dyed with berries more than coin. Her bare feet slapped softly against the cobblestones as she rushed toward him.
“Mr. Nick!” piped a younger voice, full of innocent joy. Pearl, garbed in a similar dress tinged with rose-madder hues, threw her arms around Phoenix’s waist and clung to him like a child greeting a father returning from war.
Phoenix let out a quiet chuckle, ruffling the girl’s dark hair with affection. “I’m quite alright, Pearls,” he murmured, his voice warm despite the chill in the air. “The night gave me a bit of trouble, but I gave it trouble back.”
Maya grinned, stepping closer as the tension in her shoulders eased. For a brief moment, silence fell among them, broken only by the distant barking of dogs and the creak of wooden shutters.
Phoenix’s gaze wandered down the alleyway, where the huddled silhouettes of neighbors and kin waited in quiet hope. Their eyes were sunken, their bellies empty, but they had not yet surrendered to despair. Not while he still ran free.
“I trust you’ve all an appetite,” he said at last, his lips curling into a mischievous smile. With a flourish, he pulled a small brown satchel from beneath his coat. The faint jingle of gold and the glint of jeweled finery spilled faintly through the opening.
Maya’s eyes widened. “You didn’t—”
“From the King’s own vault,” Phoenix confirmed with a wink. “Tonight, we dine as though we were nobles ourselves.”
The two girls beamed, and behind them, in the shadows of the alley, heads began to turn—hope rekindled.
And though the weight of the King’s vengeance would soon bear down on him, for now, Phoenix Wright—the dark blue rogue—had won another night for the people who had nothing.
The firelight crackled softly within the slums as Phoenix crouched beside a makeshift table, his satchel of stolen treasure resting within reach. Maya and Pearl sat nearby, eyes wide with awe as they helped count the gleaming coins and jewels. The scent of freshly baked barley bread wafted from a nearby stall, already heating in anticipation of a rare, hearty meal.
Though Phoenix wore a smile for their sake, the lines of old memory weighed behind his eyes.
He had grown up here—in the mud and smoke of London’s forgotten quarters. An orphan, with no known family nor noble name, he had learned quickly the cost of kindness and the price of survival. Yet even then, Phoenix had never hardened. There had always been a fire in him, a belief—perhaps foolish, perhaps holy—that people were worth saving. That even a thief could be righteous if his cause was just.
It was not always so bleak. Once, there had been light.
A boy with silver-threaded hair and storm-grey eyes had brought it. Miles Edgeworth. The noble’s son who, despite bearing the silks of privilege, would slip past the castle guards just to kneel in the dirt with the rest of them—play chess on crates, chase crows, fall in the mud without flinching.
Phoenix remembered those days with the ache of old summers. He remembered Edgeworth's laughter—rare, but honest—and the stories his father told, seated amongst the children like a bard in a court of paupers. Lord Gregory Edgeworth, Esquire of the Body, the King's personal knight and one of the few noblemen who dared step into the slums without a sword drawn or nose wrinkled.
But then, one day, both vanished.
No trumpet heralded their departure. No bells tolled in mourning. The palace did not speak of their absence. The poor only noticed the bread that stopped arriving, the silver that no longer filled begging palms. Whispers slithered through the alleys like mist: the old knight was gone—and so was his boy.
Phoenix waited. Days blurred into weeks, then months. Still, he waited. Each twilight, he hoped to see Miles crest the hill beyond the orphanage, boots muddied, hair tousled by play. But the path remained empty.
Years passed. Phoenix hardened. His limbs grew long and lean from flight, his fingers clever from sleight. He learned the ways of shadows and silence, of taking without being seen. But he never forgot the boy with grey eyes and a noble heart.
And then—on a chill morning, heavy with frost—he saw him again.
Miles Edgeworth returned not as a boy, but as a man mounted upon a snow-white destrier. His crimson justaucorps gleamed with golden embroidery; his black jerkin fit his tall frame like armor of silk. A pristine white cravat encircled his neck, knotted with soldierly precision and fastened with a red gemstone that caught the morning sun like fresh-spilled blood.
But it was the hair that made Phoenix’s breath catch.
That familiar shock of silver-grey swept back in sharp, winged angles, defiant as ever. Each strand was sculpted to perfection, a style no commoner would dare mimic, no courtier could match. It framed a face grown colder, leaner—sculpted from marble and command.
His once-warm eyes now mirrored iron skies, stormy and hard, stripped of wonder. There was no recognition in them as he passed the slums where he’d once played, no hesitation as peasants bowed their heads and melted into shadows. Phoenix watched, unseen beneath the cowl of his ragged cloak, heart pounding like the hooves that struck the cobbles.
This was no longer Miles.
He was Esquire Edgeworth now—the King’s sword, his voice in court, his hand in war. The personal knight sworn to King Manfred the Ironfist, who drained the slums dry to gild his throne.
And yet Phoenix could still see the ghost of that boy—the one who once knelt in the mud beside him, vowing to build a better kingdom.
“Nick?” Maya’s voice broke gently through his reverie. She had appeared at his side, a basket of torn bread slung over her arm. “Are you alright?”
Phoenix blinked, realizing his hand had tightened around the small wooden token until his knuckles turned white. Etched with a lion and quill, its edges were worn smooth from days of turning it over in his palm. He set it down gently, shaking his head. “I’m fine,” he murmured. “Just… thinking.” He looked toward the rooftops again, where the sky dimmed into velvet dusk. Somewhere out there, Edgeworth would be tightening the reins of his white destrier, rallying knights, sharpening his pursuit.
And still, Phoenix could not forget the boy in the dirt. The one who once dreamed of a better kingdom.
He rose to his feet. “Tonight, we eat. Tomorrow…” His voice lowered, the firelight flickering in his eyes. “Tomorrow, we steal again.”
•••
The great stone walls of the throne chamber stood tall and cold as tombs, carved with the rose and lion of the realm, flanked by high stained-glass windows through which the dying sun poured crimson light upon the floor like blood. Braziers burned low along the marbled gallery, casting long shadows across pillars of blackened oak. The air hung thick with incense and iron—smoke, sweat, and the sharp scent of oiled steel.
This was the heart of Whitehall Palace, the seat of royal power and the cold jewel of the Crown. Built upon the ashes of an older fortress, it sprawled across the northern bank of the Thames like a coiled serpent—stone upon stone, wall upon wall, with towers that pierced the fog-choked sky. Its great gates were wrought iron and watched day and night by guards in crimson livery. Within its labyrinthine halls, the King’s will was law, and secrets passed between tapestries like ghosts.
Whitehall was no place of warmth. Though gold trimmed its ceilings and velvet draped its windows, the palace bore the chill of ambition and bloodshed. The courtiers walked in whispers. The servants moved in silence. And in the throne room, beneath banners heavy with the dust of conquest, the King ruled with a gaze as unyielding as the mortar in its walls.
Here, even the air bowed.
Lord Miles Edgeworth stood alone in the center of the hall.
His boots clicked softly against the checkered floor as he knelt, one leg folded, one arm across his chest in formal salute, his head bowed. His white cravat—creased but unsullied—caught a flicker of gold from the firelight. Beneath his heavy maroon justaucorps, his back ached from hours in saddle and the sharp sting of failure.
The heralds had said nothing when he arrived—only opened the doors to the throne chamber in complete silence. The King was already waiting.
Upon the raised dais, beneath a canopy of black and crimson velvet, sat King Manfred the Ironfist—a man carved of stone and fire. His crown sat heavy upon thinning white hair, his fur-lined mantle spilling over his throne like a wolf’s pelt. Though not broad, he radiated a cruel strength, the sort of wiry, sinewed danger found in wolves and executioners. His eyes, pale as frostbitten sky, bore into Edgeworth as though they might pierce the bone.
A hush fell. Then: “You return alone.” His voice slithered from the throne like smoke.
Edgeworth remained kneeling. “The rogue escaped, Your Majesty.”
Silence.
Manfred rose slowly, his robes hissing over the stones. He descended the dais, step by step, each footfall deliberate—measured. A hawk descending toward the rabbit.
Edgeworth did not move.
CRACK.
The first blow came fast—a riding crop, tipped with silver, snapping across Edgeworth’s back with a force that rang through the hall. The knights flanking the columns did not stir. The servants did not gasp. All watched without breathing, without blinking, as the King lashed his most loyal knight.
CRACK.
The second strike came harder. Edgeworth’s jaw tightened. His black gloves curled faintly, his knuckles flexing—then still.
Manfred circled him now, slow and wrathful. “I gave you power. Status. My trust. And in return, you let a filthy street-rat slip through your fingers?” He struck again, the lash cutting across Edgeworth’s shoulder. “He stole from my coffers. Made fools of my knights. And you—my Esquire of the Body—you knelt in dung-strewn alleys while he danced on rooftops!”
The fourth blow struck across Edgeworth’s ribs. Still, he did not speak. Did not flinch. He stared ahead, the flickering torchlight reflected faintly in his storm-grey eyes. They were narrowed, unreadable.
“Your silence offends me, boy,” the King hissed.
Edgeworth’s voice, when it came, was quiet and unwavering. “I offer no excuse. Only my sword.”
King Manfred stood in front of him now, breathing heavily through his nose. He raised the crop again—but paused. Then, he leaned in close. His voice dropped to a serpent’s whisper. “Your father wore the same face, you know. Silent. Proud. Loyal to a fault.” He brushed a finger beneath Edgeworth’s chin, lifting it ever so slightly. “And look where it brought him.”
Edgeworth’s breath stilled. But he did not speak.
Manfred withdrew his hand, sneering. “Pray you do not follow him into the earth so soon.” He turned, tossing the crop to a waiting steward.
“You have until the fortnight’s end to catch the thief. I care not for his name—only that his body hangs from London Bridge before the new moon.” He waved a ring-laden hand dismissively. “Go. And mind yourself, Esquire. Fail me again, and I shall teach you what loyalty truly costs.”
Edgeworth rose stiffly, a red bloom spreading beneath his coat where the strikes had landed. He bowed, every movement precise. “As you command, Your Majesty.” He turned and walked from the chamber, the heavy doors groaning shut behind him.
In the hall beyond, the palace was hushed—carved marble, hushed tapestries, silent courtiers who dared not meet his eyes. His boots echoed down the corridor, and only once he reached the solitude of his private antechamber did he stop.
With a quiet breath, he unfastened the clasps of his coat, every movement slow. His fingers, normally deft with sword or pen, trembled only once.
The linen beneath was soaked red.
He stood before the hearth, letting the warmth of the fire touch the skin beneath the fresh welts. No physician would be summoned. There was no one to ask. He had long since learned to bind his own wounds—first in silence, then in shadow.
But even as he dabbed at the blood, he saw it again: the masked rogue, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, laughing like a fox with fire on its heels.
That grin. That voice.
Something in it stirred a memory. A ghost.
But he shook it off.
The rogue would fall. He would see to it. The King had made his will known.
And Miles Edgeworth—Esquire of the Body—was bound to obey.
•••
By the time the bell tolled Prime, casting long shadows across the cobbled courtyard, Phoenix Wright stood among the lowest ranks of King Manfred’s knightly order—just another body clad in tarnished steel.
He moved differently than the others. Not in the way he walked or stood, but in how his weight shifted—silent, measured. There was a grace to him that the others chalked up to fast learning, uncanny instinct. In truth, it was a lifetime lived in silence and shadow. A thief’s instincts, disguised in a squire’s garb.
His helm remained on, always. Polished to a dull sheen, its visor drawn low, obscuring the face beneath. He dared not remove it. The hair alone would give him away—those unruly, dark spikes that sprang from his scalp like the thorns of a wild briar. It was his mark, the calling card of the rogue who leapt across London’s rooftops by moonlight. If even one soldier recognized it, the gallows would follow. No trial. No confession. Only the creak of rope and the hush of a crowd.
He had not joined the order out of honor. He had not sought glory nor praise. He had joined for two reasons—and neither bore the King's sigil.
One was Miles Edgeworth.
The other was gold.
The Knight's Order granted access to rooms few commoners ever dreamed of entering. Armories, vault ledgers, supply chests, and—most importantly—the treasury. Phoenix had seen it with his own eyes: chests of gold, untouched and gleaming in the torchlight, locked behind gates guarded by men who barely looked twice at a knight with a humble seal and bowed head. From the inside, the Crown’s riches were all too easy to pluck. One coin here, another there. A sealed pouch smuggled beneath a pauldron.
Disguised.
Hidden.
Delivered back to the slums by dawn.
The bread they ate, the medicine they found on their doorsteps, the clean linens suddenly draped in the poorhouses—that was his work. Every copper piece a quiet rebellion.
He had become a knight not to serve—but to steal.
And to get closer to him.
Miles Edgeworth.
Phoenix’s chest tightened at the name, even in thought.
Edgeworth—the boy who once knelt in the chapel courtyard, handing out bread with his father, swearing that justice should not depend on one’s bloodline. The boy who once played beside him in the dirt, who looked at Phoenix not as a wretch, but as a friend.
Now, Phoenix had to look upon the man. A stranger clad in maroon velvet and golden filigree, his eyes colder than the stone he walked upon. He did not look toward the slums anymore. He did not speak of change. He stood beside the tyrant king with a sword at his hip and silence on his tongue.
And Phoenix—now Sir Nicholas Wright—had burrowed into the serpent’s nest to find him. The name, Nicholas, was close enough to the nickname Maya had always called him—Nick—a small piece of himself hidden in plain sight. Forged papers, a coin slipped into the right hands, a talent for swordplay honed in tavern brawls and back-alley scrapes—it was all he needed to climb through the lower ranks. His hands were quick. His mind quicker. And no one questioned a knight who kept his mouth shut and his helm on.
“Again!” barked the drill master, snapping his leather whip against the training post.
Phoenix ducked low, deflecting a practice blade aimed for his shoulder, only to miss the follow-up strike. The wooden edge struck him clean across the ribs, making him stagger back with a grunt. Laughter rang from a few idle knights at the sidelines.
“Keep your guard up, greenling!” one called.
Phoenix clenched his jaw beneath his helm. He wanted to shout back, to bury the man’s blade in the dirt. But he swallowed the urge and stepped back into position.
Then—silence. Not the silence of pause or fatigue. This was something colder. He turned, breath short, to find the knights around him standing at attention, backs straight, eyes forward. Even the birds seemed to stop singing.
The King had entered.
King Manfred the Ironfist descended the carved stone steps of the east wing, flanked by guards in crimson-plated armor, and behind him…
Phoenix’s breath caught in his throat.
Miles Edgeworth walked with the king, as he always did, a shadow stitched in golden and scarlet. And that hair. Immaculate, unmistakable. Swept back in sharp wings of grey, it caught the morning light like a polished blade.
His stride was even, but Phoenix noticed the stiffness in his posture, the slight favoring of one side. Manfred’s fury had left its mark. No one else seemed to see it—but Phoenix had known Edgeworth too long, too well.
It made something curl in his stomach.
Anger.
Sorrow.
Guilt.
He couldn’t name it.
“All training shall cease!” The captain’s voice rang across the courtyard like a bell tolling doom. Swords dropped. Boots stilled. Knights—young and old—fell to one knee in unison. Among them knelt Phoenix Wright, head bowed, heart hammering against the confines of his armor.
He clenched his gloved hands, forcing stillness into them. From the arched gallery above, flanked by red-liveried guards, descended King Manfred. The Ironfist.
He walked with the slow, deliberate tread of one who expected the world to part before him. His crimson cloak, lined with black ermine, swept behind him like spilled blood across stone. And his crown, twisted and cruel, glinted beneath the grey morning sky—each gold spire shaped like a blade.
“My knights,” the King intoned, voice low and lethal, “my swordarms. My faithful hounds.” He stopped atop the final stair and gazed down upon them with contempt, as if beholding a field of crops gone fallow. “I have been... disappointed.”
Silence fell like a guillotine.
“There is a pestilence in my city,” he continued, his tone sharpening. “A vermin who scuttles beneath moonlight, robbing my vaults, mocking your oaths, dishonoring your blades. A masked cur. A thief. And still” —his voice rose— “still, you bring me no head, no name, no justice!”
Phoenix’s spine stiffened.
“I grow weary of failure,” the King said, voice cold and thunderous. “So let failure become spectacle. Let it become sport.” He opened his arms like a bishop at the altar. “I declare the opening of the Court of Steel—a tournament of arms, where any knight may enter, be he noble-born or no. Let skill speak where blood fails. The victor shall be granted coin, elevation of station…” He paused. A murmur stirred the kneeling ranks. “…and a place at this year’s Carivales Nocturne.”
The name swept across the court like wind through a forest. Phoenix’s eyes widened behind his helmet.
The Carivales Nocturne. A sacred revel held once a year in the highest halls of court. A masquerade of velvet and gold, masks and shadow. No servants. No squires. No low-born knight had ever passed its gates.
But now…
If he won—if he gained entrance—he would walk unseen among nobles and ministers. He could speak with those who whispered at the King’s table, those who controlled the tide of coin and cruelty alike. Perhaps even Edgeworth would be there. Phoenix could look him in the eye—not from the shadows, but from across a hall of chandeliers, beneath a black mask of his own choosing. Perhaps he might even speak to him. Perhaps, at last, Edgeworth would see him.
And if he won the tourney, he would no longer be nameless.
In a court where name meant power, meant notice, it might be enough.
By night, Phoenix was still the ghost of the alleyways—the black-masked thief who slipped past locks and shadows, his spiked hair unmistakable beneath moonlight. A face known only in whispered warnings, never caught, never named.
By day, he was a nameless sword among hundreds. When he’d pledged his fealty and taken up arms, it had been with purpose—not to serve, but to infiltrate. It gave him access. Proximity. The keys to the vaults. It made the King’s gold easier to bleed back into the slums, coin by coin, mouth by mouth.
But it came at a price.
He kept his helmet always fastened, hiding the unmistakable crown of hair that would betray his double life in an instant. No one could ever know. Not the guards. Not the servants. Not Edgeworth.
To be discovered was to die.
But if he won, he would be more than a whisper. More than a mask in the night.
He would have a title. A place. A path.
He lowered his head further, hiding the flicker in his eyes.
Let the Court of Steel begin.
He would win. He would enter the Carivales.
And beneath the chandeliers of the palace, he would steal again.
•••
The slums of Southbank lay quiet beneath the ink of night, only the flickering of oil lanterns casting trembling halos along the narrow, muck-slicked streets. Chimneys wept smoke into the fog, and the river’s stink curled in through cracked shutters and doorways too thin to keep out the damp. In one such hovel, a crooked timber shack pressed against a crumbling stone wall, a girl stirred from the hearth, brow knit with worry.
Three knocks. A pause. Two.
Maya was at the door in a flash, hand on the old blade hidden behind a stack of firewood. Only when she heard the creak of familiar boots did her shoulders loosen. She pulled open the door with a scowl. “You’re late,” she hissed, stepping aside. “And don’t tell me you’ve been thieving this close to dawn.”
Phoenix slipped inside, hood drawn low, mud clinging to his hems. Beneath the cloak, his gambeson bore fresh bruises, one of which throbbed like a drumbeat in his side. “No jobs tonight,” he murmured, unbuckling the sword at his hip and setting it beside the hearth. “I was at the yard. Training.”
Maya narrowed her eyes. “Again? What, they flog the green ranks 'til the moon’s down now?”
“Wouldn’t be the worst thing they’ve done,” he muttered, easing onto the bench near the fire. The movement sent a jolt of pain down his ribs.
“You’re bleeding.” She snatched up a cloth from the basin, kneeling before him. “Hold still.”
He winced but obeyed, letting her press the cloth to the wound beneath his tunic. Silence settled between them, broken only by the fire’s hiss and the far-off squawk of a gull.
“What happened?” Maya asked, voice quieter now.
“There’s to be a tournament,” Phoenix said. “By the King’s order.”
Her head snapped up. “A tournament?”
He nodded once. “Any knight may enter. No matter their name or standing.”
Maya leaned back on her heels, brows drawn. “You plan to fight?”
“I plan to win.”
She stared at him, stunned into silence. Then, as if something snapped, she rose and threw the bloody cloth into the basin with a splash. “You’ve gone mad, Nick.”
“It’s a chance—”
“It’s a death sentence,” she spat. “If they discover who you really are—if they see your face, your hair—”
“I won’t enter as a knight,” he cut in, voice low. “That’s not the plan.”
Maya paused, frowning. “Then what?”
“I’ll decline the invitation. Let Sir Nicholas Wright disappear from the list.” He looked toward the soot-streaked window where the distant towers of Whitehall loomed through the fog. “But the Carivales… I’ll be there. As myself. Or rather, the other self they fear so much.”
Realization dawned, and Maya’s face twisted with alarm. “The thief?”
He said nothing.
“The Carivales is for the King’s closest. Nobles. Lords. You won’t wear a helm to hide your face there. You’ll be caught the moment the mask slips!”
“Then it won’t slip,” he said flatly.
She crossed her arms. “You hate the nobles. You’ve always said so. They’re the ones who let the slums rot while they drink sweet wine behind gold gates.”
“I do hate them.”
“Then why go among them?” Her voice cracked now, eyes shining. “Why put yourself at their mercy?”
Phoenix looked at the hearth. At the little cracked bowl of barley gruel Maya had been scraping together for Pearl. “It’s not just the coin,” he said.
“Then what?” she pressed, stepping closer. “What’s this all for, Nick? You’re not chasing some title—hell, you won’t even keep the rank you earned. You sneak into the barracks, you bleed for training, and for what? Just to throw it all away at a masquerade?”
He didn’t speak. Didn’t meet her gaze.
Maya’s voice dropped to a whisper. “There’s someone there. Someone you haven’t told me about.”
Phoenix’s eyes flinched, but still, he said nothing.
“You’ve never said it aloud, but I see how you watch the castle when the mist lifts. Like something’s waiting for you behind those gates.”
He clenched his jaw.
“You’ve been hiding something from me, Nick. I don’t know what it is. But I know it’s not just about feeding the slums anymore.”
From behind the faded curtain, a small voice broke the stillness. “Maya…?”
Both turned.
Pearl padded into the glow of the firelight, her little feet bare on the cold floor. “Why are you shouting?” she mumbled, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
Maya dropped into a crouch at once, arms open. “We’re not shouting, Pearly. Just talking too loud.”
Phoenix knelt beside them, brushing a hand over Pearl’s tangled hair. “Everything’s fine,” he said gently.
Pearl leaned against him, hugging his neck. “You’re always gone…”
“I know,” he murmured. “But soon, that might change.” He stood slowly, carrying her back behind the curtain and settling her beneath the patchwork blanket.
When he returned to the hearth, Maya was standing by the window, watching the fog roll over Whitehall’s distant ramparts. “You’re playing a dangerous game, Nick,” she said softly, without turning.
“I never intended to play it safe,” Phoenix replied.
And in the silence that followed, the fire cracked, and the storm outside crept closer.
•••
The marbled antechamber of Whitehall Palace glowed with the flickering light of wrought-iron sconces. The air was scented faintly with beeswax and smoke, and beneath the archways, nobles murmured like doves waiting for the next court decree.
Yet all fell silent as Princess Franziska’s voice rang out like a whip crack. “A low-born knight? In the Carivales?” she hissed, her heeled steps echoing sharply on the polished stone floor. “What madness has seized this court?”
She stood at the center of the chamber in a gown of deep midnight, embroidered with silver thread that shimmered like frost beneath candlelight. Her hair was braided into an intricate crown, her posture as rigid as a blade unsheathed.
Across from her stood Lord Miles Edgeworth, the King’s Esquire of the Body, hands clasped behind his back, his maroon justaucorps pristine as ever. His expression bore no scorn nor humor—merely that same unreadable calm.
“The tournament was opened to all,” he replied in his low, measured tone. “The victor earns entrance through skill alone, not title.”
Franziska scoffed. “Skill? Please. If a man from the gutter waves a sword with flair, we bow and offer him a place beside dukes and earls now?”
Edgeworth did not respond.
She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a sharp whisper. “You lost the thief, and now His Majesty covers your failure with spectacle. And we’re to reward it? Shall we invite the rats of the slums next?”
Before she could continue, the great oaken doors swung wide. King Manfred entered with the clank of boots behind him, his dark mantle sweeping across the marble tiles. His face was hard as flint beneath his gilded circlet.
“Still prattling on, Franziska?” the King growled, stopping between them. “A princess ought to know when to bite her tongue.”
“I speak only because I see weakness, Your Majesty,” she said, managing a graceful curtsy. “If I had a sword—”
“You do not,” he snapped. “You are a daughter of this realm, not a soldier. Leave swordplay to men. There is little beauty in a woman wielding a blade.”
Franziska stiffened. “And yet I have trained in secret. I am no less skilled than Lord Edgeworth.”
“That is not the point,” the King said, tone cutting. “A princess exists to be seen. Heard only when summoned. You are a pearl in a velvet box—not an arrow in the quiver.”
Franziska’s mouth twitched, but she said nothing more.
The King’s voice grew colder. “You will attend the Carivales. You will smile, and you will speak only when spoken to. You will not embarrass this court with talk of war or steel. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Franziska bit out.
With a grunt of finality, Manfred turned and strode from the hall, the clatter of his guards echoing after him.
When the doors closed behind them, silence stretched once more.
Franziska’s hands trembled at her sides. “I could catch the thief,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “I could match Edgeworth blow for blow and still hold back enough not to wound him.” Her eyes snapped to Edgeworth. “Say something. Say I’m wrong.”
But Edgeworth’s face was still, his gaze unreadable.
She stepped closer. “You know I’m right.”
He regarded her for a moment, and though his lips did not move, there was something in his gaze—a quiet, unspoken truth. He did not believe as the King did. He never had.
Still, he said nothing.
Franziska turned from him with a scoff, her voice low and bitter. “Silent again. Like always.”
And with that, she swept away down the corridor, the silver threads of her gown glinting like blades in the firelight.
•••
The clang of swords rang through the crisp morning air, echoing off the stone walls that surrounded the training grounds just beyond Whitehall Palace. The grass was worn down from countless bouts, damp with dew and churned earth beneath armored boots. Knights-in-training formed a loose ring around the two combatants at the center, their voices rising now and again in cheers or jeers.
Phoenix moved like no one else there.
His steps were swift and sure, weaving between strikes with the kind of instinct that couldn’t be taught in royal halls. He fought with a practiced unpredictability—ducking low, shifting his balance, striking when no one expected it. His blade arced through the air in gleaming, elegant curves. It was not the polished swordplay of nobility, but something leaner. Sharper.
He didn’t fight like a knight. He fought like someone who had survived.
High above, from a narrow stone balcony overlooking the practice fields, Lord Miles Edgeworth stood still, his gloved hands clasped behind his back. The air was cold, but he did not shiver. His focus was absolute.
His eyes followed one man.
Sir Nicholas Wright, newly knighted. Unknown blood. Promoted swiftly through the ranks, though few could name a patron. No title. No lands. Just a helm, a sword, and silence.
And yet, Edgeworth narrowed his gaze as Phoenix parried a heavy blow from his opponent, then ducked beneath the next with a movement too refined, too fluid, to have come from royal drills alone. He twisted, pivoted—countered in a way that made Edgeworth's breath catch. The opponent’s sword clattered to the ground. A few onlookers gasped.
Edgeworth didn’t.
He knew that move.
His hand slowly unclasped behind his back.
It was not a maneuver taught in the palace courts or even among the elite guard. It was rare—elegant in its simplicity, devastating in its precision. And Edgeworth had not seen it in years.
Because it had been taught only to him.
By his father.
Lord Gregory Edgeworth.
Edgeworth's jaw tensed.
The memory came unbidden: a boy of seven, panting in the courtyard under his father’s calm instruction, repeating the same motion again and again until his arms ached and his fingers blistered.
That technique was not meant to be passed on.
And yet, here it was—in the hands of a nameless knight who should have had no claim to it.
Below, the match continued. Another challenger stepped forward, a brute of a man with a battered helm. Phoenix moved to meet him, but took a hard strike to the chest—enough to stagger him.
He stumbled, catching himself—but the blow knocked his helmet askew. It was his mistake, he knew; he hadn’t worn chainmail beneath his surcoat, counting on speed over caution. Foolish. Chainmail would have softened the blow, held the helm steadier. But haste—and pride—had made him careless.
A gauntleted hand reached up to adjust it.
Too late.
A sharp, spiked tuft of dark hair slipped free from beneath the rim, catching the morning sun.
Edgeworth’s eyes sharpened.
It was only a glimpse.
But for a man like Edgeworth, a glimpse was enough to draw blood from water.
That shape—those unmistakable spikes—he had seen them before, flickering beneath the moonlight as a thief darted across the rooftops of the capital, just ahead of the guards.
That same silhouette had haunted the treasury, eluded every patrol. The faceless rogue who mocked the court with every coin stolen.
Could it be?
Edgeworth’s brow furrowed deeply. He would not jump to conclusions—not yet. It could be coincidence. It should be coincidence.
But Edgeworth did not believe in coincidences.
Not when the man in question moved like a shadow, fought like a ghost—and now wielded his father’s technique.
He took one final glance down at the figure, now sparring once more with measured caution. The helmet was back in place. No trace of the hair remained.
But the doubt had been planted. And with it, a mission.
Edgeworth turned sharply on his heel, the heels of his boots striking the stone as he walked back through the corridor toward the palace interior. His face was unreadable—save for the flicker of something cold and sharp behind his eyes.
Whoever this Nicholas Wright was… He intended to find out.
And before long, that helmet would come off. One way or another.