Tickets, as it turned out, were very much available. Not the nicer tickets, no, but the other rooms, the simple rooms. The rooms I’d hoped the average person would use. Those were definitely not sold out.

  And the tickets I purchased for Azalea and myself came not only at the cost of the last of the money I had, but the cost of a strange look from the ticket seller. The paper two tickets were part-printed and part-written, and I found myself wondering how simple they would be to replicate using my silk as we entered the station.

  Despite its location near the edge of town, the station was busy, bustling and crowded. And it also wasn’t finished, with scaffolding and workers joining the diaspora of people. Most folks were probably here for the shops, selling goods brought from down the line, the City of Arches or even further.

  Opulence for the common man, I’d been told when approving the design and budget. Now that I had to walk through it, not as the ducal heir, but as a commoner, I appreciated it less. Maybe when it was finished, the grand chandeliers and murals would seem less mocking. Maybe the hard, stylized bench Azalea pulled us onto would feel a little more comfortable.

  To me, the grandest thing in this room was no by-tile artistic masterwork, but the train itself. A behemoth of metal, stamped, pressed, rolled, and cast. Birthed from the inches of progress the Kingdom of Hearths had clawed from the Sects: grand machines and forges.

  But its beauty was more than function: swirls, flourishes, patterns, and symbols of our Kingdom decorated each car and its paint reflected bright and honest in the gaudy light. Two dozen or more cars. Past us, the passengers from the arriving route disembarked and rushed by. I caught fine furs and silks, hints of perfume and cologne and leather.

  “It’s beautiful,” I murmured.

  Yes, I’d seen it before. I’d even spoken to some of the artisans, visited the forges. I’d been on the day of its first departure to Hearthome. But here, now, in the midst of people simply coming and going, sitting on a bench lost in the crowd, it seemed so much more real. Each element was like a fine painting, and I frowned as I realized just how apt a comparison it was.

  I turned to Azalea, who was people watching with an insultingly bored look on her face. “This isn’t affordable, is it?”

  She perked up and threw her arm around my shoulder. “If you save up, it is!”

  My hands clenched together. “If there were more trains, more routes, maybe…”

  “Silk, where would folks go?”

  “To Hearthome! To the City of Arches! To a lovely seaside town somewhere in the South or East!” I threw my hand out toward an unfinished tropical scene.

  “And do what?”

  I looked at her askance. Her curious red eyes seemed so dispassionate, and any reasons I could have thought of left my mind. “I don’t know. I… can’t do this right now, Azalea.”

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “But let me tell you why they won’t go: there’s no good reason that doesn’t cost money they don’t have. Normal folks don’t think of vacations; normal folks don’t get vacations. They don’t spend money to go to a city to spend money.”

  I thought about the ticket prices, the different markets we’d seen. For all my attempts to know my people, did I truly understand so little of common life? “So is this entire thing useless?” I gripped the edges of the bench, indenting the wood just a little.

  She shook her head, drills bouncing. “Nope! Look there.”

  I looked up and followed her finger. At the other end, making their way through the station’s crowd toward the platform, was a family in common dress: parents and two young children. They looked like they were dressed as well as possible, unfamiliar with just how much their attire stuck out: ill-fitting clothes of moderate make and jewelry of semiprecious stones.

  “It’s not all doom and rich people!” Azalea clapped. “They just need a reason, and some money. Give them both, and this’ll work out.”

  “I can’t just give them money.”

  Azalea shrugged. “Make better jobs. But I guess that’s… yeah.”

  I swallowed, the lump in my throat catching. My eyes blurred and I sunk down on the awful, hard bench, looking down past my skirt at my stocking-clad ankles and the too-fine tile floor rather than look at the awful decor. Azalea bumped my knee and I pushed my legs together.

  Why couldn’t I see this?

  More than that… This is my life now, at best. No grand future where I could make decisions to benefit everyone.

  I turned my hands over and flexed them, imagining the sharp nails hidden under silken skin. There was a way—the same way that damn demon took seventeen generations ago. I’d wager the money Azalea had left that he hadn’t the perspective I did, the honest goal.

  “I need to get stronger.” I felt like a broken clock, ringing the same damn time over and over again.

  “You already are!”

  “Azalea, no. I mean stronger.” I watched to see if anyone was listening to two young people talking strange things on a station bench, but no eyes spared us more than a passing glance. Still, I was careful. “Truly strong.” Fifth Ring? Seventh Ring? Would I need to ascend to whatever the demonic equivalent of the celestial canopy was?

  “Oh ho ho, now there’s the Silk I like to see! Me too, honestly.” She stood up. “So let’s get going then!”

  “Azalea, the train won’t be ready to board for an hour.” I pointed at the large clock on the wall.

  She huffed and sat back down. Together, we watched people pass by, the platform emptying and filling again, as the minutes ticked down on the clock above.

  More than that, I took a good look at the train. Specifically, the cars. I couldn’t claim to know every function, but I knew that each end would have a steam engine. Past that, it was safe to assume the windowless cars were for cargo: two at what would be the rear of the train, and one at the front. It also looked like the luxury cars were closer to the rear, but I couldn’t tell.

  Which left me anxious. In a place like this, I couldn’t afford to slip into my Garden. Nor would it make sense to while the time away with meditation. There’d be answers on this train, likely amongst the cargo rather than the passengers, but investigating would have to wait. So, in an odd twist, I found myself fully occupied with attempting to look bored.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Azalea had no trouble with this, blending in seamlessly as she checked the clock, the chandelier, the people, me, the clock…

  “Ten minutes, right?” she asked.

  “Yes.” I huffed, my latest attempt at looking bored broken in favor of looking annoyed. “Just like it was twelve minutes two minutes ago. Are you certain you can read a clock?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, just… 11:50, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  She bit her lip, looking like she had more to say, but I was saved by a shouted announcement that the train was boarding. Her hand grabbed my wrist and I was dragged to the very front of a queue. Our tickets were checked and stamped, our lack of luggage was met with mild confusion, and we stepped aboard, all in a flurry.

  “We should head to the front,” I said quickly. “We’ll want a seat close to the cargo car there, and I think that’s where we’ll need to be anyway for our tickets.”

  Azalea pulled my arm the wrong way. “Isn’t this it?”

  “No, the train pulled in that way—that’s the rear now. We’ll want to go all the way up to the front.”

  “Well then why didn’t we get on up there?”

  I yanked my wrist free. “Azalea, think for one second. Just stop and think. Do you know why that might be?”

  She blinked. “Oh… well you should’ve said something.”

  I threw my hands up and started to walk quickly toward the actual front of the train. “You shouted before I could, and it would have drawn even more attention to pull you away.”

  Her footsteps sounded behind me. “Let’s move then.”

  We passed between this passenger car and the next, briefly moving outside, my shoes clanking on the metal. These cars here had narrow hallways with windows that looked out into the platform. To one side, luxury cabins with numbers awaited occupants. We moved from them through a lounge car and then the dining car into the more affordable passenger cars.

  Once again, the scale and the marvel of this hit me.

  To think we’d arrived at all this in just a scant few years. Mundane labor and mundane minds—not the least bit fallow where it counted. Coachbuilders, metal workers, and engineers. All working on an increasing scale with ever-growing precision, achieved from the awkward early designs I’d seen as a child. Marvelous!

  After another, less well appointed lounge car, we finally arrived in car two. All along the way we passed more and more people, awkwardly pushing through the tight corridors. The rooms here were still set up for sleeping, but in tighter quarters, with open-curtained windows on the doors showing sets of benches faced like a carriage.

  “You seem suddenly happy,” Azalea commented as we ducked past a well-dressed man who sneered down at our plain attire.

  I simply smiled back at the scowling man, realizing at some point that I’d switched to leading Azalea. “Of course I’m happy! Look at this wonder of technology, this… marvel of modern, mundane production!”

  Azalea squeezed my hand. “You’re cute like this.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I do not desire to be cute.”

  “...Sure.”

  “Don’t ruin my mood, Azalea. Please.”

  She just laughed until we arrived at the only partially empty cabin in the closest car to the front of the train. Opposite us, perhaps in a twist of fate, was the same commoner family we’d seen earlier.

  I marveled at the sliding door as I closed it and looked above at the luggage storage, the pillows and blankets cleaned and pressed for the passengers, and the wall opposite the station platform, its half-finished mural depicting purple mountains lit by morning sun.

  “First time on a train?” a kindly voice asked.

  “Yep!” Azalea answered without missing a beat. “She’s really excited.”

  I opened my mouth to correct her, then looked down at my skirt and up at the woman who’d spoken. She was probably a little younger than Mother, but she looked older, laugh lines creeping into the edges of her eyes and a little fatigue hanging under. Her husband, I presumed, was busy distracting the young boy and girl who were clambering over each other to look out the window. At least someone appreciates the mural.

  The only reply I gave was a nod, as Azalea guided the conversation deftly through the weather and into the train itself. So many times I wanted to speak up, but I held my tongue. Slate would know these things; Slate would have his own car, isolated from the reality of the other passengers.

  Silk sat here and listened to ticket prices, construction delays, and the years of saving it took for a vacation to the sea. At some point, we exchanged names and the children calmed. Not long after our tickets were checked again and the call to depart was made. A few minutes late by my guess, but there was no clock in sight. A whistle hooted, the car lurched, and the train crept forward, out of the station, with the dull grinding of metal on metal loud to my enhanced hearing. Soon, we passed the edge of town and departed into a rolling pastoral ribbon, bounded by fire-orange forest.

  I propped an elbow up and looked out the window. The ghost of my reflection shone in the glass, pale almost like my true appearance. The red eyes that stared back at me could belong to Azalea’s sister, but the long, black hair was my own.

  Probably the only thing left from Slate, and it was something Father never approved of. I clenched my fist and focused past my reflection, with its fair features so unlike what I’d grown up seeing.

  What Father thought of the mine didn’t matter; his actions did. Yes, if the Shimmering Shadows Sect had demanded it, he would not have the physical might to oppose it, but surely a letter to the King or a competing sect could have solved the issue?

  Of course it wouldn’t. If it could make it there without interception anyway. It was easier this way, anyone could see that, and I suddenly wondered how much of the track laid down below us had been paid for by literal blood money. I felt sick, and it wasn’t just the train’s swaying, clacking motion under us.

  Standing, I excused myself, pushing past the quiet family and a bored-looking Azalea. She, of course, stood after me.

  “I’m just going to the restroom,” I half-lied. Really, that was all I intended to do physically at least. “You don’t need to come with me.”

  She frowned and sat back down. “Be quick, alright? I want to go to the dining car as soon as it opens.”

  “Which it will soon,” I reassured her as I slipped out the door. Again.

  All she could think about was food and it was all I could do not to lose mine as I squeezed into the cramped restroom. I sat down on an unfamiliar contraption—another new invention with a water tank above it—and tried to focus.

  We were here to investigate whether there was any bloodstone transported on this train. Which I had figured would be in the front cargo car. But what did it matter? Could I return home, make up a story about getting away, and somehow avoid a doctor’s inspection that would immediately reveal what I was? If I did, what would I do? Tell my Father, who had signed off on this scheme?

  I needed the power to change this, which once again turned my thoughts to growing in strength as a demon and confronting my family. Yes, I could potentially get Mother on my side and I did not believe for a second Father would waste the chance to be out from under the Sect’s thumb.

  I stared up at the quaint nature scene painted opposite me, and I hated how serene it looked. My fingers were shaking when I looked down at them. There wasn’t even a plan for when the train arrived. I’d be stepping out into a city I’d been to a dozen times, but never truly visited, with no money, no connections, and a gnawing hunger that would not be able to find passive satisfaction in so dense a metropolis.

  Enic’s smirking face came to mind, and my gut twisted. Father hadn’t even confirmed whether those forced to work at the mine were criminals, but what other choice did I have than to trust Enic’s words? Any work that could get me stronger would send the Sect after me by virtue of being an unaffiliated cultivator. Not to kill me at first, but they’d find out what I was soon enough. Kobel was a fluke; I would not be so lucky next time.

  A knock on the door jolted me, and I mumbled a response. Right now, I needed something to focus on, and that something would be finding the bloodstone on this train, confirming Father’s direct hand in this business and maybe finding another clue.

  Hurrying out of the restroom, I tried not to think about the rush of power I’d felt consuming that small shard back the estate I’d left—its vitae had felt right.

  Like I was taking back what was rightfully mine.