Read Chapter 24: The Betrayal

The video call crackled to life on Marcus’s phone at 3:47 a.m., the harsh blue light carving shadows into the train carriage’s grimy windows. Eleanor was asleep against his shoulder, her breathing slow and even, the decoy diary clutched against her chest like a talisman. He didn’t move to answer. He let it ring.

It rang again.

He eased his arm free, careful not to wake her, and slid into the vestibule between carriages. The train juddered, the door hissing shut behind him. He pressed the phone to his ear.

“Marcus.” Margaret Hale’s voice was silk over steel. No video, just audio. “I trust you’ve had a productive evening.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s comfortable. For now.” There was a pause, a rustle of fabric, and then his mother’s voice—muffled, terrified. “Marcus, don’t—don’t do what they—.”

A sharp sound. A gag being tightened. His mother’s whimper cut off.

“You have until breakfast,” Hale said. “Bring me both diaries. The decoy and the original. Hand them over, and your mother walks free. You walk free. Eleanor Ashworth becomes a footnote, and this whole unpleasantness evaporates.”

“She’ll never agree.”

“She doesn’t have to. You do.”

The line went dead.

Marcus stood in the rattling gloom, the phone cold in his hand. His reflection in the window was hollow, a stranger wearing his face. He thought of his mother’s laugh, the way she’d hummed when she cooked, the scar on her wrist from the accident when he was eight. He thought of Eleanor, who had trusted him with her secrets, her father’s ghosts, her life.

He went back to his seat. Eleanor stirred, murmuring something unintelligible, and settled deeper into sleep. The original diary—the leather-bound volume that named a sitting peer and shook the foundations of the crown—poked from her satchel. The decoy lay open in her lap.

He watched the Cambridge rooftops slide past the window, and he made his choice.

---

The hotel room was cheap, a Travelodge near the station, chosen for cash anonymity. Eleanor collapsed onto the bed fully dressed, asleep before her head hit the pillow. Marcus waited until her breathing deepened, then moved.

He worked fast, his hands steady even as his heart pounded. He photographed every page of the original diary with his phone, the flash muted under a folded sock. He then took the decoy diary into the bathroom and tore out the two pages that corroborated the land-grab claims and the queen’s ancestors. He held them over the sink, flicked the lighter, watched them curl and blacken. The ash swirled down the drain.

For the original, he didn’t tear out pages—too obvious. Instead, he used a razor blade from his toiletry kit to carefully slice away the bottom half of three pivotal pages: the passage naming the peer, the map reference, the dated confession. He slid the slivers into his pocket.

He copied the decoy’s remaining contents too. Not for the firm. For himself. A hedging instinct he didn’t want to name.

He left the note on the bedside table, weighed down by her father’s pocket watch—a detail he knew would wound her more than any other. *I’m sorry. I can’t let her die. They have the copies, but I’ve left you the photographs on my phone’s cloud—log in with your birthdate. The passcode is 0428. Keep them safe. They’ll come for you. Run.*

And then, because he was a coward and a traitor and a son who loved his mother, he took both diaries and slipped out the door.

---

The call came at 5:58 a.m., as the gray dawn leaked through the curtains.

Eleanor woke to her phone buzzing. Marcus’s name. She answered, her throat raw. “Marcus? Where—?”

“Don’t go to the library.” His voice was ragged, broken. “It’s a trap. All of it. I gave them the diaries—both. They’re meeting me at the Round Church. But they never planned to let either of us walk away. I heard Hale on a call. The original goes to the peer. You go to the Cam.”

Eleanor sat up. The note was there. The diaries were gone. The pocket watch sat heavy and still.

“Marcus.” Her voice was flat, quiet, the calm of a storm’s eye. “You sold me.”

“I know.” A hitch in his breath, maybe a sob. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I made copies—every page of the original, and most of the decoy. I hid them. Your father’s watch—it opens a compartment. The code’s in the note. Eleanor, please—.”

“You told them where the real diary was.” It wasn’t a question.

“They knew. Hale knew before I said anything. They’ve known since the library. The proctor wasn’t a proctor. He was theirs.” A pause. “Run. Go to the coast. Use the photographs. Blow the whole thing open. It’s the only way I can—.”

“You can’t buy back a betrayal, Marcus.”

Silence. Then, barely audible: “No. I can’t.”

The line clicked. Gone.

Eleanor sank onto the bed, her hand closing around the pocket watch. The engraving on its face, the one matching her father’s cryptic journal entry—she’d never asked what it opened. She turned it over, pressed the crown, twisted it counterclockwise until she felt a click. The back popped open.

Inside, a micro-SD card.

Her father’s insurance. Her only weapon.

She heard the distant slam of a car door outside. Footsteps on the gravel. Voices, low and purposeful.

They were already here.