Read Chapter 32: The Debt Collector

The port reeked of fish and desperation. Elara pressed herself into the shadow of a drying-net shed, watching the third warehouse from the docks. Veyron had been here for six days—long enough to book passage, short enough to still be waiting for the right tide.

Alaric shifted beside her, his breathing still too shallow. The coma had cost him something he hadn't gotten back yet. His hand rested on his sword hilt, but his knuckles weren't white. They were grey.

“You should wait with the horses,” she said.

“No.”

“Alaric, if this turns—”

“No.” He turned to look at her, and there was iron in his gaze again. Not the iron of a king. The iron of a man who had watched her almost die once and had decided that would not happen twice. “We do this together. Or we don't do it at all.”

She wanted to argue. Instead she nodded and returned her eyes to the warehouse.

Veyron had been her father's spymaster for twenty years. A rodent of a man with a ledger for a heart and a talent for knowing where every body was buried. He'd disappeared the same night her father died, and no one had seen him since. Until one of Alaric's old contacts spotted him in this piss-soaked corner of the realm, trying to buy a berth on a ship that didn't ask questions.

The warehouse door creaked open. A man in a grey cloak slipped out, glancing both ways before moving toward the dock.

Veyron.

“Now,” Elara said.

They moved. Alaric's longer stride carried him ahead of her, and he caught Veyron before the spymaster reached the gangplank. A hand on the shoulder, a quiet word. Veyron froze, then turned, and his face went the color of spoiled milk when he saw Elara approaching.

“Your Highness.” His voice cracked on the second word.

“I'm not Highness anymore, Veyron. I'm the woman whose father died under your watch.”

Veyron looked between her and Alaric, then at the escape route behind him. The ship's captain was watching from the rail, but he wasn't about to intervene for a passenger who'd drawn armed attention.

“I have money,” Veyron said. “I can pay for your silence. Both of you, whatever you need, I can—”

“I don't want your money.” Elara stepped closer. “I want the truth. And I want it now, before I decide that the harbor is deep enough to hide a second body tonight.”

Veyron's throat worked. He was a man who had spent his life trading secrets, and he knew the currency of threats. Hers was genuine.

“Not here.” He looked around, twitchy as a rat cornered by cats. “There's a booth by the chandler's shop. I'll talk. I'll talk, but I want your word you'll let me walk after.”

“No,” Alaric said.

“What I mean is,” Elara cut in, “I'll decide after I've heard what you have to say.” She gave him nothing else. No comfort, no promise. Just the cold arithmetic of a woman who had learned that mercy was a ledger some people never paid back.

They followed Veyron to a cramped booth reeking of tallow and salt. He sat with his back to the wall, hands flat on the table as if he thought they might stop him from bolting.

“I didn't kill him,” Veyron said.

“He died in your castle, in your custody, while you were supposed to be protecting him.”

“I know what it looks like.” Veyron's voice dropped to a whisper. “But there was a group. A cabal, they called themselves. They'd been pulling strings in both courts for years, and they had me in their pocket. Debts, you understand? Real ones. The kind you can't climb out of unless someone lets you.”

“So you traded my father's life for your books.”

“I didn't trade anything!” Veyron's indignant mask slipped. “They forced me. They said if I didn't let them reach him, they'd kill my daughter. She was nine years old.”

Elara's jaw tightened. She remembered rumors of Veyron's daughter, sent away to the country for her health. She had never wondered if it was true.

“They told me they only wanted to talk to him. Pressure him on a trade agreement. I believed them.” Veyron's hands trembled. “But the man they sent wasn't a negotiator. He was a poisoner. Your father died before I could even raise the alarm. And then they said if I ever spoke of it, they'd take my daughter anyway, and I'd die slower than he did.”

Elara forced herself to breathe. The anger was there, hot and bright, but she banked it. Anger was fuel for fools. She needed information.

“Who are they?”

Veyron hesitated. For a moment, she thought he'd bolt. But Alaric had moved to block the door, silent as a shadow, and the spymaster saw the calculations weren't in his favor.

He reached into his coat. Elara tensed, but what he pulled out was a leather-bound book, worn at the edges, with brass clasps that had been opened and closed so many times the metal had polished the leather beneath.

“The Cabal keeps accounts,” he said. “I was their bookkeeper for six years. Every payment, every name, every meeting. It's all in here.”

He slid it across the table. Elara picked it up, feeling the weight of it. This was more than evidence. This was a rope. All she had to do was find the right neck to put it around.

“Why give me this now?” she asked.

“Because I'm a dead man either way.” Veyron's voice was flat. “The Cabal found out I'd been talking to King Alaric's people. They sent word last week that my daughter was taken from the farm. They want me to meet them in Caldoran to 'renegotiate.'” He laughed, hollow and bitter. “I'm not walking into that. I'm not giving them the satisfaction.”

“Then run,” Alaric said. “Why stay?”

“Because she's still alive.” Veyron looked up, and there was something raw in his face that his careful, rodent features had never shown before. “She's alive, which means they'll keep her that way until I show up. But if I give you the ledger, maybe you can burn them all down before they get to use her. That's the only play I've got left.”

Elara opened the ledger. Columns of names, dates, amounts of coin. She recognized half the noble houses of Valdris. A quarter of Aurenne's. Each entry cross-referenced with what was traded—a vote, a shipment of weapons, a convenient death.

“This is everything,” she breathed.

“Everything except the one name that matters.” Veyron smiled, and it was the rictus grin of a man who had saved his best secret for last. “The Cabal has a patron. A single hand that feeds it. You'll find it on the last page.”

Elara flipped to the back. The final entries were sparse, written in a code she didn't recognize. But at the very bottom, in Veyron's careful hand, was a name.

“King Harrow of Caldoran,” she read aloud.

Alaric took the book from her hands, his eyes scanning the page. His face went still, that kingly mask sliding into place.

“The man who wants both our thrones,” he said.

“He's been funding the Cabal for ten years,” Veyron said. “Stirring trouble in Valdris and Aurenne, making both kingdoms weak and unstable. And when you two—” He gestured between them. “—decided to marry and unite the crowns, he saw his whole plan unraveling. So he pulled his puppet strings: the Duke, Lady Mira, everyone who's been hunting you.”

That fit. That all fit too well.

A scream rent the night from outside. Veyron flinched, and Elara saw his eyes go wide with recognition.

“They found me.” He stood, knocking his chair backward. “You have to go. Now.”

“You can come with us,” Elara said, surprising herself. “You can testify.”

“No.” Veyron shook his head, backing toward the door. “You saw the ledger. When the Cabal learns it's gone, my daughter is dead, no matter what I do. But if I give them a reason to think I still have it—” He pulled a knife from his boot. “—maybe they keep her alive long enough to use as leverage. Either way, this is my only gift to her.”

Before she could stop him, he plunged the blade into his own chest.

Elara stepped back, her hand flying to her mouth. Veyron dropped to his knees, a gurgling sound escaping his throat. He looked up at her with water-bright eyes.

“The last page,” he choked. “There's a letter. Between the leaves. Proof that should have been destroyed.”

Then he fell forward, and the life went out of him.

Alaric was already moving, pulling her toward the back exit. Shouts rose outside, booted feet pounding toward the booth.

But Elara's hands were shaking as she opened the ledger to the final page, feeling between the leaves. Her fingers found a folded sheet of paper, yellowed and sealed with wax.

She broke it open and read three lines.

“Harrow has been keeping a trump card. He's holding someone—” Her voice caught. “—someone who was supposed to have died as an infant. A true heir to Aurenne. Alaric's cousin.”

Alaric's face went pale beneath his week of road-grime. The sounds of their pursuers grew closer, but neither of them moved.

“He's alive,” Elara said. “Your cousin is alive. And Harrow has him.”

Somewhere beyond the door, the Cabal's men kicked their way into the chandler's shop. And Elara realized that the ledger in her hands wasn't a weapon meant to save them.

It was a bell. And they had just pulled the rope.