CHAPTER 76: CHAPTER SEVENTY SIX

The silver moonlight was a weak, watery grey, doing little to pierce the heavy, oppressive shadows of the forest. The abandoned monastery stood on the hill like a rotted, broken tooth, its bell tower a jagged silhouette against the moonlight. The air was cold, damp, and unnervingly quiet.

Derek, completely hidden beneath a heavy, plain, dark-wool cloak, his face obscured by a simple, black half-mask that left only his eyes visible, moved through the trees like a shadow.

He reached the crumbling stone wall of the monastery and paused, listening. There was no sound. No birds. No rustle of guards. No signal. Only the heavy, tomblike silence that settles in places long forgotten by men. He had waited three years for this meeting since he found out the man was still alive. Commander Leon, his father’s most trusted soldier, a man who had vanished after the war, had finally sent word.

A single message: The truth of the massacre. Meet me at the old monastery. Come alone. Trust no one.

Now, the silence felt wrong. It felt "oddly quiet."

Derek slipped through a collapsed archway, his hand resting on the hilt of the plain, unmarked sword at his hip. He was in the main courtyard, now a riot of overgrown weeds and broken stones. The door to the main sanctuary was slightly ajar, a sliver of darkness in the grey stone. He pushed it open.

The inside was vast, dark, and smelled of damp earth, rotted wood, and something else... something metallic and sharp.

Blood.

His eyes scanned the gloom. He saw the rows of broken, overturned pews, the shattered, stained-glass windows, the thick, dusty cobwebs that hung from the high rafters like funeral shrouds and trails of dropped blood.

And then he saw him.

In one of the few pews that was still upright, a man was lying, slumped on his side. He was an old man, still wearing the tattered, dark-green uniform of the Thompson regiment.

"Commander Leon!" Derek’s voice was a harsh, urgent whisper. He ran down the central aisle, his boots kicking up clouds of dust.

He reached the old man’s side. Leon was alive, but only just. His breathing was a low, wet, rattling sound. His face was a waxy, pale grey, his lips tinged with blue. Three short, black-fletched arrows were embedded deep in his chest.

Derek’s blood ran cold with a sudden fury. This was an ambush. He reached out, his hands, which were usually so steady, trembling slightly. He gripped the shaft of the nearest arrow, intending to break it, to try and pull it free.

"Don’t... Your Grace." Leon’s voice was a faint, wet gurgle. His hand, thin and cold, clamped down on Derek’s wrist with a surprising, desperate strength. "It’s too late. The tips... poisoned. Black-lotus venom."

Derek froze, his mind a chaotic storm of rage and a terrible, familiar grief. He was too late. Again. "Who did this, Commander? Who?"

Leon coughed, a terrible, racking sound. A spray of dark, bloody foam flecked his lips. He was struggling, fighting to get the words out. "Had to... see you, Your Grace. Had to... tell you the truth."

"Save your strength," Derek pleaded, his voice rough.

"No... time." Leon’s eyes, though clouded with pain, were burning with a last, desperate urgency. "The massacre... of the Thompson army... it wasn’t your father’s regiment."

The words struck Derek. His entire world, his entire quest for vengeance, had been built on the foundation of his father’s death, his father’s men, his father’s honor. "What?" he breathed, his mind unable to process the words.

"Your father..." Leon coughed again, the effort agonizing. "He was a hero. He... he sacrificed his life, yes, but it was five years ago. Your brother and I fought along side him. He did it to settle the feud between the Capital and the Western Region. The war ended with a... a peace treaty. He died a hero."

"Then the massacre..." Derek spoke, his voice laced with disbelief.

"The King... he handed the regiment over to your brother. To... Theodore." Derek’s heart stopped. Theodore.

"Theodore... he was just a lieutenant and stayed in camp for two years before he became commander." Leon gasped, his grip on Derek’s wrist tightening. "Then, war broke out between our kingdom, Eudora, and Mercia. He led the troops. They were... victorious. They were heroes. But they were... ambushed. On the way back. Slaughtered, all of them. Just like you heard."

"Who?" Derek’s voice was a hoarse, broken whisper. "Who ambushed them?"

"Someone... someone at home. Someone in the palace," Leon forced the words out, his eyes wide. "They were betrayed."

"How do you know? What proof?"

"Strathmore," Leon choked out. "A small county, given to Eudora after the war. The High Cathedral of Strathmore. That is where you will find the evidence. The proof. You have to... you have to go to Strathmore." His voice was fading, his body going limp. "Someone in the palace... in the king’s court is responsible. He... he..."

He spat out another, larger gush of dark, poisoned blood. His eyes, fixed on Derek’s, suddenly went wide, filled with a last, silent, terrible understanding. His hand, which had been gripping Derek’s arm so tightly, went slack. He was gone.

"Commander Leon?" Derek whispered, his hand shaking as he touched the old man’s shoulder. "Commander Leon!"

But the man was gone. He was gone, and he had taken the full truth with him, leaving only a new, more horrifying, and more personal path of vengeance behind. His brother.

A sound. The scrape of a boot on stone.

Derek was on his feet in an instant, his sword drawn. He was not alone.

They poured in, from the main entrance, from the side chapels, from the holes in the walls. They were not bandits. They were not mercenaries. They wore the pristine, silver-and-blue uniforms of the King’s Royal Guards. Ten of them.

They fanned out, their swords drawn, forming a half-circle, trapping him against the altar. A man in the golden-trimmed armor of a Captain stepped forward, his own sword pointed directly at Derek’s masked face.

"Commander Leon was a traitorous fugitive, wanted for selling the state’s secrets," the Captain announced, his voice cold and final. "And you, whoever you are, have collided with him. You are his accomplice." He raised his sword. "By order of the King’s council, you must be executed on sight."

A traitor? Derek thought, his mind racing, cold and clear. Sir Leon, a traitor? It was a lie. A perfect, clean, and terrifying lie. This was the cover-up. The men in the palace, the ones who had slaughtered Theodore, were now here to silence the last person who knew the truth.

The guards lunged.

There was no more time for thought, only action. The clang of steel against steel was a deafening, sudden explosion of sound in the silent, dead monastery. Sparks flew in the dim, grey light.

Derek was a master swordsman, trained since birth, but he was one man against ten. He was not fighting to win. He was fighting to live.

He blocked a high, slashing strike from one guard, parried a low, fast thrust from another, and used his booted foot to kick a third in the chest, sending him stumbling back into his comrades. He was moving backward, giving ground, trying to find a more defensible position, a doorway, a narrow aisle to escape.

Steel met steel. He blocked, twisted, and thrust, his blade sliding past a guard’s defense and sinking into his shoulder. The man cried out and fell.

But for every man he wounded, two more took his place. They were pressing him, overwhelming him. His arm was burning from the strain of blocking so many heavy, relentless blows. He was breathing hard, the air thick with the smell of dust and his own sweat.

He parried a savage blow from the Captain himself, the force of it jarring his entire body. He saw his opening—a small, split-second gap in the Captain’s defense.

THWIP.

A sound, sharp as a wasp, hissed past his ear.

THUD.

An arrow, identical to the ones in Leon’s chest, embedded itself, quivering, in the thick, wooden altar, exactly where Derek’s head had been a second before.

He froze, his blood running cold. An archer.

He looked up. There, in the high, shadowed rafters, in a broken gap where a window had once been, was a dark, cloaked figure, his bow already raised, a new arrow nocked and aimed directly at Derek’s heart.