Chapter 434. Money Always Leaves a Trail

Chapter 434: 434. Money Always Leaves a Trail

That evening, after the adrenaline of the training yard had finally ebbed and Kaela had retired to her quarters, a heavy silence descended upon the guest wing.

William sat alone in the amber glow of a single candle that burned dangerously low, casting elongated, dancing shadows across the walls. Several sheets of borrowed parchment lay scattered before him, their surfaces stark white against the dark oak of the desk.

His mind, however, remained far from rest. It kept circling back, like a predator circling a wound, to that persistent, nagging suspicion that had never truly released its grip since King Theron’s first, halting explanation weeks earlier.

Something about the crisis had never sat right in his gut; it felt oily, wrong, like blood beneath a clean bandage. The timing had been too perfect.

The precision of Delmore’s aid had been too convenient. And most troubling of all was the marriage clause, a suspiciously specific requirement for young royal blood rather than any more general form of alliance.

In William’s decades of experience, he had learned that when a story appeared too plausible, too neatly constructed, it was almost always because someone had spent considerable effort stitching the lies together to conceal a considerably darker truth beneath.

Every instinct honed across a lifetime of violence and deception screamed that this was exactly such a story.

With Kaela’s training now settled into a stable, productive rhythm, and with Selena’s presence at the palace providing an additional layer of watchful protection during his own absences, William finally found himself with the breathing room necessary to pursue the investigation that had been quietly simmering in the back of his mind like banked coals.

’Time to actually pull this thread,’ he thought grimly, the tip of his quill hovering over the parchment. ’Let’s see what kind of monster lives at the other end of it.’

He dipped the pen in ink and began to organize his scattered observations into something more coherent, his handwriting sharp and purposeful.

The unexpected assistance came from two considerably different directions, both arriving within days of each other in a manner that felt, to William’s practiced paranoia, almost too fortunate to be entirely coincidental.

Olivia arrived first. She had traveled to the capital on unrelated academy business, but when William spotted her familiar, sharp-eyed figure crossing the palace courtyard, he nearly laughed aloud with genuine relief.

Her travel cloak was still caked with the dust of the road, and there was a weariness in her shoulders that spoke of a long journey.

"Olivia," he called out as she approached, his voice carrying a rare note of delight. "What brings you to this den of vipers?"

"Academy diplomatic correspondence," Olivia said, grinning as she drew closer, shaking the road dust from her cloak with visible relief at finally being able to dismount. "Mostly tedious paperwork that Albert insisted needed a personal touch."

"Though I confess," she added, her eyes scanning him with that unnerving intelligence she possessed, "I was rather hoping to run into you and Kaela while I was here..."

"How’s the whole engagement disaster progressing? Still holding together by sheer force of will?"

"Considerably more complicated than it first appeared," William admitted.

His voice was casual, but there was an undercurrent of something heavy, something darker, that he couldn’t quite suppress.

Olivia stopped mid-motion. The casual friendliness in her expression vanished, replaced instantly by something sharper, something predatory.

She recognized that tone. It wasn’t the tone of a man recounting a political headache; it was the tone of a man who had found a corpse in a locked room.

"That sounds like exactly the kind of complicated thing I find interesting," Olivia said, her eyes lighting up with a dangerous, delighted curiosity—the particular gleam of someone who had just scented a genuine mystery worth pursuing.

She dropped her travel bag unceremoniously onto the cobblestones and leaned forward, her entire posture shifting into one of rapt attention. "Go on, William..."

"Don’t give me the diplomatic version... Tell me everything."

"Don’t leave out a single detail, no matter how small... I have a nose for exactly this sort of thing."

William glanced around the courtyard, his eyes scanning the shadowed alcoves and the distant windows of the palace with practiced caution.

The evening air was cool, but the tension between them felt hot. Making sure no servants or prying nobles were within earshot, he grabbed Olivia by the elbow and guided her toward a secluded stone bench beneath the spreading branches of an ancient oak tree.

"Keep your voice low," William warned, his tone dropping into something gravelly and urgent. "This isn’t academy gossip..."

"This is treason."

He laid it all out for her: the treaty’s impossible timing, the suspiciously convenient arrival of Delmore’s forces, and most damning of all, the specific, surgical requirement for young royal blood that seemed less like a diplomatic necessity and more like a targeted harvest.

He spoke carefully, each word measured, but his jaw remained tight with restrained fury.

Olivia listened with rapt, frighteningly focused attention. She didn’t interrupt once; she simply absorbed every detail, her sharp eyes tracking the movement of his lips as if she were reading a map.

By the time he finished, the earlier weariness from her long journey had vanished entirely, replaced by a coiled, restless energy. She looked less like a visiting scholar and more like a blade being drawn from its sheath.

"This is genuinely the most interesting thing that’s happened to me since the Hollow Circle business," she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.

The excitement in her eyes was unmistakable, but beneath it lay the cold calculation of a seasoned operative. "You genuinely believe an entire kingdom’s collapse was orchestrated as a controlled demolition just to force a marriage contract?"

"I believe it’s worth investigating properly," William said, leaning forward, his hands clenched into fists. "I don’t have a smoking gun yet..."

"I don’t have the blood on their hands, but all I have right now is instinct and a mountain of details that refuse to align..."

"It’s like someone painted a masterpiece of a crisis, but the brushstrokes are too deliberate."

"Instinct is usually where the most dangerous truths begin to surface," Olivia countered.

Without breaking eye contact, she reached into her satchel and pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook. She flipped to a fresh page with the practiced efficiency of someone who had spent years documenting secrets that could topple thrones.

"The Academy teaches us how to read texts, but they forget to teach us how to read people and their coin."

A sharp, hungry smile touched her lips. "I have contacts, William."

"People who specialize in exactly this kind of financial bloodsport... Merchants, smugglers, and information brokers who owe me favors from my old life back before the Academy, when investigating things quietly wasn’t a hobby but my full-time occupation."

She tapped her quill against the paper. "Give me a few days."

"I’ll follow the gold... If this was engineered, someone had to pay for the tools, the troops, and the silence. And money always leaves a trail."

William felt a genuine surge of relief. For the first time since arriving at this gilded cage, he didn’t feel like he was fighting a phantom alone.

"Thank you, Olivia... Genuinely. I need someone who knows how to look in the places where light doesn’t reach."

"Don’t thank me yet," Olivia said, already standing up, her mind clearly already three steps ahead in the hunt.

The exhaustion of the road was gone, burned away by the fire of a new purpose. "Thank me when I’ve actually found something worth the effort."

"Though, between us?" She leaned in close, one last conspiratorial whisper that sent a chill down his spine. "I have a feeling I’m going to find something that’s going to make your blood run cold."