Chapter 435. A Blade Pressed Against a Throat, Not a Trial Won by Shouting

Chapter 435: 435. A Blade Pressed Against a Throat, Not a Trial Won by Shouting

Albert arrived at the palace shortly after, his presence as measured and deliberate as a ticking clock. His arrival on official academy business provided William with the perfect cover to approach him.

They met in a private study lined with ancient leather-bound volumes, the air thick with the scent of old paper and wax.

William laid out the situation with the same careful precision he had used with Olivia, though his tone was pitched with a more formal gravity, respecting Albert’s preference for structure and decorum.

As William finished describing the inconsistencies in the treaty and the disturbing specificity of the marriage clause, Albert didn’t immediately respond.

He simply sat there, steepling his fingers beneath his chin, his sharp eyes reflecting the lamplight as he processed the implications. The silence stretched, taut and heavy with the weight of what was being discussed.

"I can request access to certain archival records through proper diplomatic channels," Albert finally said, his voice carrying a rare edge of steel that pierced through his usual composed neutrality.

"I speak of restricted annals, military manifests from the Delmore campaigns, grain supply ledgers from the months preceding the crisis, and sealed correspondence between regional governors."

"These are records that would never be accessible to an outsider, especially not to a foreign instructor like yourself."

He paused, his gaze narrowing as he calculated the risks. "It will require delicate maneuvering."

"I will have to frame the request as routine historical research, a study on the socioeconomic impacts of border conflicts, rather than an active investigation into treason."

"If I am too direct, the palace censors will slam every door in our faces before we even find the first crack in their story."

"But I believe I can manage it without raising undue suspicion."

"Thank you, Albert," William said, feeling a grim satisfaction. "Genuinely... Having eyes in the archives changes everything."

"Do not mistake my cooperation for recklessness, William," Albert said quietly.

His steady gaze became grave, almost mournful. "If your suspicions prove correct... if this was indeed a manufactured catastrophe, then ’thank you’ will be a hollow sentiment."

"We wouldn’t just be dealing with a political scandal; we would be standing at the precipice of a conspiracy that could unravel the entire continent’s stability."

A cold shiver traced its way down William’s spine. He knew Albert didn’t exaggerate.

"I’ll need you to promise me something in return, Instructor Wade," Albert continued, leaning forward into the lamplight.

William didn’t hesitate. "Name it."

"Move with absolute, surgical caution," Albert commanded, his voice dropping to a hushed whisper. "Whatever we uncover, however damning the evidence proves to be, you cannot expose it recklessly."

"Do not think of this as a trial where truth wins by shouting..."

"Think of it as a blade pressed against a throat... If we reveal our hand too early, we won’t be bringing justice; we will be inviting annihilation."

Albert’s eyes locked onto William’s with terrifying intensity. "If Delmore truly engineered a kingdom’s collapse once already, if they are capable of slaughtering thousands just to satisfy a contract, then they will not hesitate to eliminate us to protect their investment."

’They won’t send diplomats to argue with us; they will send assassins to silence us... If they feel genuinely threatened, they will consider a second, far more direct intervention."

"And this time, there will be no witnesses left to tell the tale."

The warning hung in the air like a death sentence. William nodded slowly, the implications settling into his bones like ice.

He thought of Kaela’s bright smile, of Catherine’s warmth, and the fragile peace they had fought so hard to establish. He realized then that they weren’t just hunting for truth; they were walking through a minefield where one wrong step would incinerate everything they loved.

"I understand," William said, his voice quiet but unbreakable. "I’ll play the game by their rules until I can flip the board."

The first genuine crack in the facade appeared several days later, emerging from the suffocating silence of the palace archives.

William sat alone in the amber glow of a dying candle, the air in his chamber growing stale as he pored over a collection of old weather and infrastructure records. Albert had managed to procure it through weeks of painstaking, patient, diplomatic maneuvering.

His eyes burned from hours of reading, but his mind refused to relent.

The official records, filed during the height of the original crisis, painted a picture of helpless tragedy. They attributed the catastrophic harvest failure to an unprecedented, devastating blight, compounded by weather patterns so harsh they seemed almost supernatural.

William read through page after page of these official accounts first, noting with growing unease how unnervingly consistent they were. Every report, from every corner of the kingdom, pointed toward the exact same conclusion: natural misfortune.

An act of God that no king could prevent and no army could fight.

’Too clean,’ William thought grimly, his quill scratching harsh lines across his parchment. ’Too perfect... Real crises are messy.’

’They produce conflicting reports, panic, finger pointing, and chaos.’

’These records read like they were written from the same rehearsed script, as if someone had handed every official the same lie to tell.’

But then, he dug deeper. He moved past the polished historical summaries and into the obscure, rotting underbelly of the archive, the engineering reports buried in the deepest, least accessed sections where only dust and forgotten truths resided.

It was there, tucked between mildewed ledgers of stone masonry, that he found something that made the blood turn to ice in his veins.

A local irrigation engineer, a man whose name had been nearly erased by time, the ink faded, and water damage had submitted a formal complaint in the weeks immediately preceding the harvest failure.

William leaned closer to the candle, squinting at the crumbling parchment. The engineer’s language was formal, but beneath the bureaucratic veneer, there was an unmistakable current of raw, unfiltered alarm.

The report described a series of unexplained malfunctions in the kingdom’s primary dam system, the very system that regulated water flow to the agricultural heartlands.

The engineer detailed stress patterns along the dam’s support structure that defied every law of natural degradation he had witnessed in twenty years of service.

Erosion or seasonal shifting did not cause the damage; instead, specific, surgical locations concentrated the structural stress. It was as if someone had deliberately weakened the bones of the dam, preparing it to shatter at exactly the right moment.

William felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. ’Sabotage.’

His fingers trembled slightly as he scanned the margins, searching for any sign that the warning had been heeded.

Instead, he found a dismissive note scrawled in a different, aggressive hand across the bottom of the original document: ’Engineer’s incompetence... Attributed to storm season... File closed.’

There was no follow-up.

No investigation.

No second opinion.

The complaint had been strangled in its crib. William searched frantically through the surrounding documents, desperate to find any trace of the engineer, any mention of an arrest, a promotion, or even a death certificate, but the man had simply vanished from the annals of history.

He had seen the truth and spoken it, and then he had been erased.

William read the report three more times, each pass more infuriating than the last. His jaw was clamped so tight it ached.

With methodical, controlled fury, he began transcribing the key details onto his own parchment, cross-referencing the dates of the ’malfunctions’ against the exact timeline of the ’blight’ that Theron had described.

The dates lined up with terrifying precision. The dam fails, the water floods the fields, the crops drown, the blight takes what little remains, and the kingdom starves.

’It wasn’t a plague,’ William thought, his eyes darkening as he stared at the faded ink. ’And it wasn’t just bad luck...’

’They didn’t just wait for a disaster; they built one.’

The implication settled over him like a shroud: The kingdom hadn’t been destroyed by nature. It had been butchered by design.

’This wasn’t a blight,’ he whispered to the empty room, his voice like grinding stone. ’Or if it was... someone made sure it had help.’