Chapter 447. Six Paces From the Door

Chapter 447: 447. Six Paces From the Door

William did not move. He stood frozen in the shadows, his breath shallow and controlled, though his heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird.

The word rolled around in his mind with a nauseating echo. ’Asset... Not fiancée... Not princess...’

’Not even a bargaining piece, which would at least have acknowledged there was a human being, a soul with desires and fears, on the other side of the transaction.’

’An asset was something you tallied in a ledger, something you stored in a vault and deployed when the market shifted.’

’It was inanimate, and it was expendable.’

His mind flashed to Kaela, not the princess in the silver gown, but the girl in the corridor, barefoot and laughing at the absurdity of a soup-soaked lord. That girl was vibrant, fierce, and alive.

And to Alden, she was nothing more than a strategic resource to be harvested. A coldness settled over William, a glacial numbness that was terrifyingly different from ordinary anger.

This was a different kind of fury. It didn’t burn hot and bright; it didn’t shout or steam.

This anger was quiet. It was patient and it was calculating.

It was the kind of rage that built cathedrals of vengeance and waited years for the right moment to strike. He had felt this exact same hunger once before, in the wreckage of a previous life.

He remembered the wet slide of steel against his throat as a student he had loved a boy he had poured years of mentorship into, pushing a blade into his windpipe while weeping, claiming that the world owed him everything.

He had seen the shape of that betrayal too late. He had trusted the wrong person, believed in a lie, and paid for it in blood.

’I will not make that mistake twice,’ he swore, the vow tasting like copper in his mouth. ’Not this time. Never again.’

Inside the room, the scrape of a chair against hardwood reverberated through the door. William felt the air shift violently as someone rose and began moving toward the exit.

His instincts took over instantly.

He began walking backward on the balls of his feet, each step precise and silent, the ghost step taught to him by a decade of training recruits to ambush their sergeants. His muscles coiled like springs.

He rounded the far corner of the corridor just as the door swung open. By the time Lord Vane stepped out into the hall, clutching a scroll beneath his arm like a weapon of bureaucracy, William was already three doors down.

He stood before a faded tapestry depicting a suspiciously fat horse, studying the stitching with an expression of intense, scholarly interest.

Vane’s eyes swept the hallway. His gaze passed over William, lingering for a fraction of a second too long.

William offered a polite, empty nod. Vane acknowledged him with a curt, dismissive tilt of his head and continued down the hall with the unhurried, arrogant stride of a man who believed his conscience was as clean as his silk robes.

William kept his eyes fixed on the horse until the rhythmic click of Vane’s boots faded into nothingness. Only then did he turn and walk toward his own room.

He didn’t run; running would betray the storm inside, but his stride was long and urgent, each step vibrating with suppressed violence.

When he entered his quarters, Catherine was already there. She was seated at the small writing desk by the window, the afternoon light casting sharp angles across her face.

She took one look at his expression—the hollowed eyes, the unnatural stillness—and immediately set her pen aside. She didn’t ask what had happened.

She didn’t ask if he was alright.

She simply stood, walked to the door, and turned the key in the lock with a decisive click. Then, she drew the heavy curtains shut, plunging the room into a dim, amber twilight.

Finally, she sat on the edge of the bed and waited.

"Tell me," she commanded.

William told her everything. He laid out the conversation like a crime scene, recounting the words exactly as they had fallen from those poisonous mouths.

He didn’t embellish; he didn’t need to. The plain truth was more damning than any fiction could ever be.

He described the position of the door, the way the air had carried the voices, and the exact cadence of Alden’s amusement. When he reached the word "asset," his voice faltered, and he had to stop to swallow the bile rising in his throat.

Catherine’s face transformed. The attentive scholar vanished, replaced by something cold, hard, and dangerous.

"Asset," she repeated.

Her voice was quiet, terrifyingly steady, the kind of calm that precedes a hurricane. "He actually called her that."

"Word for word... As if he were discussing a shipment of grain."

"And Vane... Vane confirmed the King’s intent."

"To bind her before the leverage is fully seized."

"It’s not just Alden," William said, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "The entire Delmore crown is complicit."

"They aren’t protecting a princess; they’re securing a contract."

Catherine stood abruptly, crossing to her desk and pulling a fresh sheet of parchment toward her. Her movements were precise and economical.

"Say it again from the beginning... Slowly. From the first word."

"Catherine, you don’t have to—"

"I do." She dipped her pen into the inkwell with deadly focus. "Every syllable matters."

"Every inflection, every pause... If this ever reaches a magistrate, if we ever bring this before a council of ministers to tear their precious little kingdom apart, we cannot afford a single error."

"It needs a date, a location, and the names of every conspirator, and it must be recorded by someone whose hand isn’t shaking with rage when the ink hits the page."

She looked up at him, her eyes blazing with a cold, righteous fire. "I spent eight years drafting legal documents for men who spent their lives trying to find loopholes in them."

"Let me do this... Let me build the cage we’re going to trap them in."

So he repeated it, and she wrote. The only sounds in the dim room were the scratch of the quill against parchment and the ragged rhythm of William’s breathing.

He spoke with a detached precision, forcing himself to relive each moment as if he were observing it from above, stripping away the raw emotion to ensure the facts remained untainted.

When she finished, she did not immediately seal it. Instead, she read it back to him, line by line, each word carrying the weight of a death warrant.

"Six paces from the door?" she asked, squinting at the page. "Are you certain?"

"Yes," William said, his voice gravelly. "The angle of the doorframe gave me enough clearance to see the floorboards without being obvious."

"Six paces."

"And the time?"

"Half past two... The afternoon shift change in the servants’ quarters."

She nodded grimly. She wrote the date at the top, the precise time, and the specific location in the north wing.

She noted that the witness had been positioned in a manner that allowed for clear auditory confirmation without compromising their position. When she was satisfied, she folded the parchment into thirds with deliberate, careful motions.

She slid it into the travel case, nestling it beside Albert’s dam report and Olivia’s meticulously compiled list of names.

The metallic click of the case locking sounded unnervingly final.

"The harbor rights contract is the crux of it," Catherine said, her eyes fixed on the leather case. "That is their true prize."

"They want every signature, every concession, every shred of Delmore’s maritime power bound to the crown before the wedding bells ring."

"Once the ceremony takes place, the legal landscape shifts, and they lose their leverage."

"So they’re rushing to secure the prize before the asset becomes... well, before she becomes a wife."

"It gives us a date to work against," William said, his jaw tightening.

"No," Catherine corrected, looking up at him with sharp intelligence. "It gives us a deadline."

"I’ve never cared for deadlines set by other people," William muttered. "Especially not ones that involve selling a woman’s future for a dockyard."

"Neither do I." Catherine paused, her fingers drumming absently against the bedframe. "We should tell Kaela."

The suggestion hung in the air between them like smoke. Then, almost immediately, her expression faltered.

Her gaze dropped to the floor, her shoulders tensing. "Or perhaps... not yet."

"God, William, she has already carried so much this week... The banquet alone nearly broke her."

William fell into a heavy silence. He had replayed this exact argument twice already on the walk from the north wing, the war between honesty and protection.

Neither side had won. Neither side felt righteous.

"Not yet," he said finally.

The words felt like stones in his mouth. "We can’t go to her with nothing but ’I overheard something suspicious.’" ’That isn’t information; that’s a burden."

"She deserves to know, yes, but she deserves to know when we have something concrete... Something she can actually use as a weapon."

"If we give her this now, we’re just adding weight to her shoulders without giving her any means to carry it."

"She may be angry with us for keeping her in the dark," Catherine warned, though there was no conviction in her voice. "She hates being treated like a child."

"She’ll be angry either with us or without us," William countered, his voice hardening with the cold resolve that had taken root in his soul. "I would rather have her angry at us for a few days than see her crushed by a truth she has no power to change."