Chapter 455. An Act of Men, Not God

Chapter 455: 455. An Act of Men, Not God

Kaela’s suite lay on the opposite wing of the palace, a fortress of marble and silk that felt miles away from the storm gathering in William’s chest. He would not be there.

He couldn’t afford to be a comforting presence when he needed to be a weapon. He had asked Catherine to stay with her that evening, and she had agreed without a single question, her silent understanding more valuable than any protest.

He hadn’t expected Alden to move with such predatory speed, but he also knew that ’caution’ was a luxury they no longer possessed.

Leaving the woman he cared about alone in a room, even a guarded one with the specter of a sergeant’s worth of unknown assassins lurking in the palace shadows, felt like a betrayal he couldn’t stomach.

In Kaela’s room, Catherine had performed her role with practiced grace. She had whispered to Kaela that tonight was simply a quiet evening for two friends—wine, cake, and a sacred vow to speak of nothing resembling a wedding.

Kaela had grumbled about being fussed over like a child, but the hollow tremor in her voice betrayed her.

She had simply sat down heavily on the sofa, the fabric creaking under her weight, and asked with forced nonchalance, "Which cake?"

Meanwhile, William moved through the palace like a ghost haunting its own corridors. Albert had already laid the groundwork before William had even departed the academy.

The King maintained an old valet named Halvard, a man who had served the crown for thirty years, whose face was as unremarkable as plain parchment and whose presence was so routine it was practically invisible.

Halvard was the perfect vessel for a private word.

William found him in a dim corridor near the royal apartments. The old man’s eyes were sharp despite his age.

Without breaking stride, William pressed a folded note into his palm.

The contents were blunt: ’Speak to the King about the pillars. Tonight. In private.’

When Halvard returned within the hour, he slipped through the shadows of William’s workroom. His answer came in a breath so quiet it barely disturbed the air.

"Midnight. The small council chamber. Come alone."

The small council chamber felt different tonight. It was the same room where the King and Queen had once laid out the crushing reality of their debts, but now the air felt charged with something far more lethal than financial ruin.

William recognized the oppressive weight of the heavy oak door, the scarred surface of the long council table, and the towering windows where the thick velvet curtains swallowed what little moonlight filtered in. The room was lit only by a few guttering candles, their flames dancing erratically in the draft stirred by his entrance.

King Theron sat at the far end of the table. He looked diminished. He wore a plain, dark coat instead of his royal regalia, and his crown was nowhere to be seen.

His face was a landscape of gray exhaustion, lined with the kind of weariness that comes from years of holding up a crumbling ceiling.

William looked at him and saw not a monarch, but a man who sensed a catastrophe approaching on the horizon and had already stopped hoping it would miss him.

"Instructor Wade," Theron said, his voice gravelly and hollow. "You look like you have not slept."

"Neither do you, Your Majesty."

"No." The king offered something that might have been a smile if his mouth weren’t so tired. "Sit... Please."

William did not sit. He couldn’t.

His body was too coiled, too ready to spring into action. Instead, he crossed the room with measured, deliberate strides.

The floorboards seemed to groan under the weight of his purpose. When he reached the table, he didn’t offer a greeting. Instead, he produced the folder and began to extract the documents.

One by one, he laid them out in a precise, damning row before the King. Each piece of parchment struck the wood with a sound like a gavel.

The engineering report and the Delmore payment trails. The pre-signed grain contracts.

The record of the Prince’s treasonous words. And finally, the evidence of the assassination attempt itself.

"Your Majesty," William said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous register that demanded attention. "I need to show you something."

"And I need you to understand that once you see it, there is no going back."

Theron’s scarred fingers reached for the first page. The King picked it up, his eyes narrowing as he began to read.

William had witnessed the anatomy of devastation countless times. He had seen young soldiers collapse in the mud as they read letters from home announcing their brothers’ deaths; he had seen parents stare at confessions from their own children with a hollow, shattered expression.

There was always a pattern. People read terrible news as if they could interrogate the ink, their eyes moving slowly and desperately, as though by reading the words with enough concentration they could force them to change meaning.

King Theron fell into that same trap. His lips moved silently as he scanned the dam engineer’s complaint, his aged finger tracing the jagged line of the dismissal stamp at the bottom, the bureaucratic seal that had signed the death warrants of hundreds.

He said nothing, but the silence in the room grew heavier with every second he spent staring at that single mark of corruption.

Then he reached for the second page: the payments. As Theron read the names of the officials who had systematically strangled the grain reserves, William watched the King’s knuckles whiten.

Theron’s grip tightened on the edge of the parchment until it began to crinkle audibly. William noticed the King’s breathing falter when he reached a specific name, a man who had sat at the royal council table, sharing wine and counsel with Theron for six years.

The King set the page down with agonizing care, as if touching it might burn his skin.

The third page was the grain contract. Theron’s eyes darted to the date at the top, then back again, his pupils dilating.

He picked up the first frost report that William had placed beside it for comparison, checking one against the other with the frantic energy of a man realizing he has been living a lie.

When his eyes finally landed on the contract’s delivery window predating the crisis by weeks, his breath caught audibly in his throat, a wet, broken sound in the stillness.

Then came the fourth page. Catherine’s handwriting.

It was precise, elegant, and devastating. Theron read it once. Then he read it again, slower this time, his jaw working silently.

When his eyes landed on the word asset"asset," a tremor started in his right hand, a small thing at first, but it grew until the paper began to rattle against the oak table like a dying bird’s wings.

Finally, the fifth page: the report on the pillar.

Marrick’s testimony about the suspicious mortar. The intelligence about the inspector, who was a soldier, not a mason.

The gate log that proved the assassin had walked out while the trap was still set.

The King set the last page down. He did not move.

He did not weep. He simply became part of the shadows.

He stared at the table for what felt like an eternity. The candle nearest him guttered, its flame drowning in its own wax before steadying again.

Somewhere in the distant bowels of the palace, a clock chimed the half hour. The sound was hollow and alien, as if it belonged to another world entirely.

When Theron finally spoke, his voice was stripped of all royal timbre; it was the sound of something breaking deep underground.

"Eight years," Theron whispered. The words seemed to cost him everything. "For eight years... I have carried this like a crown of thorns."

He lifted his gaze, and for the first time, William saw the true depth of the ruin in the old man’s eyes. "I have blamed myself every single day."

"I told myself I had not been strong enough to protect my kingdom from a catastrophe of nature."

"I stood before my daughter, my own flesh and blood, and apologized with tears in my eyes for a desperation I believed was entirely my fault."

"I stood before my people, broken and shamed, and asked for forgiveness for a famine that was not a famine at all."

A single tear escaped, carving a path through the dust and exhaustion on his cheek. "It was not an act of God."

"It was an act of men."