RE: Monarch - Chapter 193: Whitefall XLVI (Book 3 End)

The decrepit building had been abandoned for years. The once slightly fogged windows were now completely opaque. Even the hammered-on boards that barred entry to the door looked so old they were falling apart. A drunk lay on the ground, either dead or on his way out, next to a wooden sign that had long since fallen from its iron posting, old text barely legible from the decay, the small smiling face that had been carved into it nowhere to be seen.

Gray’s Apothecary.

“You knew,” I said. It wasn’t an accusation. Just a statement of fact.

“Cairn. Please. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to lie or keep it from you, but it was just so cruel. So pointlessly and miserably cruel. And you’ve been so happy,” Maya wept.

I said nothing. Thought nothing. Felt nothing.

“All I wanted was to protect you,” Maya said.

“I understand,” I said. “You… remembered what she said to me. Connected the dots and tried to shield me from it.”

An old threat, spoken by my greatest enemy, whirled up in my subconscious. One I’d spent countless nights worrying over, but now, had almost forgotten. Thoth’s visage took shape in the darkness of my mind, twisted and mocking.

“I let you live, and as payment, I will eventually take something from you. And you will wish that you had died.”

Since my return to Whitefall, I’d been almost sick with worry. It had all come so easily, gone so smoothly, that I’d begun to sense the hammer, poised to strike down at my head, constantly surprised when I looked up, convinced that this would be the day when things finally took a turn. But I’d been looking in the wrong place. There was no hammer hovering above me.

Because it had already fallen.

From the looks of it, quite some time ago.

Something inside me tore.