Chapter 39: Suzy backstory [02]

Suzy didn’t move her head from my shoulder. She just kept her eyes on the sword in her hands, her fingers moving slowly over the it. The small smile she had a minute ago faded away completely, and the space between her eyebrows pinched together as she went deeper into her memories.

"It happened on a Tuesday evening," Suzy said, her voice dropping into a serious talk . "My father came home from the inner palace much later than usual. He didn’t bring any mint leaves from the garden that night. When he walked through the door, his face was completely different, and his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t even unlace his shoes correctly."

She took a long breath, her body moving slightly against my chest as I held my arm steady behind her back.

"My mother tried to ask him what was wrong, but he just shook his head and locked himself in his study room," she continued. "Alan and I stopped our training session in the yard and stood outside his door, listening through the wood. We could hear him flipping through the paper pages over and over, muttering lines about missing balances and illegal supply logs. He stayed inside that room until midnight, checking the math three times to make sure he wasn’t making a mistake."

"What did he find in the books?" I asked, keeping my tone very quiet.

"He found a completely black ledger," Suzy said, her grip tightening around the sword handle until her knuckles went pale again. "Prince Raymond had secretly authorized a massive transfer of guild gold to a sketchy outer territory supplier. The line item said it was for building construction, but my father tracked the supply wagons. They weren’t bringing wood or stone into the city. They were bringing thousands of highly unstable, forbidden dark monster cores directly into the Prince’s private laboratory. The Prince was draining the kingdom’s entire cash reserve just to buy illegal power for his next tier breakthrough."

She paused, her fingers moving down to her leather vest.

She slipped her hand into a hidden pocket right near her heart and pulled out a tiny object, placing it flat on her palm so I could see it.

It was a small coin, but it wasn’t currency. It was a blank guard token, completely smooth on both sides except for a small crescent-moon notch cut into the top edge. It looked exactly like the guard on her father’s sword.

"The next morning, before my father went back to the palace to confront the board, Alan called me into the backyard training patch," Suzy whispered, her eyes softening as she stared at the little silver token. "He looked very serious, completely different from his usual loud self. He took this token out of his pocket and pressed it into my hand. He told me that things were getting very dangerous around the inner circle, and that the Prince’s guards were starting to watch our house from the street corners."

A single tear hit the token on her palm, making the metal shine in the dim yellow light.

"Alan told me that if anything ever happened to him or our parents, I had to keep this token safe," Suzy said, her voice cracking slightly from the memory. "He said as long as I carried this moon notch, our family legacy was still alive, and nobody could ever truly erase us from the capital. He made me promise that if the house was ever breached, I wouldn’t try to fight. He told me my only job was to run, survive, and keep our numbers straight. We didn’t know that the execution squad was already signing the papers at the palace while he was giving me this talk."

I looked down at the tiny token in her hand, then looked back at her pale face. "Your brother knew what was coming, Suzy. He gave you the token to keep you focused on the long-term plan. He didn’t want you to be a hero; he wanted you to be the survivor who survived at the very end and can keep the bloodline alive."

Suzy closed her fingers over the token, pulling it back against her chest as she let out a long, shaky sigh. "He did. But knowing it didn’t make that midnight attack any easier, Barry. The next night, the front doors didn’t just knock. The knights came with fire and blades, and our happy house became a complete slaughterhouse in less than five minutes."