Reborn as the Villainess's Bodyguard, I Refused to Stop at Bodyguard novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Old Chapel

The old chapel stood in a hollow on the royal hunting grounds, with half its roof gone and an owl in the bell tower.

Haruka lay on her stomach on the choir loft with a sword beside her and dust in her nose.

Below her, thirty of the Queen's riders crouched in the dark outside the walls, and not one of them made a sound.

At the stroke of midnight a horse came down the path, and then a second.

Prince Aldric came in first, in a plain grey cloak that did not hide his white and gold collar.

He was pale, and he kept turning to look at the door.

Behind him walked a tall old man in black, with a trim silver beard.

He had the unhurried stride of someone who had taught noblemen for forty years.

Lord Harrow lit a single candle on the broken altar.

"You are shaking, Your Highness," he said gently.

"She is alive." Aldric's voice cracked. "You wrote it. You said the Captain lied. I laid my hand on that box. I saw it go into the cart."

"A box can carry anything."

"I saw the axe fall!"

"Then the axe is not what we believed it to be." Harrow folded his hands. "I have been thinking about it for a day. The Mercy Axe is the Crown's oldest toy, and your mother has never once let you hold it. Did it never strike you, my prince, that there were things in that vault you were not told?"

Aldric stared at him.

"If she lives, she will speak," he said. "She will say I put the cup in the Saint's hand."

"You did."

"You told me it would be clean! You said the letter would stand and nobody would ask for anything more! I paid you well, Harrow, for your hand and your silence."

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