Elira was already there when I arrived. She had a table in the back, away from the worst of the noise. Two mugs of ale sat between us, barely touched.
We talked for a while about nothing important. The weather. The road north. She was good at that – making space for easy words before the hard ones came.
Then she set her mug down and looked at me properly.
“I heard something strange the other day,” she said. “From a trader who passes through the hills. He mentioned a document that turned up in Ravenholdt’s hands a few weeks back. Something that might’ve said what really happened to my father the night he disappeared. A witness statement from someone who was there.”
I felt the floor tilt under me.
She kept her voice even. No accusation yet. Just facts.
“Said it was stolen from a Syndicate courier. Clean job, apparently. Whoever did it never even opened it before handing it over.”
I didn’t answer right away. The ale tasted flat in my mouth.
“I carried it,” I said finally. The words came out quieter than I meant them to.
Elira went very still.
“You what?”
“I didn’t know what it was. They gave me the job, I did it, I handed it over. That’s how it works there.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “I only found out later what it might’ve been. When you mentioned your father’s last days… I put it together.”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Just looked at me like she was trying to decide whether to be angry or tired.
“You could’ve told me,” she said at last.
“I know.” I met her eyes. “I should have. But by the time I understood what I’d done, it was already in their vault. And I didn’t know how to say it without making everything worse.”
Elira picked up her mug again, turned it slowly in her hands.
“I’m not asking you to burn Ravenholdt down for me, Willers. I just need to know the truth isn’t locked away because you were too afraid to open your mouth.”
I nodded. It was all I could manage.
She reached across the table and rested her hand over mine for a second. Not forgiveness. Not yet. Just contact.
“We’ll figure it out,” she said quietly. “But next time you carry something that matters, you tell me before it disappears into a vault.”
“I will.”
The inn noise swelled around us again. Someone laughed too loud in the corner. Outside, the wind off the sea rattled the shutters.
I didn’t feel any lighter. But at least the secret wasn’t sitting between us anymore.
Part 3 of 4The old guard and the new
The Document
Willers' past catches up when Elira learns he was the one who carried the document about her father.