Kneel! The Fallen Hero Has Returned!

Chapter 4: The Hunt List

"Ronan Vale? That name has been on the Abyssal kill list for three years."

Nash Wilder stared at the wheelchair rolling through his office door as if he had seen a ghost crawl out of a grave. The broker's pen slipped from his fingers and rolled across the scarred wooden desk.

Ronan sat in the doorway, wrapped in a plain gray cloak, "Tell me everything."

It was past midnight. Ronan had slipped out of the Whitmore house while Bram kept watch, and he had crossed the old harbor district alone. The guards at the gate of the black market had laughed when they saw a cripple in a cloak, and not one had thought to stop him.

"Master Vale," Nash croaked, glancing around nervously. "Forgive me, but how did you get down here by yourself? Those tunnels are..."

"I'm persistent," Ronan said with a small, pitiful smile. "I had a good push."

Nash gave a nervous laugh and bent to pick up his pen, taking longer than necessary. When he straightened, his face was a professional mask again. "My rates aren't cheap."

Ronan tossed a small leather pouch onto the desk. The strings loosened, and three palm-sized crystals rolled across the wood, glowing a soft blue.

Nash's eyes bulged. "S-spirit crystals? These are high grade!"

"I took them from the Vale vault years ago, when I still had a hand in the accounts. Consider it a deposit."

"A deposit." Nash swept them into a drawer with shaking hands. "Master Vale, for this I'll tell you what color underwear the Grand Marshal wears. What do you want to know?"

"For three years, Abyssal creatures came for me," Ronan said. "I was a cripple in a wheelchair, behind four walls and a hundred guards. Yet they always found me."

Nash's face changed. He glanced at the door, then the ceiling, and finally he rose, locked the door, and drew a curtain across the only window.

"What I'm about to tell you could get me killed," he said, sitting down again. "I'm not doing it for the crystals. I was at the victory parade. I watched you ride through the gates, bleeding, barely able to stay on your horse, and I cried like a child."

Ronan said nothing, but his fingers stilled on his knee.

"Three years later, I see them laughing at your name in every tavern. It never sat right with me. So when the whispers started, I listened."

"What whispers?"

"That someone was feeding the Abyss your location."

The words hung in the air. Ronan did not blink. When he finally spoke, his voice was very soft.

"Say that again."

"The creatures didn't find you by luck." Nash leaned forward, his words coming faster. "Your name went on the kill list the day you came back from the war. Every few months, someone sent fresh information. Where you slept, how many guards, which nights your pain was worst."

"Who sends information to the Abyss?"

"Hunters. Men who trade with the lesser Abyssal bloodlines for crystal fragments. It's illegal and insane, and it makes them rich." Nash swallowed. "I know because I arranged half the meetings. Not yours! I swear on my mother's grave. That job came through a different channel."

He opened a drawer and slid a thin black folder across the desk.

Ronan flipped it open. Inside were neat handwritten pages of dates, sketches of rooms, and the schedule of the night guards. He recognized his guest wing, the narrow window, and the path to the garden, and his chest went tight.

"Who paid?" he asked.

"Two accounts. Both routed through the Cross Trading Company, but the original funds belonged to..." Nash hesitated.

"Say it."

"Seren Whitmore," Nash whispered. "And Damon Cross."

The room went completely still. Ronan stared at the names at the bottom of the page.

"For how long?" he asked at last.

"The first payment came eight months after you returned. It never stopped."

"Eight months." Ronan's voice sounded like it came from the bottom of a well. "She sat by my bed that winter and held my hand. She told me she'd wait forever."

"Master Vale..."

"I thought, what did I do to deserve a woman like this?" Ronan let out a short laugh.

He turned the page and found a list of seven dates, each marked with a red circle, and next to each was a single word in the same neat hand. *Failed.* His fingers closed on the paper, and it crumpled. Gold light flickered under his skin, and the lanterns in the room shattered.

"M-Master Vale!" Nash scrambled back in his chair. "Your hand!"

"Sorry." Ronan forced a slow breath, and the light sank back. "I'm a little upset."

"Upset?" Nash croaked. "Sir, if it were me, I'd be tearing this city apart."

"I'm considering it." Ronan flattened the page against the desk. "Nash, how much does it cost to put a bounty on someone?"

"A bounty?" Nash blinked. "On whom?"

"Two names. Public. I want everyone to know, but I don't want them to know it's me."

"You'd hire hunters against the Cross family? Master Vale, that's suicide! They have three hundred guards and two Core Realm elders!"

"I'm not hiring killers," Ronan said quietly. "I'm hiring people to hunt their secrets."

Nash stared, and then a slow, dawning look crossed his face. "You want to pay for it with their own money."

"Every coin they spent trying to kill me is evidence. I'll let them hang themselves with their own rope."

Nash let out a shaky breath and began scribbling furiously. "A hundred thousand to start?"

"Two hundred." Ronan smiled thinly. "It's their fortune. I'd hate to waste it."

"And you? What do you do in the meantime?"

"I stay what they think I am." Ronan lifted his chin, and for a moment the tired cripple vanished, replaced by something calm and terrible. "The weak don't get watched, Nash. Nobody looks twice at a man in a wheelchair."

Nash gave a nervous grin. "You're scarier than I remember."

"I haven't done anything yet."

"That's what scares me."

Ronan turned his chair toward the door, and Nash hurried to unlock it. Then a runner burst down the tunnel, panting, with a folded paper clutched in his fist. He pressed it into Nash's hand and bolted away.

Nash read it. His face went gray.

"What is it?" Ronan asked.

"A new bounty, posted an hour ago." Nash held out the paper, and his fingers shook. "Master Vale, it's on you."

Ronan took it. The page bore the seal of the Hunters' Guild, with letters across the top. *WANTED ALIVE. The Cripple of Vale.* Under it was a reward of five hundred thousand gold, enough to tempt every hunter in the city.

"Alive?" Ronan murmured. "Why alive?"

Nash pointed at the small print at the bottom, where the sponsor's name was hidden behind black wax. The reason for the capture was written plainly. *Subject must be delivered with the core intact.*

Ronan read it twice, and then a faint smile curved his lips.

"The stone," he said softly. "He felt it."