Icelock (Of Shadows & Secrets #7)

Preface

Snow fell like absolution over St. Gallen, soft and silent, blanketing the ancient monastery in a shroud of white. Within the stone archives, Brother Aldric sat alone at his desk, the scratch of his pen the only sound disturbing the midnight stillness.

The note was nearly finished.

He paused, reading back what he had written by the guttering light of a single candle. The words looked strange on the page—dangerous, but they were true. And truth was all he had left to offer after so many years of silence.

Baroness,

Recruitment has accelerated. Three more of our old network have been contacted in the past fortnight alone.

They offer restoration, renewed purpose; though I do not know what they seek to restore.

Their plans remain hidden, but I recognize the patterns.

Worse, I recognize the fervor in their voices.

Please be careful.

I fear this is larger than either of us suspected.

Aldric

Aldric set down his pen and rubbed his eyes.

At sixty-three years of age, he had spent the last thirty of those years in this monastery, doing penance for sins he could never fully confess.

The Benedictine habit he wore was meant to be a shroud for the man he had once been—a man who had killed in the name of his faith, who had believed that murder could be holy.

An image he’d mindlessly whittled while debating his missive caught his eye. His etching lacked skill, but the stylized spear would still be recognizable to anyone who knew what it represented.

The Order of Saint Longinus.

He had not spoken that name aloud in three decades, but lately it haunted his dreams. The brotherhood he had renounced, the cause he had fled, they were stirring again. He could feel it in letters that arrived from old contacts and in whispered rumors that reached even his cloistered walls.

And so he wrote to the Baroness, as he had for years.

She was the one who had helped him escape, who had arranged his passage to Switzerland when the Order discovered his doubts. He owed her his life. More than that, he owed her the truth.

The candle flickered.

Aldric looked up, frowning.

The archives were deep within the monastery, far from any window or door. There should be no draft, no breath of wind to trouble the flame; and yet, the shadows seemed to shift at the edges of his vision, pooling in corners that should have held nothing but dust and ancient manuscripts.

He rose slowly from his chair.

“Who is there?”

Silence answered.

But it was the wrong kind of silence.

The monastery should’ve been filled with the peaceful quiet of sleeping, but this was the venomous, held-breath stillness of a predator waiting to strike.

Aldric’s hand moved instinctively toward the crucifix dangling against his chest, an old habit that normally calmed his nerves. He had not held a weapon in nearly thirty years, but his body still remembered his training and the cold calculation of a man who had once been death’s instrument.

“I know you are there.” His voice was steady, though his heart hammered against his ribs. “Show yourself.”

A shape detached from the darkness.

The man moved with fluid grace, each step silent against the stone floor.

He wore black, but not the ceremonial robes Aldric remembered from his earlier years with the Order.

These were more practical and modern, more uniform than cassock.

A mask obscured his features, leaving only his eyes visible.

They were pale, empty, and utterly devoid of mercy.

“Brother Aldric.” The man’s voice was soft, almost gentle. “You have been most prolific of late.”

Aldric’s blood turned to ice. “How did you find me?”

“We never lost you.” The masked figure moved closer. Candlelight glinted off the blade in his gloved hand. “Did you think thirty years of feigned penance would make us forget you? The Order forgets nothing. We also forgive nothing.”

“I left.” Aldric’s voice cracked. “I renounced—”

“You betrayed.” The word was flat, final. “And now you feed our secrets to our enemies. Did you think we would not notice? Did you think your little correspondences would go unobserved?”

The man was close now, close enough that Aldric could see his own reflection in his empty eyes.

He thought of running, but his legs refused to obey.

He thought of fighting, but his hands were those of an old monk, no longer the weapons they had once been.

He thought of praying, but after decades spent in quiet contemplation, he was no longer certain anyone was listening.

“The others . . .” Aldric whispered. “You have been recruiting. What are you planning?”

The man tilted his head, considering. “A new order for a new age. You could have been part of it, Brother. You could have come home.”

“Yours was never my home.”

“No.” The figure’s voice held something that might have been regret. “I suppose it was not.”

The blade moved.

Brother Aldric did not cry out.

He only had time to think of the unfinished letter on his desk. It would never reach the woman who had saved him.

With that thought, and darkness closing in around him, he watched as the man gathered the papers from the desk: the half-written letter and other correspondence stuffed in the bottom drawer, damning evidence of thirty years of betrayal.

Everything went into a leather satchel.

When he finished, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a single card. It was old, the edges worn soft with age, but the symbol embossed upon it remained clear: a stylized spearhead, ancient and unmistakable.

He placed it on the now dead monk’s chest, directly over his still heart.

Then he moved to the far wall and pressed an unmarked spot in the stone.

Seams appeared, and hidden hinges ground, as the wall swung outward into the blackness of a passage.

The man stepped into the gloom, closing the portal behind him and vanishing into the night.

The archives returned to silence.

Outside, the snow continued to fall, covering any trace of passage, any evidence that death had visited the holy place. By morning, the brothers would find one of their own cold and still at his desk, a strange card upon his chest and his papers vanished as if they had never existed.

They would not understand what had happened.

They would not know that the first move had been made in a game far older and far darker than any of them could imagine.

And somewhere in the frozen darkness, a shadow was already traveling toward its next purpose.