Traitors’ Creed (Traitors duology #1)

Prologue

I met with him today – the boy we raised. Although it was you, really, that did most of the raising. A fact I am infinitely grateful for. Sometimes I do wonder what it would have been like if we’d chosen a different path. Stayed home. Stayed small. Stayed … silent. I know, of course, that life wasn’t ever ours. But it doesn’t mean I don’t wonder.

He was impressive today, ‘our’ boy, although I don’t know how much of me he remembers. I would like to think his ability to sway you from your fervent focus on bloodshed to a longer, more strategic play had something to do with me. But, the truth is, I think it was all him.

He tells me they are feeling the loss of their head of intelligence, a fact that hurts my heart immensely. I will do what I can to ease her suffering from where I am. They had a semblance of a plan on how to manage if one of them was taken, and it’s that plan we are now moving to enact. Thankfully, he is still focused on the future. Whatever the outcome of their – our – recovery mission, there are a number of other issues that can be dealt with at the same time. Only time will tell how those cookies crumble, so to speak.

To help ensure we’re set up for that future, I have been observing one of my team here. Her time here is coming to an end and she would be a natural in the place where we most sorely need some inside intelligence. She’s smart but unassuming, and has a background in academia focusing on social issues that I can’t help but think will form the foundation for her and the things she will come to understand. She just doesn’t know it yet.

I will ease her into that new role, help her peel back the layers to see what’s beneath, and continue to do what is required of me.

There is a way to go my friend, but this phase will see some true penance being paid.

I remain hopeful it can go all the way.

I cannot send you this letter, I realise. I write now more out of habit and as my own personal outlet than with any real thought that we’ll be able to talk openly again – there is too much at stake for us to be friends in the daylight anymore.

I am unsure when my next update will be but I remain, as always, loyal to our goals.

Placing the heavy black pen down slowly, I stare at the words, accustomed now to the hollow feeling writing these letters that go nowhere brings. But I take heart in the things I have been able to release – even knowing they will simply be swallowed in a void of silence – and in the meeting I had today, knowing the series of events that will come from it.

The metal bin scrapes lightly on the carpet as I pull it from under the ornate timber desk with my booted foot, holding the letter over it and grabbing the lighter from my bottom drawer. I take a moment to run my thumb over the engraving, my chest warming a little, before I flick the lighter to life and let the corner of the paper catch. I pinch the corner of the paper until it's too eaten by heat and flame for me to hang on to anymore and I drop it into the empty bin and watch it burn.

When I’m satisfied any evidence of my only partly censored thoughts has disintegrated, I take the bin to the window and tip the ashes in the night sky.