Chapter 23 #2
The ice in Gregor’s gut spread outward. He’d theorized with Fergal about the Murphys systematically eliminating real dragon slayers while maintaining the organization as a brand.
But the financial angle was new, and it was vast in its implications.
“You’re saying they funded you while simultaneously destroying your organization from within. ”
“I’m saying that ten years ago, we had forty-seven active members.
Now there’s one. Me.” Duff’s jaw tightened.
“My comrades died in freak accidents, like drowning, car crashes, or mysterious illnesses. Or they perished in operations that, in retrospect, were suspiciously well-anticipated by the targets. Intelligence that turned out to be wrong. Safe houses that weren’t safe.
Ambushes that someone had to have set up in advance. ”
“They were feeding you into traps.”
“And funding the operations that sent us there.” Duff’s voice was steady, but his eyes held the devastation of a man watching the architecture of his life collapse. “They needed us active enough to be useful and depleted enough to be controllable.”
Gregor let the silence stretch, giving both of them time to sit with the weight of it. Outside, the pack continued its daily rhythm—voices, laughter, the distant whinny of a horse. The normalcy of it felt almost obscene against the darkness of what they were discussing.
“I need to tell you something,” Gregor said.
The decision was instinctive, not tactical, and that alone should’ve given him pause.
He wasn’t a man who operated on instinct.
He was a man who calculated, assessed, planned.
But something about this conversation, about the rawness of Duff’s honesty, the parallel tracks of their experience, the shared understanding of being used by the same enemy, had dismantled Gregor’s usual protocols.
“As you’re probably aware, King Lorcan—Fergal’s father—was assassinated along with his brother two months before the Dragon Council. They were ambushed on their return from a flight. Crossbow bolts to the heart, professional grade, designed to pierce dragon-scale armor.”
Duff’s pen had stopped moving.
“Three days later, we received an email claiming responsibility for the assassination. It was signed by Duff Bás.”
Visceral horror passed across Duff’s face. “I was aware he and his brother were murdered, but I didn’t kill them.” Duff’s voice was low, raw, stripped of every pretense. “I also didn’t send that email or authorize anyone to use my name. I was in Europe at the time, and I can account for every day.”
“I believe you.”
The words came out before Gregor had fully decided to say them, but they were true. Gregor was looking into the eyes of a man who had just learned that everything he’d built his life on was a lie, and the devastation there was impossible to fake.
“We received the email and analyzed it,” Gregor continued.
“The language was wrong. This strange mix of modern and archaic language that read like a performance rather than authentic communication. Using email was off since it’s traceable, so a covert organization wouldn’t use it.
And the signature raised questions too—no real operative uses the most famous name in their organization’s history. ”
“So you knew it was fake.”
“We suspected, but we couldn’t prove it, and publicly, we had to accept the narrative. Our own advisors—men we now believe are Murphy operatives planted in the Fitzgerald clan—were pushing the dragon-slayer explanation before the email even arrived.”
Duff closed his notebook slowly, as if the notes he’d been taking had become irrelevant. “They used my name to cover a murder.”
“Yes. But I do want to point out that if you’d been given the chance, you would’ve killed them yourself.”
Duff only hesitated for a moment. “Yes, most likely I would have. But…” He looked away, swallowing. When he spoke again, his voice was much softer. “But it’s still wrong that they used me.”
Gregor wasn’t sure if he would’ve used the word wrong here, but in itself, Duff had a point. “Agreed.”
“They funded my organization while systematically destroying it.”
“It appears so.”
Duff stared at the table for a long moment. When he looked up, the confusion and uncertainty that had characterized his demeanor since arriving at the pack land had been replaced by something harder. “My dragon slayers didn’t attack the Doyles.”
It wasn’t what Gregor had expected him to say, yet it made perfect sense. Duff was giving him another piece of the puzzle, maybe as a quid pro quo for the information Gregor had shared with him. “We came to the same conclusion.”
“I’ll need to think about what this means.”
“I can imagine. Can I ask you one more question in return?”
Duff gave him a brief nod.
“When you held Rhene captive, you used magical wards to prevent him from escaping. Yet you’re human. Who set up those wards for you?”
Duff looked genuinely puzzled. “Magical wards? What do you mean?”
“Rhene was unable to leave the cabin, even when you were gone. Magic kept him inside.”
Duff’s frown deepened. “I didn’t use magic, just the protection prayers my father taught me, the same his father taught him.”
“Protection prayers?”
“Yes, the ones you say every morning and every night, asking the gods to protect your house, your body, and your mind. Everyone says those.”
He rattled off a few lines in Irish, and Gregor’s blood ran cold.
The man was either the greatest actor on the planet, or he genuinely had no idea. “No, Duff, no. Everyone doesn’t say those because they’re not prayers. They’re protective spells. It’s magic you’re using.”
Duff’s face grew pale as fresh snow. “M-magic? But I don’t have magic. I’m human.”
Gregor blew out a long breath. And the plot thickened once again.