Valero Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Valero stood beneath the broken eaves of an abandoned mill, watching the road below. The woman he'd selected walked past with her traveling pack. She would reach the coaching station before dawn. After that, the next town. After that, gone. He had four hours to decide if this one would be different from the seven before her. He opened the black notebook with gold trim and scanned the pages. Three weeks of notes. Her patterns, her routines, her stops. The house where she stayed alone every third night. The exact time she locked the door. The fact that she always traveled with too much water and not enough food. Every detail reduced to ink. He closed the book and tucked it inside his coat. The data was clean. The preparation was complete. What remained was execution. The old stone house sat at the edge of the property line, half-hidden by a sprawling tree covered in withered black roses. He'd checked it twice already. The door frame was solid. The windows faced nothing. The cellar had a lock that worked from the outside. On the table inside, he'd left a kitchen knife still stained from the seventh attempt. Not as a tool. As a reminder. The last one had stopped speaking, and he'd used that knife to end it when the silence proved the failure was irreversible. Valero moved down from the mill and crossed the empty field. The woman was already out of sight. He had the location. He had the method. He had the hours. What he didn't have was certainty that this attempt would break the pattern. But certainty was not a variable he could control. He pushed open the door to the stone house and stepped inside. The knife gleamed in the dim light. He would act tonight, because waiting had never once improved an outcome.