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“Enough. You’ll all follow Draven and me. As quickly as you can. With as many of our troops as you can gather, Sir Ector and Dame Halyna.”

“At least some of those are already in Brightwind, thank the Three,” Dame Halyna murmured.

With the repeated attacks on his borders, King Mark had permitted us to station a few regiments in Tintagel to provide a small measure of support for his own soldiers.

“But only a few,” Galahad reminded her. He turned to me. “Morgan, I hate to say it, but we don’t even know for certain that Ulpheas came from Brightwind.”

I gritted my teeth. “Brightwind is where we know he was last, and so Brightwind is where I will go now. If he’d left Brightwind, he’d have told us, wouldn’t he?” I looked at Draven, and he nodded. “Good. Then he was almost certainly still in the capital.”

But suddenly, there in the back of my mind was something I didn’t even want to think about or dream of mentioning.

I didn’t know if the last thing Ulpheas had done was stitch to us... or if I had somehow stitched him here myself.

Once, in my moment of greatest need, Draven had come to me—disappearing off the back of an exmoor and arriving in the dungeons of Arthur’s castle as I was being tortured by Arthur’s Lord General, Fenyx.

In the midst of my nightmarish battle of minds with my father, had I somehow sensed Ulpheas’s similar distress and instinctively stitched him to Camelot?

But no. There was no reason to think that was a real possibility. Especially when we still had no idea who was responsible for Draven’s instantaneous arrival in the dungeons in the first place. It might have been me who did it—or it might have been him. Some quirk of his own fae magic. Who could say how these things worked? It had only happened once. Once was not a basis from which to draw conclusions.

Draven’s hand gripped my arm gently, pulling me away from the group as the others engaged in a new discussion as to how quickly they could leave and whether those who could be ready faster should depart immediately, followed by Sir Ector and Dame Halyna with the larger contingent of troops.

“There’s another possibility, Morgan,” Draven murmured.

“Oh?” I said lightly, wondering if we’d been thinking along the same lines.

“You know I came to you once. Perhaps if we tried it together now...”

“No.” Some warning prickled at the back of my mind. “No.” I shook my head. “It wouldn’t work.”

Draven gave me an assessing look but didn’t press me, for which I was grateful.

“I’ll get your armor,” he said. “And everything else we need. You finish up here. I’ll meet you at the roost.”

I gripped his hand before he could stride away. “Thank you. For... everything. For not doubting me just now.”

His eyes shone very green. “It will be my great honor to fight at your side once more.” He leaned down and kissed me, quickly but fiercely. “All or nothing, my silver one.”

“In dreams as in life,” I whispered back, tears threatening the corners of my eyes as I remembered our cottage.

I couldn’t tell him. Not yet.

Not until this was over.

CHAPTER 9 - MORGAN

In my heart, I knew I had been right about Brightwind.

And yet when we finally saw the fires burning from a distance, I was still shocked.

Below us, the sprawling city of Brightwind lay ensnared in the grip of an insidious siege. Spreading out for miles around the city were dark foot soldiers moving with sinister purpose.

I had seen fighters like these once before. Draven and I had battled them by air in Myntra. They had come for Rychel and the grail then. Some had stayed to lay waste to the Court of Umbral Flames. We had stopped them.

But today? They may not have come with their dark, sinewy flying mounts, but right now, there seemed to be so many more of them.

Thousands upon thousands, like ants crawling up endlessly from the ground, they spread over the earth, moving tirelessly towards their target.

Like the forces that had attacked Myntra and those who had ambushed Draven’s troops as they came ashore off the western coast of Eskira, all of the foot soldiers were masked. Their helmets were crafted in the image of death itself, forged from the same foreboding black metal as their spiked armor. The helms bore skeletal features with hollow, glowing eye sockets. It was impossible to say what lurked within. Were they all fae as I assumed? Mortal? Or something worse?