Dinadan grumbled, tugging his cloak tighter against the wind.

  Bracken snorted but kept his steady pace, hooves ringing crisp against the frozen earth. The mule’s breath curled white in the morning air before vanishing into the mist.

  The road stretched ahead, silver with frost, its edges lined with skeletal trees. Their bare limbs clawed toward the sky, black and brittle, shuddering under the grip of the season's chill.

  Dinadan pressed his lips into a thin line, breath slipping from his nose in a quiet gust.

  Uther had summoned him.

  Not a warlord. Not a favored knight. Him.

  Not since the Henge of Elders. Not since the night the air had smelled of burning yew, since the dawn had risen on a battlefield that would never be sung of in halls.

  The letter had been brief. Come to Caer Llion at once. No reason. No warning.

  And that was the problem.

  The last time he had answered a summons, he had left men in the earth.

  Bracken’s hooves struck hollow.

  One. Two. Three.

  Dinadan stopped counting and hissed a curse, rubbing a hand over his face.

  Bracken flicked an ear, but his steps slowed.

  Dinadan frowned.

  The mule hesitated.

  A gust of wind stirred the mist. A biting, metallic tang curled through the air.

  Wet iron.

  The shard against his skin hummed.

  Bracken stopped.

  The beast’s ears pricked forward, nostrils flaring.

  The scent clung—subtle yet undeniable.

  Blood.

  Dinadan let out a slow breath.

  A single crow called in the distance. Then another.

  Dinadan’s fingers flexed at his side. He lifted his eyes.

  The trees lining the road were black with them.

  Perched in the branches, their bodies stark against the frost-laced boughs. Others crowded the ground, their talons sinking into the frozen earth—or where the earth should have been.

  Dinadan’s breath hitched.

  At their feet, curling between the roots of the trees, the frost was gone.

  In its place, wisps of black fog coiled over the ground.

  The tendrils did not cling to the earth the way mist did. They did not settle. They writhed, unfurling, seeping into the space around them.

  Just like the night at the Henge.

  Dinadan’s pulse pounded in his throat.

  Y Tír hummed beneath his ribs.

  The mule snorted, muscles tensing beneath his coat, but he did not move forward.

  Dinadan licked his teeth.

  The mule did not answer.

  The crows did not blink.

  A gust of wind stirred the branches.

  They did not shift.

  The force of their presence pressed against him. Watching. Waiting.

  Bracken stamped a hoof, muscles tensing beneath his coat.

  Dinadan gritted his teeth and nudged the reins.

  The mule didn’t.

  A ripple moved through the flock—not flight, not a startled shuffling of feathers—a twitch, as though an unseen force had brushed against them.

  Dinadan’s pulse drummed in his throat.

  The heaviness of the air settled deeper.

  Y Tír was watching.

  The back of Dinadan’s neck prickled. His grip tightened on the reins.

  Bracken took a single step forward.

  The crows turned their heads in unison.

  A hundred ebony eyes locked on him.

  Dinadan hated that.

  Another step.

  Still, they watched.

  Bracken refused to quicken his pace.

  Another crow landed on the road ahead, close enough that Dinadan saw the frost crusting its claws. The bird did not flinch as the mule’s hooves neared.

  It should have flown.

  It didn’t.

  The tendrils of black mist curled over its feet.

  A tremor rippled through Dinadan, stirring the shard hanging at hanging around his neck.

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  The Darkening.

  Not here. Not again.

  The other crows began to shift, tilting their heads, feathers ruffling without a breeze.

  A knot tightened in Dinadan’s ribs.

  He grumbled, pressing his heels to Bracken’s flanks.

  The mule obeyed.

  The moment they crossed the edge of the trees, the crows rose at once.

  A wall of black wings thundered against the air, shattering the quiet.

  And with them, the tendrils lifted—spiraling upward, twisting in their wake, dark against the pale sky.

  For a breath, the frost lay untouched.

  Then, as if Y Tir had sighed, the ice crept back, silvering the ground where the crows had stood.

  Dinadan did not look back.

  Y Tír had stirred.

  The Darkening had not left the world behind.

  ---

  Dinadan knew the moment the city gates came into view.

  Caer Llion moved as any city should—carts rattling over frozen roads, the clang of blacksmiths hammering iron, the scent of fish thick in the air as merchants haggled at the docks.

  But the rhythm was wrong.

  Voices that should have rung out in laughter or brisk bargaining softened into uneasy murmurs. The press of the crowd at the gate, which should have slowed him, parted without being asked.

  Merchants bartered in hushed tones, eyes flicking toward the high keep before snapping away. A woman near the tanner’s stall paused mid-conversation, fingers tightening around the handles of her basket. A group of children playing by the well scattered at the first sight of him, their laughter vanishing down side streets.

  Bracken’s hooves struck the ground in a steady rhythm, the sound too loud in the hush that settled behind them.

  A prickle ran down Dinadan’s spine, the unseen gaze coiling around him. He was being watched.

  Not with curiosity. Not with the wariness given to a man in unfamiliar colors. This was different.

  A whisper behind cupped hands. A door thudding shut. A figure slipping back into the gloom behind a half-latched shutter.

  The smith at his forge didn't glance up, but his apprentice did. The boy’s brow furrowed—not in recognition of Dinadan himself, but of what he represented.

  The smith caught the boy’s sleeve and shook his head. Keep working. Don’t stare.

  A butcher stood at his stall, cleaver poised over the joint of a pig, but he did not bring it down. Not while Dinadan passed.

  No one met his eye.

  No one spoke his name.

  No one stopped him.

  No one welcomed him either.

  Bracken flicked his ears back, uneasy. Dinadan ran a gloved hand along the mule’s neck.

  The banners snapped overhead, crimson and gold stark against the grey sky.

  He should have ignored it.

  He had spent years walking unnoticed through the high halls of Albion, passing from court to campfire without earning a second glance. He had preferred it that way.

  But the way the city moved around him now—as though they did not want to be near him—itched beneath his skin.

  They had seen him.

  They had not expected him.

  They had expected war.

  It had been weeks since the Henge of Elders. Since Y Tir had chosen its king. Since Uther Pendragon had emerged from the mist, crowned not by men, but by Y Tír itself.

  The banners had returned.

  Yet, the war had not begun.

  Where were the riders sweeping south to bring the rebellious lords to heel? Where were the warbands storming the great halls of those who had refused to swear fealty?

  Where was the fire?

  Uther had been named king, but no swords had been raised in his name.

  Instead, he had summoned one man.

  A man the people of Caer Llion had never seen.

  A man who rode alone.

  And that was enough.

  Bracken’s hooves struck stone as they passed through the inner gate, breath curling in the cold air.

  Dinadan exhaled a low curse. A mistake, then, coming here.

  The courtyard was emptier than it should have been.

  Guards lined the walls, but they did not call out. The stable hands near the archway worked in silence, their shoulders stiff, attention fixed on their tasks.

  The moment Dinadan swung from the saddle, the doors groaned open.

  A summons.

  The stable boy who came for Bracken hesitated. Only for a breath. But Dinadan saw it.

  He handed over the reins without a word.

  Bracken huffed, ears twitching, but did not resist as he was led away.

  He had been called.

  But the people of Caer Llion watched him not as a man answering a summons—

  As the first sign of the storm they had been waiting for.

  Dinadan rolled his shoulders, loosening the tightness that had settled along his spine. The city’s silence clung to him, a thing unseen but felt all the same. A man did not walk through Caer Llion unnoticed—not when he had been summoned, not when he rode alone.

  The doors of the war hall groaned shut behind him, sealing out the courtyard’s cold. The chamber was warm with torchlight, the scent of wax and old tallow clinging to the stone.

  But the heat did not touch the air.

  Not the kind of cold that came from stone and winter air—the kind that settled when a king began to doubt his crown.

  The king stood at the war table, one hand pressed against it as if feeling the shape of the kingdom beneath his palm. His fingers traced the edges of a letter—unopened, unread.

  A letter a king did not wish to read.

  Dinadan’s eyes darted to it, his stomach twisting with distaste. He loathed letters.

  Nothing good ever came sealed in wax.

  He tilted his head, weary amusement flickering in his eyes.

  Uther did not look up, his voice weighed with unspoken ire.

  Dinadan adjusted his stance, rolling the tension from his shoulders as though it were road dust to be shaken off.

  The parchment crumpled under Uther’s fingers.

  That was new.

  The torches flickered—the shadows stretching long across the stones, twisting like ink bleeding through parchment.

  Dinadan sighed, rubbing a hand over his face.

  Uther lifted his gaze. A king’s gaze. Cold. Heavy. Measured like steel in a smith’s grip.

  Ah. There it was.

  Dinadan’s stomach sank.

  He had never wanted to be a knight. Never cared for oaths, for duty, for the burden of another man’s crown pressing on his shoulders. He had learned long ago truth was an ungrateful thing—it burned in the hands of those who carried it.

  Dinadan let out a low breath, his tongue running along his teeth.

  A pause. The pull of flame, stone, and silence.

  Uther’s hand moved, pushing the letter across the table. He did not let it go. The wax seal did not appear heavy, but it acted it.

  His voice dropped lower. Quieter.

  Dinadan did not move. He had spent years avoiding that kind of expectation. A man who listened was not often trusted by those who ruled, but Uther—Uther had never been one to trust without cause.

  Now, he was trusting Dinadan.

  Trust was a dangerous thing.

  A man did not ride to find silence without risking being silenced himself.

  He should have refused.

  The wax seal gleamed in the firelight, and beneath the shard, deep in his ribs, Y Tír hummed.

  He reached out and took the letter.

  It sat in his palm like a stone pulled from deep water.

  Dinadan did not move.

  Uther had called for him.

  Not for his warlords. Not for his favored champions. Not for men who would ride at dawn with banners and steel.

  Him.

  A man who did not like to fight. A man who did not like to kneel. A man who listened.

  That should have been a comfort. It wasn’t.

  Because when a king trusts no one but a fool, the kingdom is already lost.

  Dinadan turned the seal between his fingers, the wax smooth beneath his touch, yet heavy as stone. His jaw clenched, but he held his silence, letting it settle where it would—on his hands, in his thoughts, in the unknown waiting ahead.

  Fate take me, he thought, dryly. A poor choice, majesty, but yours to make.

  He slipped the letter into his cloak.

  Uther pushed back from the table, the motion slow, deliberate.

  Dinadan arched a brow.

  Uther’s eyes did not waver.

  Dinadan cursed under his breath, the words unfit for polite company.

  He turned for the door and did not glance back.

  He had never liked riding toward waiting silence.

  His grip tightened on the hilt of his sword as he stepped out into the morning.

  The gates of Caer Llion closed behind him. Their shadow remained, heavy and unshaken.

  Y Tir held its silence.

  Dinadan did not.

  He hummed under his breath, low and tuneless, more to fill the air than for any pleasure in it. Bracken’s hooves struck hollow against the frostbitten earth, the sound stretching too far in the hush of morning.

  Three lords. Three halls. Three silences.

  Castell Raglan. Cwmbran. Caerwent.

  He knew the names like a gambler knew the balance of dice in his palm. Old, familiar, but uncertain once cast.

  The first would be Lord Morys of Castell Raglan. A cautious man. Steady. Slow to anger, slower to laugh. A man who did not speak in haste, but spoke with wisdom when he did. For him to go silent was not just troubling. It was unnatural.

  Next, Cwmbran—Lord Cadoc’s lands. A younger lord, ambitious. A man who measured his words with great care, as if each one were a blade he might have to parry. Dinadan had never trusted a man who smiled more than he spoke.

  And last—Caerwent. Lord Owain’s seat. An old warrior, worn by time but keen where it mattered. He had fought for Uther’s crown. Bled for it.

  Now he said nothing.

  Dinadan watched his breath coil into the cold, vanishing like a whisper lost to the wind.

  Men did not fall silent for no reason.

  Uther’s words sat in his ribs, heavy as the letter pressed to his side.

  The road stretched long before him, winding into mist. Y Tír was silent. But silence was never still. When it spoke, Dinadan would listen.