1. Guinevere

Sleep was a waste of time.

A weakness.

Sleep stole the hours that needed to be dedicated elsewhere.

Meeting, training, torturing.

Sleep brought dreams. Dreams turned to nightmares.

Nightmares were the only place Gwen saw her friends anymore.

Still, she avoided them. The white-haired queen, young and broken, who'd entrusted her with a kingdom. The Brutal Prince, commander turned friend turned king. When their faces came to her nightmares, they spoke words of disappointment. The queen's beautiful features filled with rage, the knife in her hand swiping for Gwen's throat.

She always woke before the queen could land her death blow.

That was the real nightmare.

Gwen had no doubt that the queen would come for her. That she would demand vengeance for her failures. Merlin gone. Parys dead.

Parys.

Perhaps her first true friend.

She had not deserved him in life. In death, at least, she would honor him. In the ways she knew, as well as those she was still learning.

She shifted in the tall wingback chair, arching her spine to stretch. That was fatigue curling around her bones, tightening her muscles. When she did sleep, it was always in her dark lioness form. She was lethal, in any form—and knew it. But knowing and believing were far from the same thing.

Fatigue she could tolerate.

Weakness, she could not.

She rolled her shoulders and refocused her eyes on the book in her lap.

The Travelers.

Parys had carried this book with him from the library, through the tunnels as they chased down Merlin, Igraine, and their Shadows.

It was important. It had to be. Otherwise, he would have left it behind.

Or he'd simply forgotten that he carried it at all.

Gwen shoved that thought away.

She would read the entire damn book, forward and backward again, if that was what it took to find some nodule of meaning. Something to mark Parys's contribution. His importance.

His absence.

The Travelers.

Few among us have the power to travel through space, to sense the grains of creation and bend them to our will.

What utter drivel. Nonsense.

She'd traveled the entire length of the continent. The humans had come from Eldermist. If humans could travel, anyone could.

Why had Parys bothered with this book at all? It had nothing to do with the rifts, as far as she could tell, or Veyka's void power. No mention of Avalon in the chapter headings.

She needed to go to the library.

She had ordered it sealed after Parys' death, but she had not gone to inspect it herself. Not yet.

First, she had to see the goldstone palace fully secured.

She had walked the entire perimeter, finding two more unprotected exits. It was a miracle Baylaur had stood unbreached for seven thousand years, with all its secret passageways and weak wards.

Not weak, she corrected herself. Foolish.

The wards were keyed to power. Specifically, royal power. Only the royal family could alter them. As the terrestrial heir, Arran had been able to manipulate them upon arrival. And Igraine had been able to open and close them to accommodate the Shadows as she willed.

A snarl built in Gwen's chest, a low rumble that grew and grew until she pushed to her feet. The book crashed to the goldstone tiles. She grabbed the back of the chair, desperately anchoring herself.

She'd almost shifted, without thought or intention.

Without control.

That had not happened in more than a hundred years.

Her lioness surged again, another snarl that sent her braids flying, her chin whipping to the side. She had no choice. She couldn't contain it. She threw her head back and screamed.

Half fae, half beast. Pain and torment and rage.

The entire room quivered around her.

She knew that if she looked down at her hand, she'd see claws digging into the upholstery.

That forced the lioness back.

She couldn't destroy the chairs. The twin wingbacks where she'd shared so many meals with Parys. Suddenly, they were more than chairs. They were infinitely precious.

She dragged in a breath. Then another. Breath by ragged breath, she fought back until she was in control. Until there was no weakness left.

Her eyes tracked around the room, the fatigue banished now as well.

Book. Table. Round Table.

The candlelight glinted off of the golden scrollwork of the Round Table. Mocking the engraving that had vanished when Parys did.

Gwen hated that table.

She ought to destroy it and the prophetic curse that Merlin had saddled them with. If Parys' name was not etched upon it then it should not exist at all—

Footsteps.

Her eyes went to the doors with keen feline awareness.

It was too early for dinner, a meal she wouldn't eat anyways. But the footsteps… not heavy, laden with trays of food.

Rushed. Running.

Gwen drew her sword.

No knock, no pleasantries.

A palace guard, sweat lining his face, fire sputtering at his fingertips. His pale, cream-colored uniformed was barely visible beneath the noxious black bile.

"The darkness," he choked out. "In the barracks."

The guard barracks. Tightly packed. Males and females lodging together.

All fae.

The darkness had come to Baylaur.