This obsession wasn’t just weakness. It was danger.
I gripped the stone sill until my knuckles blanched. Below, the guards moved like phantoms, torches flickering in rhythm with their slow patrol. Loyal men, most of them. Loyal through gold, or fear, or some twisted echo of faith. Beyond them, the Whispering Wilds loomed—dense and black, the border between my rule and the wild truths I couldn't command.
I looked up.
The stars offered no comfort tonight. I found myself searching them anyway, like a child desperate for signs.
I had outlawed divination long ago—banished the astrologers, silenced the seers. And yet, in my private moments, I still yearned for prophecy.
Certainty. Control. Something the dragon had stolen from me.
I turned from the window.
Sleep would not return—not tonight. Not with her scent still lingering in my memory, the weight of Excalibur's betrayal throbbing like an old wound, and the ever-present threat of the dragon.
I could feel the fucking thing now, that ancient presence stirring restlessly beneath my skin, drawn by the turbulence of my thoughts. The tattoo across my chest and back pulsed with heat—the dragon's fire.
I pressed my palms against the cool stone of the window frame, letting the chill seep into my heated skin. The dragon stirred again, restless, eager. It fed on my frustrations, my fears, the growing cracks in the perfect control I'd spent so many years constructing.
"I will defeat you," I whispered.
If it was possible for a dragon to laugh, then that is exactly what it did.
-LANCE-
I knew I shouldn't have arranged a patrol with Lioran, but I had no choice. I had to speak with him.
The ramparts crowned the castle like a vast stone spine, stretching the full length of the outer walls and circling Camelot in an unbroken ring of watchful height. Up here, the wind always felt sharper—cleaner—carrying with it the scents of hearth smoke, horse sweat, and distant pine from Thornhallow Forest.
A narrow walkway ran along the top of the wall, paved with worn flagstones smoothed by centuries of boots. Some stones dipped where countless patrols had passed; others bore shallow grooves from sword points dragged absentmindedly along their edges by restless sentries. The walkway was just wide enough for two men to stand shoulder to shoulder.
To the outer side, the parapet rose waist-high, a crenellated barrier of solid stone. Its merlons—those squared blocks of defense—threw long, rhythmic shadows across the walkway, while the gaps between them offered narrow, purposeful views of the surrounding lands: the training yard below, the village roofs clustered like rough-cut slate, the rolling fields, and farther still, the dark smudge of the forest that marked the start of Camelot’s borders.
"It's a lovely day," Lioran offered.
Every step I took seemed to whisper:fool, fool, fool.
My heart shouldn’t have raced when our shoulders brushed in a narrow bend of the walkway. I shouldn’t have noticed how the sunlight caught in his eyes.
"Yes," I answered, dropping my attention.
This was a place of vigilance. But it could also be a place of secrets traded in low voices. A place where kings came to think and soldiers came to forget. From the ramparts, Camelot lay open to the eye—every rooftop, every courtyard, every road in and out of the city. From here, one could see the kingdom Arthur ruled and the shadows gathering at its edges.
The ramparts were not merely stone and mortar.
They were the castle’s spine, its shield, its quiet, patient witness to every triumph and every downfall that walked its walls.
As we walked, the wind cut sharper, snapping at my cloak and worrying the hair at my temples. I didn’t slow. The height never bothered me; the cold never bit the way it should. But Lioran kept glancing down at the courtyard far below as if the stones were waiting to swallow him whole.
The wall-walk stretched ahead, long and narrow, crenels dividing sunlight into sharp bands across the stone. Below, Camelot stirred: guards changing shifts, squires dragging buckets to the stables, smoke curling from cookfires.
We reached the small parapet door tucked beneath an arch—the sort of narrow entry most men overlook unless they patrol these walls as often as I did. Before I knew what I was doing or where I was going, I pushed it open and gestured for him to enter.
“Here.”
The door shut behind us with a dull thud, and the world changed in an instant. The wind fell silent. The air grew still. Even the light softened, filtering through dust motes in muted gold.
He hesitated on the top stair before following me down. The stairwell was tight—too tight—and I felt him close behind me, his breath catching now and then as though he didn’t trust the coils of shadow or the press of stone.
