Dust hung thick in the afternoon light over the Royal Estate. Garrick Arundel knelt in the middle of it, scrubbing a stone corridor that a hundred nobles would walk across without ever once looking down.He was seventeen years old. He couldn't read the notice pinned outside the servants' hall, though he'd stood in front of it three times that day pretending he could. The only thing he truly knew how to write was his own name, taught to him in secret by an old cook over a kitchen cutting board. Nothing more had ever been offered to him."Arundel." The voice belonged to Tomas, a boy his own age with soft hands and a permanent sneer. "You missed a spot."There was no spot. Garrick looked anyway. Arguing always cost more than it saved."Where?""Everywhere." Tomas laughed, and two others laughed with him, until they grew bored and wandered toward the kitchens where the good bread was kept.Garrick didn't hate them. He'd turned that feeling over in his mind enough times to know its shape,

Two guards fastened iron shackles around Garrick's wrists and led him down toward the old tunnels beneath the palace. One carried a lantern ahead. The other trailed behind with the prison keys. Neither thought to bring more men. He was a servant boy with no training and no weapon. The idea that he might be dangerous had never once occurred to anyone but Zephar.Garrick walked between them in silence, chains dragging softly against stone, still trying to understand how protecting a frightened girl had turned him into an accused murderer in the space of one afternoon.The corridor narrowed. The torches here were old and spaced too far apart, and the darkness between them pooled thick enough to hide a man standing perfectly still.It hid one now.The knife took the lantern bearer in the throat before he could make a sound. He crumpled without ever knowing what killed him. The second guard's hand found his sword hilt half a second too late. The assassin closed the gap before the blade cle

The seven pillars ringing the platform lit one after another. Asterion explained that the sanctuary hadn't finished with him yet. Rather than techniques, it offered history first. Memories preserved since the order's founding. The reason the Sword Monarchs once stood beside kings rather than beneath them.Garrick watched armored warriors defend cities from horrors that poured through gateways ordinary steel couldn't close. He watched sacrifice after sacrifice made without hesitation. And he watched, too, the slow turn that followed. Kings growing afraid of warriors more trusted by their people than the crown itself. Fear ripening into suspicion. Suspicion ripening at last into betrayal.The vision cut off before it named names."The rest is sealed," Asterion said, "until you are strong enough to carry the whole truth without it destroying you before you're ready to use it.""Then teach me," Garrick said."I will teach you nothing today except how little you know." Asterion's tone allo

The throne room had emptied by the time Cedren crossed back toward the dais, the last of the nobles filing out through the great doors, their voices fading into the corridors beyond. Only a pair of guards remained, stationed and silent along the far wall, too distant to hear anything spoken low."You wanted me to stay, Your Majesty."King Evandor waited until the doors had fully closed before he spoke again. "What did you find in the tunnels, Captain? And I don't mean what Lord Zephar told the court I found."Cedren chose his words carefully. "Both guards were killed by a single strike each. Precise. The kind of wound a trained soldier leaves, not a boy who's spent his life scrubbing floors.""Go on.""The chains binding the prisoner were unlocked, not broken. Whoever did this took the time to free him before running, or before he ran himself. That's not the act of a boy overpowering his guards in a panic. That's the act of someone with a plan."Evandor leaned forward slightly, his fi

The passage beneath the old chapel had not been used in years, its stone steps worn smooth by feet that had learned long ago to leave no other trace of their passing. Lord Zephar descended alone, a single lantern in hand, the air growing colder and staler with every step until it settled into the particular stillness of a place the living rarely visited.The crypt at the bottom had been abandoned for generations, its stone sarcophagi cracked and empty, its carved names worn past reading. It was, for exactly that reason, one of the few places in the capital Zephar trusted completely.Three figures already waited for him among the tombs, their faces hidden behind plain dark masks that gave away nothing beyond the fact that they had been standing motionless long enough for the cold to no longer trouble them."You're later than we expected," the center figure said, voice flat, neither male nor female in any way Zephar could easily place."I came as soon as I could without drawing attentio