The wind is an icy claw, tearing at my skin. It funnels down to us in the shadow of Cadair Idris, skips over Llyn Cau lake, and brings the winter chill to our small band in the ritual space below.

Clang!

We stand on the edge of the stone circle set low into the earth, surrounded by lit torches held aloft by Pages, and watch the sorcerer do his work.

Clang!

“We are all that is left.” Lancelot at my right, speaking my thoughts aloud as he is wont to do. “They have brought our numbers down to nothing, Arthur.”

“We are not nothing,” I rumble in response, my eyes still on the movement of Merlin’s arm, the heavy swing. The words of forging guiding every strike, pushing power into the boulder in the center of the ritual cerrig. “We are thirteen.”

Clang!

A wave of silver aether pulses through the ground, stopping at the raised stones beneath our feet, most of it bouncing back and into the earth, back to the boulder. Over and over, Merlin drives power into the stone, but each wave that hits and returns also sends a reverberation outside of the circle. An echo that sends lightning up my spine.

“This plan that you and Merlin have devised.” In the light of the torches, his hair gleams gold. “How will we know if it is successful?”

“We will know we have succeeded,” I reply, “when we are dead, and return.”

“In spirit, but not flesh.”

“Not in flesh, not in our lifetimes. But when every Cysgodanedig is dust, the war will be won.”

Clang! White sparks arc high in the air, falling on Merlin’s cloak.

“How many generations?” Lancelot asks.

“As many as it takes.”

I turn to his profile, watching. “The Spell will not hold if we do not all believe. Our Oaths bind us to it. Do you doubt, my knight?”

His brows furrow. Clang! The aether sparks fly; this time they are reflected in his eyes. Embers of power glowing silver and blue, then fading, then rising again. He turns to me then, and his gaze is as I know from the battlefield: storm and steel, fury and focus. “I do not doubt. The Table, forever.”

I clasp his arm in mine, our fingers wrapped at the elbows. “The Table, forever.”

At my touch, Lancelot flickers, thins, then reappears as the boy I know.

Nick squeezes my elbow, eyes looking me over in a concerned sweep. “What’s wrong?”

I shrug helplessly, voice low. “A little bit of everything, but I think I should be asking you that. You were in danger the other night.”

He releases me. “Mageguard. It’s over, but my father was injured. We’re in a safe place. I am, was, sleeping, actually—” He stops short. “Sel felt it, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

Something must show on my face—pain, anger, disgust—because his brows draw tight, and his voice lowers. “Something happened.”