Gabriel is pale, with an upturned nose and gray streaks at the temple of his light brown hair. Unlike Cestra, when he walks down the center aisle, he pauses every few feet to shake hands with someone he recognizes. Glad-handing, I think. Like a politician. As he offers condolences to the parents of the fallen, the final car’s doors open.

The next man is the leader of the High Council of Regents himself, Lord Regent Aldrich, the keeper of Legendborn records, Order history—and commander of the Table when it is not gathered.

When Aldrich exits his car, he seems to rise and rise until he reaches his full height. A tall, tanned man, built like a warrior.

As Aldrich moves in front of the altar, his long, heavy cape swishes along the wooden planks of the raised platform at the head of the congregation. Tor signals for us to sit.

“Welcome, all.” Aldrich’s low, rich voice carries across the lawn and brings the whispering crowd to silence. The white-and-gold cape and sash radiate light beneath the low clouds. “To open our ceremony, a lament as ancient and precious as our great mission.”

Aldrich takes a long, silent breath before he recites an elegy for the fallen, a poem for another warrior lost in another war long ago.

“As for the soul of Owain, son of ancient King Urien,” Aldrich murmurs solemnly, “may we, as his fellow warriors, with today’s families, sit at the knee of his creator to consider its journey…”

William taught me well. I recognize this portion of the ceremony. But I don’t expect Aldrich’s opening words to send a heated flush down my spine, followed immediately by an odd, cold sensation. Another wave of heat, then chill. The tall shape of the Lord Regent at the altar seems to smear at the edges and fade. My eyes have filled with sudden tears.

Aldrich recites the next lines in Welsh, echoing the ancient poem. “Rheged udd a gudd tromlas…”

I feel a tear slip down my cheek. Blink again.

Eyes close.

Eyes open.

“Nid oedd fas i gywyddaid…”

From one stanza to the next, Lord Regent Aldrich is replaced by a tall, robed figure. From a lament in English to one in Welsh, from a blue morning sky over a picturesque, professionally maintained lawn to endless gray clouds and a hidden afternoon sun… the scene before me has bled into another similar ceremony from long, long ago.

“Gan ni cheffir cystedlydd…”

The robed figure’s voice is resonant, slow, overlapping with Aldrich’s, but slightly off. Echoing like a minister’s prayer in an enormous cathedral, but we are not inside a building; we are in a valley. And this speaker is not a holy man, but a cambion.

I know this because I recognize his long, narrow face framed by sharp cheekbones. The dark brows and glowing red-orange eyes.

He is not a Merlin.

He is the Merlin.