CHAPTER THREE
-GUIN-
One Week After the Announcement of the Shadow Trials
I guided Shade along the narrow forest path that led away from Caer Gwyll and toward the Standing Stones.
Three years in Annwyn had changed me. Sharpened me.
Hardened me. But I still wasn't prepared for the disorienting pull of the Whispering Wilds that spanned both Logres and Annwyn.
The trees shifted when I looked away. Birdsong played tricks—a lark chirping at my shoulder one moment, then miles away the next.
Shade's hoofbeats sometimes echoed before her steps landed, as if time itself unraveled here.
The Whispering Wilds. The name alone had terrified me as a child. You'd hear whispered stories of travelers swallowed whole by the forest, of trees bending to block escape, of leaves murmuring secrets that eventually caused a person to go mad.
A rustling sound came from my left. Or behind me? Impossible to tell.
Shade nickered, ears twitching like nervous fingers.
"Easy," I murmured, touching her neck. Her muscles twitched beneath my palm.
I unfolded the map again, though doing so bordered on useless. Not only did compasses die in the Wilds, but navigable stars rearranged themselves.
Shade pawed the ground, hooves striking the earth with hollow resonance.
"Easy, girl." Bred in Annwyn, Shade had her own sort of magic. She could sense distortions in magic and find true paths through illusion—something she was putting to good use now.
My fingers grazed the leather satchel at my side. Three objects lay within, and I would need each of them to cross over. The tallest Standing Stone rose before me, carved with living runes that shifted when I blinked.
I opened the satchel.
The first item—a vial of water from Annwyn's sacred pool, blessed by Merlin's own hands. The second—a compass crafted from bone and silver, its needle ignoring north in favor of magic's hidden currents. The third—a small vial of blood.
The compass pulled at me, and I followed its trembling needle around the ancient monolith directly in front of me, once, twice, until I stopped where moss grew in perfect spirals. The needle danced furiously. This was the spot—the thinnest point between worlds.
Magic thickened the air. My skin prickled. The earth beneath my boots throbbed with power. I uncorked the vial of water—meant to cleanse the surface of the rock. Then I dumped the vial over the stone and watched as the water covered it completely.
Next was the blood—Merlin's.
Three years ago, I'd crossed these stones on instinct and terror, guards at my back and death in my future. I'd stumbled through the stones somehow. Survived when I shouldn't have. To this day, no one understood why. Not even Merlin.
And on that subject, Merlin had been blunt: "I will not risk you on chance and hope."
So he'd given me this. His blood. The only substance that could fool the stones into recognizing their creator. As the one who'd woven the boundary spell and paid for it with his own life essence, Merlin could cross freely. The stones saw him as origin, as home.
And someone carrying his blood? The stones would see the same thing.
With steady hands, I tipped the vial over the threshold stone. Thick crimson trickled down the ancient rock, disappearing into its cracks.
For a breath, nothing happened.
Then the runes carved into the stone's surface woke—an eerie blue glow pulsing in perfect rhythm with my heartbeat. Each throb sent waves of azure light rippling across the ancient symbols carved into the stone's surface, the language of magic responding to the magic in the blood.
The massive stones began to shift. Not physically—they remained rooted in their eternal positions—but the space between them parted like a veil being ripped open.
I stepped forward.
Darkness swallowed me. No sensation. No sound. I was breathless, bodiless for the length of two heartbeats until reality snapped back.
I stumbled forward, gasping. Annwyn's twilight was gone, and now sunlight stabbed my eyes, forcing me to bring my arm up to shield them from the invasive light.
The air here felt wrong. Thin. Dull. As if magic itself had been wrung from the land. And I supposed, in a manner of speaking, it had been.
"I'm here," I breathed to no one in particular.
Returned to Logres. To what was once my home, but now entirely Arthur's realm. Returned to the kingdom that would have executed me—the kingdom that executed my parents.
In one way, Arthur had succeeded in destroying me—I wasn't the same naive girl I had been. Now I was something—someone—altogether different.
Sir Lioran.
I was no longer Guinevere.
I was a knight from the northern provinces, come to join Arthur’s Shadow Trials, come to prove myself worthy of becoming one of his Knights of the Round Table. Come to get close to him so I could betray him. So I could end him.
Familiar roads stretched before me, made foreign by time and exile.
Shade carried me through this side of the Whispering Wilds, but the forest resisted our passage.
Just as before, on the Annwyn side of this forest, branches dipped when we passed beneath them.
Roots rose from the ground like grasping fingers.
The whispers—the ones that gave the forest its reputation—grew louder.
Arthur might have outlawed magic, but here—in the natural world—it was very much alive.
I didn't know how long I rode until I heard voices ahead and recognized a winding dirt road. That meant I'd reached the perimeter of the Whispering Wilds, the end of the forest. Now civilization lay ahead.
I tensed.
The King's Guard stepped into view, their armor gleaming, their steps practiced. They were Arthur’s law made flesh.
Shade snorted. I steadied her.
My hand hovered near my sword, but I forced it still. Instead, I straightened, eyes forward, projecting confidence. This would prove to be the first real test of my disguise. I couldn't afford to fail.
"State your name and business," the captain barked. Scarred. Broad. Sharp eyes.
"Sir Lioran of the Northern Provinces." My voice—deeper now, decidedly masculine—didn't waver.
He squinted at me. "From the north?"
"Aye. I seek entrance to the Shadow Trials."
I studied the soldiers. Their exhaustion betrayed them—sleepless eyes, twitchy movements, fear bleeding from their pores.
Religious symbols hung over their armor, desperate wards against magic.
Even as I watched, they flinched at the forest’s sounds.
No matter Arthur's orders, his purges, or his executions, he couldn't ebb the flow of magic from the Whispering Wilds.
Another soldier stepped forward, an Iron Hound straining at his leash.
The beast locked eyes with me. Up close, the creature disturbed me more than I remembered. Metal and flesh entwined. Joints hissed with steam. Its body radiated something wrong—organic magic twisted into steel.
I stayed perfectly still.
The hound sniffed. Snorted. Stepped back.
No reaction. Good.
My magic held.
"Your papers."
I reached into my saddlebag with deliberate calm, withdrawing the carefully prepared documents that would either secure my passage or expose me as a fraud. The parchment felt heavy in my gloved hands—not from its physical weight, but from the magnitude of deception it represented.
The forged identification bore my new name in flowing script, each letter meticulously crafted to appear authentic.
Dame Yseldra of Fenwick Vale's seal pressed deep into the crimson wax that gleamed at the bottom—a legitimate mark from a real noblewoman who had become my sponsor through Merlin's careful manipulation.
The seal depicted a stylized falcon in flight, wings spread wide above a mountain peak, representing the rugged terrain of her northern holdings.
Most importantly, nestled between the identification papers lay an official invitation to Arthur's Shadow Trials, its edges gilded with gold leaf and bearing the unmistakable dragon insignia of Camelot's royal house.
The invitation itself was genuine—stolen rather than forged—though the name inscribed within had been altered.
While Dame Yseldra existed as more than mere fiction, she would be of no real consequence to Arthur's court.
The northern provinces had always been regarded as Logres' untamed frontier, a collection of scattered holdings carved from the unforgiving wilderness.
Most nobles from that region rarely ventured to Camelot, preferring to govern their harsh lands from weathered stone keeps that had withstood centuries of bitter winters, barbarian raids, and tyrant kings.
Because this remote corner of Logres remained so wild, so rough, so stubbornly uncivilized despite Arthur's centralizing efforts, it naturally followed that its people would possess the same rugged qualities—hardy, independent, and disinclined toward the refined courtesies that defined southern nobility.
A knight from such lands arriving with minimal ceremony and maximum practicality would surprise no one at court.
The captain studied the documents, returning them with a begrudging nod.
"Cutting it close," he muttered. "Trials begin in three days."
"I'm riding fast."
He nodded. "North Star Road leads straight to Camelot."
The Hound growled—a sound of metal grinding.
The handler yanked its chain.
"Proceed then, Sir Lioran," the captain said. "Godspeed."
I nodded curtly, guiding Shade past the checkpoint.
Her hooves struck the packed earth in a steady, measured rhythm that spoke of countless miles traveled and countless more yet to come.
The sound seemed unnaturally loud in the tense silence that had settled over the border crossing, each step echoing off the weathered stones that marked the ancient boundary between the wild northern reaches and Arthur's more civilized domain.