The road to the capital was less a road and more of a dusty, sprawling artery, suddenly clogged with life. After days of seeing nothing but Kaelen’s stoic back and Bartholomew’s furry, judgmental one, the influx of humanity was a shock to the system. We passed merchants with carts groaning under the weight of pottery and textiles, their faces etched with the grime of a long journey. Grim-faced mercenaries with scarred cheeks and suspicious eyes sized us up as we passed. Families herded children and goats with equal exasperation. It was a chaotic, smelly, vibrant parade, and a stark reminder that our little quest was just one story among thousands.

  “Observe, Mistress Paige,” Bartholomew sniffed from his perch on my saddlebag, his whiskers twitching. “The unwashed masses. One must assume the capital possesses a rather robust plumbing infrastructure, lest the entire city succumb to a miasma of its own making.”

  “Don’t be a snob, Bart,” I muttered, pulling my bandana up over my nose. “Your litter box doesn’t exactly smell like potpourri.”

  He flicked an ear in disdain, a gesture of supreme feline offense.

  As the sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the sky in violent shades of orange and purple, Kaelen found us a spot to camp. It was a far cry from the serene lakeside. We were tucked into a small copse of trees a stone’s throw from the road, the sounds of distant laughter, arguing, and a truly terrible lute player drifting over to us on the evening breeze.

  And that’s when the whispering started again.

  It had been a low hum for most of the day, a background static I could almost ignore. But as the world grew quiet, the voice of the shard I carried grew louder. It wasn’t a voice of words, not exactly. It was a feeling, a cold certainty that seeped into my bones. A spike of pure, undiluted wrongness.

  Turn back.

  The thought slammed into my brain with the force of a physical blow. I flinched, dropping the waterskin I was refilling. Kaelen glanced over from where he was checking the horses’ hooves.

  “Are you well, Paige?”

  “Fine,” I said, maybe a little too quickly. “Just… pre-game jitters, I guess.”He gave me a long look, his blue eyes searching. He’d seen me face down shadow beasts and possessed trees without this much tension coiled in my shoulders. But he just nodded.

  “The capital can be overwhelming.”

  That was the understatement of the century. It wasn’t the city that was overwhelming me. It was the shard. It pulsed with a cold, insistent dread, a warning siren blaring in the depths of my soul.

  This is not the way. They will find you. Danger.

  I tried to block it out, focusing on the simple, grounding task of setting up my bedroll. But the feeling was like a hook in my gut, pulling me, urging me to run in the opposite direction. I wrapped my arms around myself, a useless gesture against the internal chill.

  “Mistress,” a soft, furred weight landed on my lap. Bartholomew looked up at me, his green eyes luminous in the firelight. For once, his usual air of theatrical boredom was gone, replaced by something akin to genuine concern. “Your countenance is more troubled than a freshly laundered Persian thrust into a puddle. One might surmise you have ingested a particularly disagreeable mushroom.”

  “I’m fine, Bart,” I whispered, stroking his head. His purr was a low rumble, a small point of warmth against the creeping cold. “Just tired.”

  It was a lie, and he knew it. He pressed his head into my hand, a rare moment of unguarded affection. “The ward you carry grows agitated. Its dissonance grates upon the senses.”

  So he could feel it too. That was… not comforting.

  Sleep was a lost cause. Every time I closed my eyes, the feeling of dread intensified, accompanied by fragmented images of twisting shadows and a single, burning eye. I lay there for what felt like hours, listening to the crackle of the fire and Kaelen’s soft, even breathing from the other side of the clearing where he’d taken the first watch.

  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I sat up, kicking off my blanket. The air was cool and crisp. I could see Kaelen’s silhouette against the fire, a still and watchful guardian, his sword resting across his knees. He heard me move, his head turning instantly.

  “You cannot sleep?”

  “Too much on my mind,” I said, walking over to the fire and holding my hands out to the phantom warmth. “My brain won’t shut up.” It was the truth, just not the whole truth.He looked out into the darkness that surrounded our little bubble of light.

  “Fear is a heavy blanket.”

  “It’s not fear,” I snapped, then immediately regretted it. “Sorry. I don’t know what it is. It just feels… wrong. Being here. Going there.”He studied me for a long moment, his gaze intense.

  “Do you wish to turn back?”

  The question hung in the air. The shard screamed YES! inside my head. Run. Flee. This city is a trap. But I thought of the village we’d left, of the encroaching darkness, of the hope—however slim—that the capital represented. Surrendering to this nameless dread felt like letting the Shadow Lord win without even putting up a fight.

  “No,” I said, my voice firmer than I felt. “No. I’m just antsy. I want to get this over with.” I looked down the dark, moonlit road. “I wish we could just keep going.”

  An idea, born of desperation, sparked in my mind.

  “Why don’t we? We’re not going to get any real rest here anyway. If we ride through the night, we’ll be at the gates by dawn. Less traffic, and… and we get it over with sooner.”

  Kaelen considered it. It was unorthodox, breaking camp in the middle of the night. But he also saw the frantic energy buzzing under my skin. He was a man of action, and perhaps he understood that for me, right now, movement was the only medicine.

  “It is a risk,” he said slowly. “But the road is well-traveled, and the moon is bright. Very well. Wake Bartholomew. We ride.”

  The night ride was surreal. The world was leached of color, rendered in shades of silver and black. We joined a silent procession of other night-travelers, their faces hidden in shadow, the only sounds the rhythmic clopping of hooves and the creak of wagon wheels. The shard’s insistent warning didn’t stop, but it became a thrumming baseline beneath the physical sensations of the ride: the cold wind on my face, the burn in my thighs, the solid presence of the horse beneath me. I focused on that, on the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other, mile after mile.

  Just as the eastern sky began to bleed from inky black to a soft, bruised purple, we crested a hill.

  And there it was.

  Aethelgard. The capital of Eldoria.

  It wasn’t a city. It was a monument. Massive white stone walls, impossibly high, stretched as far as I could see in either direction, punctuated by towers that scraped the dawn sky. Even from this distance, I could see the glint of the sun on the golden banners that fluttered from the battlements. It was beautiful and terrifying, a fortress built to keep the world out. Or to keep something in.

  The shard shrieked in my mind, a final, desperate crescendo of panic. FOOLS! IT IS A CAGE! TURN AWAY!

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  We rode down the final slope, joining the growing river of people funneling toward the main gate, a monstrous arch of iron and stone that could have swallowed my entire apartment building back home. The air filled with the sounds of the waking city—the clang of a blacksmith’s hammer, the shouts of vendors, the low roar of countless lives packed together.

  My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat of terror and exhilaration. I was not, in any capacity, prepared for this. The gate began to groan open, revealing a bustling, chaotic world within. We urged our horses forward, swallowed by the crowd and the shadow of the wall. A troop of guards stopped each party as they passed beneath the wall, asking simple questions before letting them continue into the city. When it was our turn, Ser Kaelen showed them something I couldn’t see, and they just waved us through.

  Welcome to the big leagues, Hawking. Try not to get yourself immediately disemboweled.

  Once we were through the gate, the sheer density of Aethelgard hit me. The roar of the crowd I’d heard from outside was a symphony of chaos up close. It was a river of humanity, and we were just a few drops swept along in its current. Towering, half-timbered houses leaned precariously over narrow cobblestone streets, their upper floors nearly touching and blotting out the morning sun. The air was a thick stew of smells: roasting meat and fresh bread warring with the tang of unwashed bodies, horse manure, and something acrid I suspected was raw sewage. So much for the majestic, clean-smelling fantasy capital of my D&D-addled dreams. This was more like medieval Manhattan during a sanitation strike.

  “Charming,” I muttered, pulling the collar of my tunic up over my nose.

  “One finds the olfactory assault upon one’s senses to be most… bracing,” Bartholomew intoned from his perch on my saddlebag. His fluffy gray face was a mask of pure aristocratic disdain. “It is the scent of progress, I suppose. And pestilence.”

  Ser Kaelen, ever the stoic knight, seemed entirely unfazed. His gaze swept over the crowds, the rooftops, the shadowy alleyways, his hand never straying far from the pommel of his sword. He was a man at home in the beautiful, terrifying cage. He navigated the throng with an unspoken authority, his horse parting the sea of people who wisely decided not to argue with a man built like a brick wall and armed to the teeth.

  We wound our way through a labyrinth of streets, leaving the grand thoroughfare for a web of smaller, quieter lanes. The noise softened from a roar to a constant, bustling hum. Finally, Kaelen pulled up before a sturdy-looking building with a heavy oak door and a swinging sign depicting a man slumped over a table. The sign read, ‘The Weary Wanderer.’

  “Points for accuracy,” I said, swinging a stiff leg over my horse. My entire body felt like one giant bruise from the days of riding.

  Kaelen grunted, a sound that could mean anything from “I agree” to “Please stop talking.” He led the horses into an adjacent stable, paying a grubby-looking boy a few coppers to see to them. Bartholomew hopped gracefully to the ground, shook his fur with a theatrical shudder, and marched toward the inn’s entrance as if he owned the place.

  The inside of The Weary Wanderer was exactly what you’d expect. It was dim, hazy with smoke, and smelled of spilled ale, sawdust, and stew. A fire roared in a stone hearth at the far end of the common room, casting dancing shadows on the rough-hewn wooden tables. It was crowded, but not unpleasantly so. Mercenaries with scarred faces drank alongside merchants in dusty robes, their low conversations a background drone to the cheerful crackle of the fire. It felt… real. I felt a flicker of something other than the pure, pants-wetting terror and confusion that had followed me on my adventure. It might have been hope. Or maybe just the promise of hot food.

  We found a secluded booth in a dark corner. Kaelen returned from the bar with a pitcher of dark ale and two wooden mugs, setting them down on the table with a solid thud. A serving girl followed shortly after with two bowls of what looked and smelled like a rich beef stew, along with a loaf of dark, crusty bread and a saucer of cream.

  I didn’t wait for an invitation. I tore off a chunk of bread and plunged it into the stew, my stomach rumbling its loud approval. It was delicious. The kind of simple, hearty food that settles deep in your bones and makes the world seem a little less hostile.

  Kaelen took a long pull from his mug, his eyes scanning the room before finally settling on me. The tension hadn’t left his shoulders.

  “We need a plan,” he said, his voice low.I swallowed a mouthful of stew.

  “Okay, shoot. My current plan involves finding a bed and sleeping for approximately three years. But I’m open to suggestions.”

  “My order, the Silver Gryphons, is headquartered in the Citadel Spire,” he continued, ignoring my sarcasm. “It overlooks the Royal District. I must make contact with those I still trust. But I am an exile. If I am seen by the wrong person, I will be arrested, or worse.”

  “So, you can’t just stroll up to the front door and ask for your old pals,” I surmised. “Stealth mission it is.”

  “Precisely.” He looked at me, his gaze serious. “Which brings us to your task.”

  Bartholomew, who had been delicately nibbling a piece of bread I’d dipped in stew for him, looked up.

  “Our task, Sir Knight, is of equal, if not greater, import. There is another warden here, protecting another traveler.”

  The shard in my head had been unnervingly silent since its frantic warning at the gate, as if the sheer scale of the city had overwhelmed it. Now, at the mention of another warden, it gave a faint, inquisitive hum.

  “Right,” I said. “The other magic cat guardian. How are we supposed to find one specific person and their talking pet in a city of… however many thousands of people live here?” My communications degree hadn’t exactly prepared me for pre-industrial private investigation.

  “Wardens possess a certain resonance,” Bartholomew explained, cleaning a whisker with a meticulous pink tongue. “A faint aura that other magically attuned beings can perceive. While I cannot pinpoint their exact location from here, I can sense their presence somewhere within these walls. It is faint, but it is here.”

  “So you’re like a magical GPS with a terrible signal,” I said. “Fantastic.”Kaelen leaned forward, his expression grim.

  “The Shadow Lord’s influence is subtle but pervasive, even here in the heart of the kingdom. Finding this other warden and their charge is not a side quest, Paige. It is crucial. Two wardens together would be near impossible to stop.”

  I looked from Kaelen’s determined face to Bartholomew’s pompous-but-serious one. It was obvious. He needed to sneak into the most heavily guarded part of the city. We needed to wander around looking for a magical needle in a metropolitan haystack. Doing these things together would be a spectacular exercise in inefficiency and would likely get all of us caught.

  “We have to split up,” I said, the words tasting like a bad idea even as I said them.Kaelen nodded slowly. He had clearly already reached the same conclusion.

  “It is the only logical course. You and Bartholomew can move through the city more freely than I can. A woman and her cat will draw less attention than an exiled knight in armor.”

  “He’s not a cat, he’s a ‘warden of ancient and terrible power’,” I said, doing a bad impression of Bartholomew’s verbose speech.

  “Your mockery is noted and summarily dismissed,” the cat sniffed. “The knight is correct. We shall begin our inquiries in the Merchant’s Quarter and the Scholar’s Ward. A stranger traveling with a creature of my distinguished lineage would surely be noticed.”

  “Great. My job is to ask around for a guy with a fancy cat,” I sighed, draining my ale. “Welcome to the big leagues, indeed.”

  “It is dangerous,” Kaelen said, his voice dropping the commanding tone for something softer, more personal. Genuine concern. “Aethelgard has a beautiful face, but her heart is full of shadows. Trust no one. Stay in the crowded places until you have your bearings.” He reached into a pouch on his belt and slid a small, heavy purse across the table. “For lodging, food, and information. Don’t be afraid to use it.”

  I looked at the coins, then back at him. He knew full well that I had coin of my own, but I took it anyway.

  “And you? What’s your plan for not getting ‘disemboweled,’ as my subconscious so eloquently put it?”A faint, grim smile touched his lips for a fraction of a second.

  “I have an old friend who runs a smithy in the lower districts. A man who values loyalty over politics. I will start there.” He stood up, a massive, imposing figure in the dim tavern light. “We will meet back here in three days’ time, at sundown. If one of us is not here…” He let the sentence hang in the air, the unspoken consequences clear enough.

  “We’ll be here,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

  He gave a final, solemn nod. Then, pulling the hood of his cloak over his head, he melted into the tavern’s shadows and was gone, leaving me alone with a talking cat, a purse full of strange money, and a mission that felt about as achievable as wrestling a grizzly bear.I looked at Bartholomew.

  “Well. Shall we go find your furry friend?”He sighed, a long, suffering sound.

  “Let us pray, for all our sakes, that the other warden is tethered to a human with a modicum of intelligence.”