Autumn swept over Constantinople with a whisper, coloring the gardens in amber and rust, softening the heat of the city's relentless summer. The sky above the palace was a high, washed blue, touched at its edges with the first hints of winter's breath. The city, swollen by years of war and invention, hummed like a living machine. Yet, inside the palace walls, there was a quiet that no invention could banish.
For weeks, Constantine had slept badly. The nightmares returned-sometimes of the battlefield, sometimes of his father's deathbed, sometimes of faceless crowds demanding more than he could give. Yet he hid this well. Every morning, he donned the iron mask of command, walking the colonnades and sitting in council as if the world's weight were nothing.
But that weight had begun to press deeper.
