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Tonight, those lines burn.

And tonight, I’ll become the thing I was raised to fear.

Not because I want to.

Because love has never been clean. Never been polite. And saving her might mean becoming the villain of my own story.

The Academy’s holding cells occupy the deepest sub-level, carved from bedrock and warded against magical escape. I descend through progressively more restricted areas, my credentials opening doors that should remain locked. Guards nod respectfully as I pass—Professor Willowheart, conducting authorized research.

If only they knew what kind of research.

Davis sits in the central cell, magical barriers humming between us like a tuning fork. He’s still wearing torn military fatigues from his failed rescue attempt. He looks older than his file photo suggested—salt-and-pepper hair, lines around green eyes that speak of decades spent in dangerous places. When he sees me approaching with my collection of devices and focusing lenses, wariness sharpens his expression.

“Professor Willowheart.” His voice carries military precision despite captivity. “Here to gloat about your successful indoctrination?”

“I’m here for information about tonight’s trial.” I arrange my devices with hands that don’t quite steady. “About the questions they’ll ask, the vulnerabilities they’ll exploit. About whatever your people have orchestrated while we’ve been pretending this is about royal bloodlines.”

My voice carries new authority—not the gentle scholar who helped Ash this morning, but something colder. More dangerous. More fundamentally Fae.

“I wouldn’t know. I’m not exactly part of their inner circle.”

The first lie. I can taste its metallic tang even through the barriers as the truth detection device flares.

“Let’s begin again.” I activate the long-range memory viewer, its light passing through the cell’s magical walls to touch his consciousness like searching fingers. “What does Colonel Graves really want with the Four Treasures?”

Davis’s eyes track the light’s movement, recognition flickering across his features. “You’re going to torture me for information.”

“I’m going to extract information using methods I’ve condemned for centuries.” The words taste like necessity and moral compromise. “Your comfort becomes secondary to her survival. Perhaps that makes me exactly what I’ve always claimed to study objectively.”

The device’s light touches his mind through the barriers, and his back arches against the chair as foreign magic burrows into his consciousness like white-hot needles. His scream echoes off stone walls.

“What does Graves want with the treasures?” I repeat, voice carrying magical compulsion that penetrates cell walls to make lying physically impossible.

“Control,” he gasps, fighting the intrusion while blood trickles from his nose. “Ultimate control over Fae populations. The treasures together can... can bind or break magical connections. Sever Fae from their power sources permanently.”

“Genocide.”

“Protection!” The word explodes from him with desperate conviction, body convulsing as I increase the device’s intensity. “Protection for humanity against creatures that see us as pets or playthings!”

“And Ash’s role in this protection?”

His resistance crumbles under magical pressure like sand before a tsunami. “Infiltration. Intelligence gathering. Locate the treasures, map Academy defenses, identify key targets for elimination.”

I lean forward, warm light flaring dangerously. “But that’s not all she means to him. Or to you.”

Davis’s face goes white. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Another lie. I activate the emotional resonance detector, its sensors reading the suppressed feelings radiating through the magical barriers. The device hums with Seelie magic as it catalogs his emotional state.

“Tell me about your relationship with Ash.”

“Professional,” he chokes out, writhing against restraints as the resonance detector forces him to experience the full weightof whatever he’s been suppressing. “Handler and asset. Nothing more.”

The words taste false even as he speaks them, emotional resonance spiking wildly on my instruments. I increase the pressure until tears stream down his face, suppressed feelings erupting like a broken dam.

“Try again.”

His composure shatters completely. “I love her.” The confession hits like extracted intel under duress. “Eight years. Since she took three bullets meant for my squad and still made jokes in the medical tent to keep me conscious. Still got the scars.”