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Or to find a way to preserve what’s left of the woman Davis loves underneath all our magical expectations.

The choice will define everything I’ve claimed to value about truth and ethical research. Am I a scholar seeking truth regardless of cost? Or have I become the kind of manipulator who destroys what he loves while convincing himself it’s salvation?

Time to find out which.

A shadow moves in my peripheral vision. I spin, warm light flaring, to find Kieran materializing from the darkness between my bookshelves.

“Interesting evening, Professor,” he says with that dangerous smile, frost spreading from his feet as he surveys my interrogation setup. “Such thorough preparation. Tell me, did our guest prove... cooperative?”

His pale eyes catalog my scattered interrogation materials with predatory interest. Frost spreads from his footsteps as he surveys the truth extraction devices, the memory viewing array, the emotional resonance detectors still humming with residual power.

“What did you learn from our human friend?” He stalks closer, winter-cold and predatory. “I confess myself curious about the intelligence you’ve gathered through such... creative academic methods.”

The temperature plummets until my breath mists in the air. This isn’t casual curiosity—this is an Unseelie prince gathering intelligence for purposes I can’t fathom.

“The real question,” Kieran says, frost climbing my walls like art, “is what you plan to do with that information.” His pale eyes lock with mine, holding centuries of deadly patience. “And whose side you’re really on when it matters.”

“You know what I love about academics?” His smile turns razor-sharp. “You always think the right information will save everyone. But sometimes, Professor...” He steps closer, voice dropping to silk over steel. “Information just makes the betrayal more efficient.”

29

ASH

The Academy CourtChamber stretches before me like a colosseum designed for public execution—ancient stone rising in three perfect tiers while hundreds of High Fae track my movement like predators watching wounded prey.

I’m wearing ceremonial white robes that feel like a burial shroud, hands shaking as I walk down the central aisle.

Each step is a funeral.

Not just for the version of me I’ve been pretending to be, but for the dreams I buried so deep I forgot I’d once dared to want more.

A life outside war.

A love without conditions.

A name that didn’t come with a target on my back.

The stone beneath me hums with ancient judgment. But I won’t apologize for being a weapon they forged then feared. I’ll show them what it means to survive.

Every step echoes through magical acoustics that amplify sound until my breathing becomes a public announcement of terror.

At the chamber’s heart sits a raised dais. Waiting for me.

In the center of that dais, a stone the size of my fist pulses with silver light that makes my thorns writhe beneath my skin. The Truth Stone. Ancient magic designed to strip away every lie, every pretense, every comfortable deception I’ve built my identity around.

“Breathe, precious root-born!” Whispen’s voice sparkles with genuine cheer, his presence invisible to everyone else. “Queens don’t break—they just reorganize into more interesting patterns! Isn’t resilience wonderful?”

But I don’t feel like a queen. I feel like a sacrifice.

The three court sections loom above me like judgment itself. Seelie delegation glitters with light too perfect to be natural, led by Lady Amarantha Lightweaver whose violet eyes hold anticipation. Unseelie representatives pool in shadow so deep it seems to drink illumination from the chamber, and at their center?—

King Moros. Kieran’s father sits on a throne of living shadow, his presence making the very air around him dense with authority that presses against my consciousness like a physical weight. When his gaze finds mine, I see where Kieran inherited those pale eyes—but where Kieran’s hold carefully controlled warmth, his father’s are arctic wastelands that have never known mercy.

And beside him, separated from me by magical barriers I can feel humming with power, sits Kieran. Something fractures behind my ribs at the sight of him. Formal Unseelie court attire makes him look like a prince carved from winter itself, but I can see the tension in his shoulders, the way his shadows writhe with barely contained agitation. His hands grip the armrests of his chair so tightly that frost spreads from his fingertips in geometric patterns. He wants to reach me, protect me, and can’t.

The Wild Court elders occupy the third section, with the Morrigan at their center like a goddess holding court amongmortals. Her silver-streaked hair catches the chamber’s light, and when she meets my gaze, I see millennia of accumulated wisdom—and something that might be sympathy.

Orion sits with them, and I can see the guardian oath eating him alive. His entire body trembles with the effort of staying seated, amber eyes burning with such frustrated fire that the air around him shimmers with heat. Blood seeps from where his nails dig into his palms, fighting magical compulsion with sheer will.