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I don’t move. “Sir?”

“The arm where our friend’s little blade found its mark.” Each word drops like stone against bone. His tone carries the weight of inevitability—not a request but the culmination of decades of preparation. “Don’t insult my intelligence by pretending it’s merely wounded.”

“It’s a surface wound. Barely—” I begin, but my throat closes mid-lie.

“Nothing about you has ever been surface-level, Ashlyn.” The use of my first name feels like a violation. “Show me what you’re becoming.”

With reluctance that shakes through my entire frame, I roll up my sleeve. The thorn patterns have spread. Delicate green-white tendrils extending halfway to my elbow. Pulsing with light that matches my heartbeat.

Graves leans back in his chair, a slow smile spreading across his face—the expression of a man whose long-term investment has finally paid dividends. “Right on schedule.”

“What is this?” I ask. “What’s happening to me?”

“The awakening I’ve been waiting for since you were three years old.” He closes my file with ceremonial finality. “You’re being reassigned, effective immediately.”

“To where?” My fingernails dig deeper into palms, breaking skin. Pain anchors me when nothing else makes sense.

“Velasca Academy.”

The name slams into me like a physical blow to the solar plexus—recognition without memory. My mouth goes dry instantly. A high-pitched ringing starts in my ears. Disorienting as a flashbang.

The taste of honey floods my mouth, unbidden. A scent memory of pine and petrichor surges through my sinuses.

“I’ve heard that name before.” The words tumble out.

Graves’ eyes narrow to knife-slits. “Have you?”

The certainty that filled me heartbeats ago wavers. Scatters like fog in harsh sunlight. Have I heard it? Or is it like the language Litvak spoke—something I know without knowing how I know it?

“Maybe not,” I concede. Pressing fingertips to my temple where a headache blooms violent and sudden. “It sounds... familiar somehow.”

“Mmm.” Graves retrieves a slim black folder from a wall safe, placing it before me. The cover bears no insignia, just a simple Celtic knot embossed in silver. Something about the pattern makes my vision swim.

“Velasca Academy is a private institution specializing in... unique students.” His voice seems to arrive from very far away. “We’ve had it under surveillance for years. We need someone inside.”

“What kind of surveillance?” I ask, flipping open the folder with fingers that don’t feel like my own. Distant and numb.

Photographs reveal a campus that shifts between crystal spires, stone towers, and structures that appear grown rather than built. The inconsistency makes my eyes burn.

“What am I looking at? These seem doctored.” My voice stretches thin as spider silk. About to snap.

“They’re not.” Graves leans against his desk. “The facility appears differently depending on who observes it. And from which direction they approach.”

I look up sharply. The movement sends daggers through my skull. “That’s not possible.” But even as I say it, something ancient and buried whispers,of course it is.

“Says the woman with thorn patterns growing on her arm.” His smile stops at his lips.

Touché.

“Your cover positions you as a visiting professor of Human-Fae Relations. You’ll be teaching combat techniques to advanced students.”

“Human-Fae relations?” The word feels both alien and familiar on my tongue. Simultaneously wrong and right.

“As in fairy folk. The Fair Ones. The Good Neighbors.” His smile turns predatory. “Pick your folklore term of choice.”

I don’t laugh. I don’t tell him he’s lost his mind. Instead, my throat closes as I think of the woman in the forest with her impossible eyes and floating hair. I think of Litvak speaking words I shouldn’t understand. I think of the faces in the trees that have watched me my entire life.

My fingertips tingle with awareness, nerve endings firing as memories try to surface but can’t quite break through.