Page 5

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.

“They’ve been operating openly all this time?” I ask. Voice barely a whisper.

Graves nods, studying my reaction with microscopic attention. “More openly than most humans comprehend. And they’ve established this... academy... as neutral territory between their courts.”

“Courts?” The word stirs something primal inside me. A half-remembered dream surfacing like a drowning person clawing for air.

He slides another photo across the desk—this one showing three distinct symbols: a radiant sun, a crescent moon, and what appears to be a tree with sprawling roots.

“Seelie, Unseelie, and Wild,” he says, pointing to each in turn. “Light, shadow, and nature. Three factions with a complicated history of alliances and betrayals.”

The symbols stir something deep within—not memory exactly but knowing. Cellular recognition that bypasses conscious thought. I find myself tracing the tree symbol with my finger before realizing what I’m doing. The pad of my finger following lines of root and branch.

My fingertip burns where it touches the image. Static spark. Or something else entirely.

“And what exactly am I looking for at this academy?” My voice sounds wrong. Hollow and distant.

“Artifacts,” Graves says. “Four specific artifacts of immense power. We believe at least one hides within the academy grounds.”

My mind flashes to the stone altar. The object that whispered thoughts directly into my consciousness. My body remembers the sensation before my mind fully processes—the way it reached inside me. The way it spoke without words. “Like what Litvak had?”

“Similar, but far more significant. The four treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann.”

The name reverberates through me like a struck bell, setting every atom vibrating at a frequency I shouldn’t recognize but do.

“Your mission is complex. The Four Treasures aren’t stored in vaults—they’re guarded by fae.

These guardians can summon their treasures at will, making traditional theft impossible.

Your objective: identify the guardians, document their capabilities, and report their locations.

The treasures themselves cannot survive separation from their bearers without killing them. ”

We’ve worked with Fae assets before—interrogations, isolated strikes. But this is different. This isn’t covert diplomacy. It’s going behind the glamours. Inside their world.

“Why me?” The question tears from my throat before I can stop it. Raw and desperate. “Why—why now? What’s really happening to me?”

Graves’ expression remains granite, but something shifts behind his eyes—something calculating and cold as midwinter. “Because you’re uniquely qualified.”

“How?” I press, leaning forward. Needing answers like oxygen. Words tumbling faster than I can regulate. “How am I qualified? What do you know about me? What am I?” The final question emerges as barely breath.

“You’ll discover that soon enough.” Which isn’t an answer at all. “Your transport leaves in thirty minutes. Everything is prepared—clothing, documentation, equipment. I want updates every seventy-two hours, precisely. If we don’t hear from you after one missed cycle—75 hours—we will come for you.”

His tone constructs fortress walls I’ve crashed against for twenty-five years without finding entrance.

“Thirty minutes?” I stand, incredulous. Chair screeching against the floor. “I haven’t even debriefed from Litvak. My arm is?—”

“Your arm will be fine,” he cuts me off. “Better than fine. It’s waking up.”

The words send a primal surge through my spine that has nothing to do with cold. My body trembles violently, not from chill but from the overwhelming force of ancient growth. Like seedlings cracking stone. I clench my jaw against the sensation.

“I need to call my mother,” I say. Request sounding foreign even to my ears. I rarely make personal calls. But suddenly it feels imperative.

Like if I don’t speak to her now, something will change irrevocably.

Graves’ expression hardens. Something like alarm flickering behind eyes before his mask slams back into place. “That’s not protocol for deep cover assignments.”

“Five minutes. Secured line.” My voice turns flat, dangerous. “Unless you want to explain to your superiors why your asset went dark because she couldn’t handle personal concerns.”

He hesitates. Eyes boring into mine as if mining for secrets. Then nods curtly. “Five minutes. Observation room three. I’ll have the equipment gathered while you make your call.”

I get up and rush to the room, uncaring how that looks to him or anyone else.

The small observation room offers the illusion of privacy—though I’m certain they record every word. Every microexpression cataloged.

I dial with shaking hands, misdialing twice.

Margaret Morgan answers on the second ring. “Ashlyn? Is everything alright? It’s after midnight.” Her voice, normally controlled as a surgeon’s hand, holds an edge of worry that makes my chest constrict with unfamiliar emotion.

“I’m fine, Mom,” I say. The title remains awkward after all these years. She tried her best, but I was never an easy child to love—too watchful, too strange. Too prone to waking screaming about faces in the trees.

“You don’t call this late unless something’s wrong.” Her voice sharpens with concern. “Where are you?”

“I can’t say. They’re sending me on assignment. I... might be out of contact for a while.” My voice fractures on the last word. I press knuckles against my lips to stifle sound.

A long pause stretches between us. Static crackles on the line when she speaks—my phone screen flickers. “The dreams are back, aren’t they?” she finally says. Voice barely more than breath. “The ones about the forest.”

“You know?” I whisper, gripping the phone so hard plastic creaks in protest. “About my dreams?”

“You used to wake up screaming” Her voice drops to murmur, so faint I press the phone painfully against my ear. “But I’ve always known you were... different, Ash. Special. From the moment they brought you to us, wrapped in that strange silvery blanket.”

My heart batters itself against my ribcage, each beat so violent I expect bones to crack. The room dissolves around me. “Mom, I need to know everything.”

A hesitation stretches too long. “There are things I swore I’d never tell you. Promises I made to keep you safe.”

“Safe from what?” The words tear out of me.

“From them. From him. From what you really are.” Her voice breaks. A suppressed sob that sends shock through me. I’ve never heard her cry. The sound makes my bones ache.

“Mom—” The word emerges as a raw supplication.

“Listen to me carefully, Ashlyn.” Her voice transforms. Stripped of reserve. “Whatever they’ve told you about this assignment, it’s not the whole truth. Twenty-five years I’ve watched him groom you for this moment. You need to contact your cousins.”

“My cousins?” The word catches in my throat.

The girls. She means the girls—Sabina, Vanessa, Pepper, Kelsie. My wolf pack. Daughters of women she calls sisters. My chosen family. The people I’ve deliberately avoided these past two years. Burying myself in missions to escape their perceptive gazes.

Who always knew when I was evading the truth. Who never seemed surprised by impossible things. Who I avoided because they made me feel less human.

“Yes,” she whispers. Voice dropping further. “It’s time they knew the truth, Ash. About you. About all of you.”

“What truth?” Ocean roars in my ears. Blood drains from my face so rapidly dizziness overcomes me. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re all connected through blood older than human reckoning. They’ll understand what’s happening to you—they’ve always been more in touch with their heritage.”