Page 58

ASH

The interrogation chamber feels like a tomb designed to swallow souls.

I walk through massive doors with my head held high, though my heart hammers against my ribs like a caged bird desperate for escape.

The room feeds on warmth, drawing heat from my body until my breath mists while black stone walls weep hissing condensation and silver inlays pulse with malevolent heartbeats. The air tastes of copper pennies and graveyard earth—something has died here, and the stone remembers.

Through the massive doors, I catch glimpses of familiar figures being held back by walls of crystallized air.

Kieran’s shadows writhe with frustrated fury, clawing at invisible barriers that spark when touched.

Frost spreads from his feet in violent, chaotic patterns that speak of barely contained rage.

Orion’s fire flickers with protective heat that makes the magical barriers shimmer like mirages, his hands pressed flat against the transparent wall as if he could melt through it through will alone.

Finnian argues with guards in three different languages, probably citing Academy protocols they’re systematically ignoring.

None of them can reach me. I chose this confrontation, and now I face it alone.

“Courage, root-born,” comes Whispen’s voice at my ear, his translucent form invisible to everyone but me. Blue light pulses faster than usual—anxiety bleeding through his ancient composure. “Walk like a queen, even if your knees knock like chattering teeth.”

Three chairs arranged in tribunal formation, each carved from different materials that speak of court allegiances. Seelie crystal that bends light into weapons. Unseelie obsidian that seems to devour illumination. Wild Court living wood that shifts and grows even as I watch.

Three figures wait with the patience of predators who know their prey has no escape.

Lady Amarantha for the Seelie, her beauty sharp enough to cut glass and twice as dangerous—light bending around her form in patterns that hurt to look at directly.

Lord Malachar for the Unseelie, shadows pooling around his boots like loyal pets thirsting for blood, darkness that moves independently of his body and reaches toward potential threats.

And the Wild Court representative—an ancient woman whose very presence makes my newly awakened magic sing with recognition and terror, bark-textured skin and eyes like deep forest pools that reflect starlight.

But it’s the fourth figure that steals my breath and sends arctic poison racing through my arteries.

Davis sits bound in the corner, military fatigues torn and bloodied, zip-tie restraints cutting into wrists that show defensive wounds.

Whatever rescue mission brought him here ahead of schedule clearly went sideways fast. His left eye is swollen shut, blood crusts his split lip, and he holds his ribs like something might be broken underneath.

My human handler. My connection to the life I thought I knew. Captured, beaten, used as leverage against a woman he probably still thinks is his asset.

The sight of him hits like taking shrapnel to the chest. My automatic military posture snaps into place—weight balanced, hands positioned for weapon access, peripheral vision cataloging threats.

But my enhanced Fae senses interpret his familiar scent differently now—gunpowder and tactical soap overlaid with fresh blood and something else. Fear. Not of death, but of failure.

Two worlds—human military precision and Fae magical chaos—collide in ways that make my skull feel like it’s splitting along invisible fault lines.

“Agent Morgan.” His voice carries the same authority it always has, though blood bubbles at the corner of his mouth when he speaks.

His good eye catalogs my appearance with professional assessment, noting changes he can’t possibly understand but that trigger recognition in his expression. “Interesting career change.”

“What the fuck are you doing here, Davis?” My voice cracks with more emotion than intended. Seeing him here, proof that my old life has followed me into this impossible reality, makes razors twist beneath my sternum. “You’re not supposed to arrive for three days.”

His jaw tightens, muscle memory making him straighten despite obvious injuries. “Intel suggested asset compromise. Took initiative.” A pause, then quieter: “Ghost protocols activated forty-eight hours ago.”

Ghost protocols. Code for “asset presumed captured and potentially turned.” The realization that my military family thinks I’ve been compromised makes something cold settle in my stomach.

“Professor Morgan will suffice,” I reply, though my throat tries to close around the words. The thorns beneath my skin pulse with agitation, responding to emotional chaos in ways Davis notices with the trained eye of someone who’s spent years cataloging my tells.

“How exquisitely touching,” Lady Amarantha observes with silk-wrapped venom, light wavering around her form as she recalculates threat assessments. “A reunion. Though I fear Agent Davis shall not be returning to his military duties. Unless, of course, certain... accommodations... are reached.”

The threat hangs in the air like cordite after gunfire. They think he still matters to me. That I still care about my old handler more than my new life.

They’re not entirely wrong, and that terrifies me more than their magic.

“What do you want?” I ask, though I already know the answer will reshape everything I think I understand about myself.

“Verification,” Lord Malachar responds, his voice like grinding stone that makes the chamber walls vibrate in response. Shadows writhe around him with hungry anticipation, darkness probing for weakness. “You claim Wild Court royal heritage. We require... confirmation.”

“The markings upon your skin,” adds the Wild Court woman, her ancient eyes holding secrets that predate kingdoms. When she speaks, tiny flowers bloom in the stone cracks at her feet. “They suggest royal bloodline. But markings can be... fabricated.”

“They’re not fabricated,” I say, letting thorn patterns pulse beneath my skin for emphasis. Blue-green light bleeds through my sleeves, casting alien shadows on chamber walls.

“Perhaps not,” Lady Amarantha agrees with a smile sharp as winter wind, light bending around her in offensive patterns. “But glamour magic can deceive even truth constraints. Remove the concealment, child. Show us your authentic form.”

I stare at her, confusion warring with growing dread. My enhanced senses detect no deception in her voice, no magical compulsion forcing false words. “What glamour? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The truth constraint doesn’t activate. No throat closing, no burning rejection of falsehood. Which means I’m telling the truth—I genuinely don’t know what they mean.

But the admission sends liquid nitrogen through my nervous system. If there’s glamour I don’t know about, what else about myself might be hidden?

“Fascinating,” Lord Malachar murmurs, shadows writhing with increased agitation that makes the temperature drop several degrees. “She believes herself ignorant of the concealment.”

“Which means,” Lady Amarantha concludes with dawning understanding that makes light flare brighter around her, “the glamour was woven in infancy. Deep enough to become part of her very essence.”

“Oh no,” Whispen breathes beside me, his blue light flickering between visible and transparent in rapid pulses. “Root-born, they think you are wearing false magic. They are going to try to strip it away!”

Permafrost crystallizes in my marrow as understanding crashes over me. “What?—”

“Combined effort,” Lady Amarantha announces with clinical precision that makes my skin crawl like insects walking across open wounds. “Glamour this ancient and deep-rooted requires three-court magic to safely remove. Any less power risks tearing the bearer apart with it.”

“Wait,” I say, backing toward the door as my pulse hammers against my throat. “I told you, I’m not wearing any glamour?—”

“Child,” the Wild Court woman says with something like pity, bark-textured skin shifting as she leans forward, “glamour woven in infancy becomes part of the bearer’s essence. You would no more feel it than you feel your own heartbeat.”

“Perhaps not consciously,” Lord Malachar agrees, shadows beginning to coalesce around his hands like living weapons that taste the air for weakness, “but concealment this deep requires... aggressive removal.”

Magic builds in the chamber like pressure behind a dam about to burst. The air itself thickens, pressing against my lungs until each breath becomes a struggle.

Power radiates from all directions—Seelie light that burns like touching molten gold, Unseelie darkness that freezes like touching liquid nitrogen, Wild magic that burrows into my very essence with root-like tendrils.

Temperature fluctuations make my teeth chatter as hot and cold zones war for dominance. The stone floor cracks under magical pressure, hairline fractures spreading outward from each court representative like spider webs made of stress.

“They are going to kill you!” Whispen shrieks, his form strobing between visibility and transparency as panic overwhelms his ancient composure. “That is not how glamour removal works! If the glamour is part of you?—”

The assault hits like being struck by lightning made of broken glass and liquid fire.

Seelie light tears at my skin, seeking false magic to strip away. Each touch burns like acid poured directly onto nerve endings, peeling back layers of self I didn’t know existed. The light doesn’t just illuminate—it cuts, carving through flesh and bone and soul with equal efficiency.

Unseelie shadows claw at my bones from the inside, searching for concealed truth with fingers made of frozen darkness. They burrow through my nervous system like parasites, following neural pathways with the single-minded purpose of finding deception that has become indistinguishable from reality.