Page 69

FINNIAN

I can’t lose her to questions I don’t know are coming.

Three hours of trial preparation, and I still don’t have enough information. For the first time in centuries, I hate this analytical mind that won’t stop cataloging every moral boundary I’m about to cross.

What good is accumulated knowledge when it might be destroying the one person I’ve learned to love?

The scrolls say patience is power. But all I feel is panic.

In two hours, Ash faces a Trial of Truth designed to strip away every defense, every careful wall she’s built around her heart. And I—scholar, researcher, keeper of forbidden knowledge—don’t know what questions they’ll ask.

“Unacceptable,” I snarl, golden magic erupting around my fingertips in response to rising panic. The crystal fixtures overhead ring like struck bells. “Completely fucking unacceptable.”

Ancient texts spread across my desk, but the Crown’s honeyed threads trace patterns beneath my skin that spell out truths no book contains. Through the artifact’s connection to time itself, I feel the weight of approaching choice points—moments when everything could shift.

The Crown doesn’t just show possible futures. It shows me the consequences of secrets kept too long.

She’ll face the trial believing she’s alone, the artifact pulses against my chest. While three guardians who could save her maintain their careful masks.

I see myself in a dozen timelines, and in every one where I choose silence over courage, where I choose safety over truth, she dies. Not just her body—her spirit, her trust, her magnificent fire that drew us all like moths to flame.

The Crown shows me what happens to hearts that break from betrayal.

It shows me what we become if we lose her to our own cowardice.

I’ve spent centuries collecting information, studying patterns, predicting outcomes. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is protection. Knowledge is the only weapon I’ve ever mastered.

But tonight, knowledge isn’t enough.

Tonight, she walks into that trial vulnerable to attacks I can’t anticipate, can’t defend against, can’t prepare her for. And if she fails—if the magical backlash destroys our bonds, if truth constraints shatter her mind, if the courts decide she’s not worthy?—

I lose her. Forever.

“No.” The word erupts with enough magical force to crack the stone walls. Books tumble from shelves as my control fractures completely. “Not acceptable.”

The words echo off the stone like an incantation, but it’s not enough. I’m unraveling at the edges, held together by syllables and shattered protocol.

Books fall. Light flares. Logic fails.

And for the first time in three centuries, I don’t care about ethics or archives or damnation.

I care about her.

Because if she doesn’t walk out of that trial whole, I’ll burn every library in Faerie to the ground and rewrite history myself.

There’s one source of information I haven’t tapped. One person who knows exactly what the human military wants, what they’ve planned, what questions they might feed to sympathetic court members.

Agent Davis sits in Academy holding cells, captured during yesterday’s political nightmare. Military intelligence officer. Ash’s former handler. The man who’s spent years orchestrating her placement, her training, her entire fabricated identity.

He has answers.

And I need them more than I need my conscience.

The decision crystallizes like shattered glass behind my eyes. Moral qualms are a luxury I can’t afford when her survival depends on information only he possesses.

I gather materials I swore I’d never use—truth compulsion spells from ancient Seelie archives, long-range memory viewing devices, emotional resonance detectors designed to strip away every privacy a mind possesses.

Tools created for interrogating dangerous prisoners who couldn’t be safely approached.

Each one represents a line I’ve defended for three centuries.

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 weight of 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.”

The admission hits like lightning striking bone. Love. Not duty or patriotism or professional respect. Love.

“She doesn’t know,” he continues, words spilling out under magical compulsion while I watch with cold fascination. “Never told her. Never acted on it. Just... watched over her. Protected her for eight years. Made sure she got the assignments that would keep her safe.”

“Safe from what?”

“From this!” The word erupts with anguished fury.

“From becoming what you’re turning her into!

She was perfect as she was. Strong, smart, real.

” His voice breaks between assessment and grief.

“Had a squad who’d die for her, a purpose that didn’t require rewriting her DNA.

She mattered without needing some ancient bloodline to prove it. ”

His words hit like acid eating through flesh, but I force myself to continue the extraction. Truth, no matter how uncomfortable.

“Explain.”

“Look what you’ve done to her!” His voice cracks like breaking protocol. “That’s not Ash. That’s some magical princess wearing her face. Real Ash sang off-key, checked her weapon three times before sleep, made terrible jokes during firefights. When’s the last time you saw her do any of that?”

“She’s discovering her true nature.”