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“You erased her true nature!” He lunges against his restraints, desperation lending him strength while magic holds him down.

“She was a soldier! A protector! Someone who fought for people who couldn’t fight for themselves!

She used to sing off-key in the shower. She kept photos of her squad in her gear.

She made terrible jokes during firefights to keep everyone calm.

She never could sleep without checking her weapon three times. ”

Each detail hits like a blade between my ribs. The Ash he describes—human, vulnerable, beautifully flawed—sounds nothing like the ethereal creature of growing power we’ve been celebrating.

“She doesn’t remember those things anymore, does she?” His laugh turns bitter. “Too busy becoming your perfect Fae princess to remember the soldier who saved my life six times. You erased her.”

“That woman was suppressed magic. Concealed nature. Living a lie.”

“She was herself enough to save my life six times!” The words explode with desperate fury. “She was herself enough to hold dying children and promise them safety! She was herself enough to sacrifice her own happiness over and over because she couldn’t stand to see others suffer!”

“And now?”

“Now she’s your project. Your experiment in royal awakening.” His eyes hold genuine devastation. “Does she even make her own choices anymore, or do magical bonds and destined mates make them for her?”

The question cuts to the bone because I don’t have an answer. How much of Ash’s growing attachment to us comes from genuine feeling versus magical recognition? How much of her transformation represents discovery versus replacement?

I push deeper with the memory viewer, searching for context, for proof he’s wrong.

Instead, I find decades of genuine care.

Images of Davis watching Ash from a distance, ensuring her safety without recognition.

Times he redirected dangerous missions away from her.

Moments he stayed awake all night because her assignment had gone dark and he couldn’t reach her.

“You want to see the real betrayal?” Davis laughs bitterly as I rifle through his memories through the device array. “The conversation that started this nightmare?”

The memory unfolds with searing clarity through the viewing lens:

Graves, older and harder than the photos suggest: “The girl’s showing signs of awakening. We need her extracted before she becomes a threat.”

Davis, younger but already protective: “Sir, with respect, Morgan’s the best asset we have. Her success rate?—”

“Her success rate is about to become irrelevant. The situation’s evolved beyond human capabilities.”

“What if I could bring her in voluntarily? What if she cooperated?”

Graves’s cold smile: “You think you can convince her to betray everything she’s become?”

Davis’s desperate gambit: “I think she trusts me. And when this is over, when we’ve neutralized the Fae threat... she’ll be free to choose her own life. Free to be with whoever she wants.”

The unspoken promise hangs in the extracted memory like poison: She’ll be yours when we’re finished with her.

Nausea claws up my throat because the evidence is undeniable—Davis didn’t come here for military objectives. He came to rescue the woman he loves from people he believes are destroying her. And perhaps... perhaps he’s not wrong.

“You see it now,” he says quietly, watching recognition dawn on my face. “You see what we’ve done to her.”

But I’m not finished extracting information. Not when I can feel the weight of deeper secrets pressing against his consciousness through the magical sensors.

“The trial tonight,” I demand, device array flaring brighter until he screams. “What questions will they ask?”

“How should I know? I’m human military, not Fae politics!”

“But Graves has contacts. Moles in the courts. Information networks.”

Davis’s face goes carefully blank. I increase the truth compulsion, watching him struggle against magical pressure that penetrates cell barriers to make deception impossible.

“Tell me about the moles.”

“Graves inherited the operation from his predecessor,” he gasps out, blood now flowing freely from his nose. “Network of court sympathizers providing intelligence for forty years. Most think they’re working toward peaceful coexistence.”

“Most of them?”

“Some know the real plan. Complete severance of human and Fae realms, with humans maintaining technological supremacy while Fae power diminishes to myth.”

“And tonight’s trial?”

“Someone inside will feed questions designed to expose her emotional vulnerabilities. Force her to admit feelings that can be used against her later. Maybe trigger magical backlash that damages her bonds permanently.”

Dread spreads through my bones like poison. “Who?”

“I don’t know. Graves compartmentalizes information.”

I believe him, which makes everything worse. Someone in tonight’s tribunal has been compromised, and I have no way to identify them.

“There’s something else,” Davis says quietly, and I catch the weight of a secret he’s been carrying through the emotional resonance readings. “Something about her placement with the Morgans. Her adoption wasn’t random.”

I lean forward, multiple devices flaring as I tear into his deepest memories through the barrier. “Explain.”

The memory that emerges through the viewing array makes my vision blur:

A younger Graves: “The girl’s protected by divine arrangement. Ancient debt between The Morrigan and Artemis herself. We intercepted the placement, but the protection remains active until she reaches maturity.”

“Divine protection?”

“Artemis chose the Morgan family specifically—military connections to guide her into our preferred career path. We’ve been planning this for twenty-five years, boy. Don’t fuck it up.”

“Divine protection,” I breathe, understanding crashing over me like an avalanche.

“Graves didn’t just steal a child from the Fae,” Davis whispers. “He stole her from the gods themselves. Artemis placed her with a military family to prepare her for some future purpose, and Graves intercepted that purpose for his own ends.”

But I’m not done. There’s one more secret burning in his mind, and this one will destroy everything I thought I knew about my own life.

“Your parents,” Davis says, reading the direction of my magical probing through the device sensors. “You want to know about your parents.”

“My parents died as Seelie Court martyrs. Executed for refusing to betray court secrets.”

Davis’s laugh carries no humor. “Your parents weren’t martyrs, Professor. They were the foundation of everything you’re fighting against.”

The memory rips from his consciousness through the viewing device like a physical wound:

Graves’s father, forty years ago, shaking hands with two elegant Seelie Fae: “The intelligence you’ve provided will change everything. My son will inherit this operation, and when he does, these arrangements will continue.”

The female Fae—my mother—nods gracefully: “Our son doesn’t know our true allegiance. When the time comes to pass the operation to your heir, eliminate us. He’ll serve better thinking we died as martyrs than knowing we died as traitors.”

My father, cold and calculating: “Agreed. Better he hate you than question us.”

The memory device shatters in its housing as my magic explodes outward, stone walls cracking under the force of revelation.

“No,” I whisper, but the memory burns with the kind of truth I’ve trained myself to recognize. “This can’t be accurate. The records I’ve preserved about them...”

“Every piece of Seelie intelligence that built POD came from their reports,” Davis continues ruthlessly. “When Graves inherited the operation, he had them executed as promised. You’ve spent three centuries honoring the memory of traitors who enabled everything you’re fighting against.”

My knees buckle as three centuries of carefully constructed beliefs collapse with devastating finality. Every choice I made in their honor, every principle I defended—all of it built on lies.

Everything I believed about my family. Everything I built my life around. Every motivation that drove me to preserve Seelie knowledge and honor their sacrifice.

All of it lies.

“Look at what we’ve all become,” Davis says softly. “You, torturing prisoners for information. Me, betraying the woman I love to save her from what I think you’ll do to her. Ash, transforming into something that makes us both question who she really is.”

“We’re trying to help her?—”

“Are you?” His voice carries genuine anguish.

“Or are you destroying the woman you claim to love in favor of some idealized version you’ve constructed?

When was the last time any of you asked her what her favorite color was?

What she dreams about? What she was like before magic started changing her? ”

The questions hit like physical blows because I don’t have answers. I don’t know these simple, human details about the woman I claim to love.

“She was going to be an art teacher,” Davis whispers. “Before she enlisted. She wanted to work with kids, help them express themselves through creativity. Did you know that? Did any of you bother to ask about the dreams she gave up?”

My hands shake as I rise on unsteady legs, gathering my materials with fingers that feel numb.

“Where are you going?” he calls after me.

I pause in the doorway, honey-colored light flickering around my fingertips as control fractures completely.

“To decide whether I’m protecting her,” I whisper, voice breaking, “or completing her destruction.”

The walk back to my quarters feels like moving through molasses. Every step carries the weight of revelation, of truths that gnaw at certainties I’ve built my entire identity around.

When I reach my chambers, I sink into my reading chair and stare at the materials I gathered for tonight’s trial.

All of it suddenly feels like weapons aimed at the heart of someone I claim to love.

But I have new information now. Crucial intelligence about tonight’s threats:

Someone in the tribunal is feeding questions to exploit her vulnerabilities Military operation planned during trial as distraction Divine protection arrangement intercepted by human military Her entire placement orchestrated for military advantage

And the devastating truth: We don’t actually know her. Not the real her. Not the woman who wanted to teach art to children, who sang off-key in showers, who made terrible jokes to comfort her squad.

We know the magical princess we’ve helped create. But the woman underneath—the one Davis genuinely loves—remains a mystery.

My hands shake as I reach for parchment, preparing to write intelligence reports for each court. But the words won’t come.

How do I protect someone I’m not sure I actually know? How do I save a woman who might not need saving from transformation, but from the people orchestrating it?

And what if I’m one of them?

What if my love—so careful, so curated—has only taught her to be what I need, not who she is?

The truth will tear us both open.

But I’d rather face that than live another day pretending I haven’t already lost the real her beneath the version we helped build.

Outside my window, twilight deepens toward the Trial of Truth that will determine everything. In less than an hour, Ash will face questions designed to strip away every pretense, every defense, every comfortable lie.

Including, possibly, the lie that we’re helping her become who she’s meant to be instead of destroying who she actually is.

The question hangs in my chambers like incense, thick and choking: Are we the heroes in her story, or the villains who convinced ourselves we were saving her while we completed her destruction?

Either way, tonight she faces a trial that could kill her, break her bonds, or transform her beyond recognition. And I have one hour to decide whether to protect that transformation...

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.”