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FINNIAN

“We have to tell her,” Orion snarls, his boots wearing a groove in the archive floor as golden flames flicker around his shoulders. “She’s walking into that trial blind while we sit here debating political consequences.”

“And if we reveal the treasures publicly, she becomes an even bigger target,” Kieran counters from where shadows pool around his boots, frost crawling up the walls in jagged patterns.

“Your father can go to hell,” Orion interrupts, amber eyes blazing as his massive hands clench and unclench.

“You think I do not know that?” Kieran’s voice cracks like breaking ice, carrying an edge I’ve never heard before—raw, desperate, barely leashed.

Shadows writhe around him with barely controlled rage that seeks targets no longer within reach.

“You think watching her get dragged away by Amarantha’s guards did not destroy me? ”

I close the ancient tome I’ve been consulting, my knuckles gone white against the leather binding where nail marks score permanent indentations. Six hours of research since they took her, and I still don’t have answers. Still don’t know how to save her.

“Fighting each other will not save her,” I say quietly, though my voice comes out hoarse with strain.

“Then what will?” Orion demands, finally stopping his restless movement. Heat radiates from his massive frame in waves that make the air dance. “Because every hour we spend planning is another hour she’s alone with that psychopath Davis.”

Rage locks my throat until swallowing becomes effort. Three years of systematic poisoning, manipulation disguised as care, and now he has her trapped and isolated for three entire days. The knowledge burns through my veins like acid—seventy-two hours to condition her for tomorrow’s slaughter.

“The trial parameters are specific,” I force out through vocal cords gone tight as wire. “Solo manifestation of all four treasures. She will attempt to call them without knowing we carry three of them.”

“While Amarantha controls the fourth,” Kieran adds grimly, frost spreading from his feet in patterns too sharp to be natural. “Corrupted to reject Wild Court authority.”

“So we coordinate,” Orion says with determination that makes the air shimmer with heat. His guardian oath blazes between his thumb and forefinger like a brand. “Manifest our treasures the moment she calls. Support her from the audience.”

“In front of all three courts,” I point out, measured analysis warring with emotional chaos that makes my hands shake against the tome. “Revealing centuries of deception. Kieran loses his inheritance, you become a fugitive, I face treason charges?—”

“And she lives,” Kieran finishes quietly, and something in his voice drives a blade between my ribs. His shoulders drop like he’s finally setting down a weight he’s carried for decades. “That is all that matters.”

The words crash into my solar plexus like stones, weighted with finality. Three of us.

Each with reasons to walk away. Each with loyalties that once came first.

And still—we’re here. Plotting revolution in her name.

Not because we expect to survive it.

But because we finally found something worth dying for.

Then the silence shatters.

The archive door doesn’t just open—it explodes inward with enough force to crack the ancient stone frame, sending fragments skittering across the floor.

Sasha stumbles through the wreckage, her usual ethereal grace completely shattered.

Silver hair whips around her face like she’s been flying through hurricane winds, and her violet eyes hold a terror that makes my blood crystallize in my veins.

“The encampment,” she gasps, hands shaking so violently she can barely form words. “The Wild Court settlement near the eastern border—they are under attack!”

My stomach plummets like swallowed lead. All our planning, all our careful strategy, and somewhere in the night, people are dying while we debate politics.

“Which settlement?” I demand, though part of me already knows. Part of me can feel the answer in the way shadows recoil from Kieran’s sudden fury, in the way Orion’s guardian oath blazes to life like a beacon.

“The Thornwood refuge. Three families, mostly children and elders.” Her voice breaks on the words like glass shattering. “Coordinated assault. Military precision. They are not taking prisoners.”

Orion’s guardian oath flares with protective fury so intense the air around him begins to shimmer like looking through water. “How long ago?”

“Twenty minutes. Maybe less.” Sasha’s voice breaks. “I tried to get there myself, but the barriers—they have suppression magic, something I have never seen before.”

Kieran is already moving before she finishes speaking, shadows gathering around his boots like eager servants responding to their master’s rage. Frost spreads from each footstep in patterns sharp enough to cut skin. “We go. Now.”

“It could be a trap,” I warn, though I’m already abandoning my texts and grabbing emergency supplies. The irony isn’t lost on me—we can’t reach Ash, but we can race toward another disaster we’re probably too late to prevent.

“I do not care,” Orion snarls, flame starting to flicker around his shoulders in response to guardian instincts screaming danger. “Those are my people. Wild Court families who have been hiding, surviving, trusting that someone would protect them.”

“And we failed them,” Kieran says with ice-cold fury that makes frost spread across the archive floor in violent spirals. “Just like we are failing her.”

The shadow-walking is violent this time, Kieran’s emotional control fractured enough that the darkness feels jagged, angry.

Like being pulled through broken glass made of night.

Orion runs alongside us in his enhanced form, guardian magic pushing him beyond normal limits.

But even divine speed feels insufficient when you’re racing toward the sound of screaming.

When we emerge from shadow at the forest’s edge, the first thing that hits me isn’t the sight—it’s the smell.

Burning flesh. Burning magic. Burning dreams.

The Thornwood refuge spreads before us in flames that pulse with malevolent purpose.

Not natural fire—magical conflagration designed to consume everything: buildings, bodies, evidence.

The suppression barriers Sasha mentioned pulse with Seelie magic so intense it makes my training recoil like touching something diseased.

“Too late,” Orion whispers, and the word carries such weight of failure that I feel it settle in my bones like poison. His guardian senses read the devastation with terrible precision. “We are too late.”

The admission hangs between us like a death sentence. We came here to save people, and instead we’re witnesses to slaughter. Kieran’s shadows writhe with helpless fury, seeking targets that no longer exist, lashing out at empty air.

This isn’t strategy anymore.

This is grief weaponized. Love turned into revolution.

We aren’t princes, guardians, or researchers today.

We’re the consequence of their cruelty. And gods help them—because we finally know what we’re willing to become to keep our people safe.

But then I hear it—a child’s scream from the heart of the burning settlement.

Not just terror. Pain. The kind of agony that makes reality itself recoil.

“There,” I gasp, pointing toward a partially collapsed building where smoke rises in spirals that definitely aren’t natural. “Someone is still alive.”

We move as one, caution abandoned for desperate hope. Through smoke that burns my lungs and flames that shy away from our combined magic, we push deeper into what used to be a place of refuge.

I find her first—a young woman trapped beneath a fallen beam, her legs crushed but her eyes still aware. Still fighting. I drop to my knees beside her, using whatever strength I have to lift the burning wood enough for her to breathe.

“Help is coming,” I lie, because we both know there’s no help for wounds this severe.

The Wild Court survivor in my arms has gentle brown eyes that begin shifting to otherworldly silver as her life ebbs toward the edge. Her breath comes in rattling gasps, each one weaker than the last. Blood foams at the corner of her mouth as she stares past me into something I can’t see.

Her breathing nearly stops—so shallow I have to lean close to feel the whisper of air against my cheek.

Then her chest jerks with a violent gasp that sounds like breaking chains, her eyes flying open wide. They blaze with silver light that doesn’t belong in a mortal frame—too bright, too vast, like staring into molten stars.

“I remember,” she whispers, voice carrying harmonics that make the air itself tremble with recognition. “Siobhan. My name was Siobhan.” Her voice grows stronger, more resonant, carrying notes that hurt human ears. “Nineteen summers. Earth magic. Wanted to heal like grandmother did.”

She’s not speaking to me—she’s speaking to herself, remembering a mortality she’s about to transcend. Divine consciousness flooding back in fragments that make reality bend around her small form.

“Honey cakes,” she breathes with wonder, silver eyes wide with recognition that makes tears of light stream down her cheeks.

“I loved honey cakes and old stories. I wanted to coax flowers from barren soil.” Her voice breaks with the weight of remembering what it felt like to be small, mortal, limited.

“I chose this. I chose to forget divinity for... for what? For the taste of honey? For the surprise of not knowing how stories end?”

The dying words hit me like physical blows because I recognize what’s happening. The terror every researcher who’s studied the deepest lore learns to fear.

She’s not just remembering her life.

She’s remembering her divinity.