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I gripped the edge of the table. Not because the words hurt—but because they still knew the shape of me. Knew where to land.

Thorne's gaze remained steady. "And yet we have records indicating that this specific artifact was released into your custody by Councilor Evrit. Do you deny this occurred?"

"Councilor Evrit was a colleague, yes," Gavriel acknowledged, "and we worked together on various initiatives. But I received no such artifact. If such records exist, they are either mistaken or have been… creatively interpreted."

The words landed like a stone dropped into still water. Not loud, not harsh—just precise. Cold. Calculated. And suddenly, everything in me twisted.

What if he was right? What if I had misread the records? If grief had clouded my judgment, made me see intent where there was none?

My throat tightened. I looked down at my hands and for a moment, I couldn’t feel them.

And then—I looked up. Across the table. Uldrek didn’t speak—he couldn’t—but he was watching me with steady eyes. There was nothing soft in them, nothing fragile. Just that quiet, unwavering truth between us.

The mark on my neck pulsed faintly, not with magic, but with memory.

No. I knew what Gavriel had done. I had lived inside it. Escaped it. Found language for it when all I’d had were scars.

I straightened and drew in a breath that scraped a little on the way down. "Councilor Thenholt, may I speak?"

He inclined his head. "You may."

"The archive copy includes Councilor Evrit’s signature and seal," I said, this time steadier. My voice still shook at the edges, but I let it. "It specifically names Lord Duskryn as the recipient. The language is unambiguous."

Thenholt examined the document more closely and passed it on to Thorne. She read it, her expression hardening.

"This appears to be in order," she said. "The signature matches other documents we have from Evrit's tenure."

Gavriel's expression remained pleasant, but I saw tension forming at the corners of his mouth.

"If I may," he said, "even if such a transfer occurred—which I do not concede—possessing an artifact is not the same as using it.

My wife's accusations are based entirely on her subjective experience, with no tangible evidence of magical influence. "

"The burned charms—" I began.

"Could be caused by any number of things," he interrupted smoothly. "Poor craftsmanship, natural magical fluctuations, even deliberate tampering to support this narrative."

Narrative. Like this was a story I’d spun.

I felt it—not doubt, not anymore, but the old helplessness.

The one that came from watching a room bend toward him.

The way he could thread charm through a lie so delicately you didn’t see the needle until it was already in your skin.

The way they shifted in their seats now—councilors who had just minutes ago been listening with care.

Now, they looked uncertain. Glancing at the papers as if they might have missed something.

And suddenly, I was back in a drawing room, years ago, watching him explain away my bruised wrist to a neighbor with a soft laugh and a story that made me feel foolish for flinching.

That was the feeling. Not self-doubt. Not disbelief. Rage with nowhere to land.

Until it found something.

Not him. Not even the council. But Ellie. Her small weight in my arms, the way she looked at me as if I was the safest place in the world. Hobbie’s voice, gruff and unwavering: No apologies . And Uldrek—still beside me. Silent. Solid. A shield, even without raising his voice.

I leaned forward, and this time, my voice didn’t shake.

"Narrative," I repeated. "You think I faked records from the Civic Vault? Burned my own charms? Put my daughter at risk just to spin a story?”

He met my gaze with well-practiced sorrow. "I think you believe what you're saying," he said gently. "That’s what makes it so tragic. Whatever happened between us has clearly left you in pain. Enough that you’ve woven this elaborate version rather than facing the truth."

I let the quiet stretch. Then said, flatly, "And what truth is that?"

"That marriages end," he said. "Sometimes, painfully. And sometimes one party—" his gaze touched on me, briefly, with a practiced softness, "—finds it difficult to accept that truth. Especially when things haven’t gone the way they hoped."

He folded his hands neatly on the table.

"Is it easier to believe your partner wronged you than to admit you made mistakes?

That your choices, your temper, your disappointment—" he let the words land gently, as though he weren’t driving a knife in with each one, "—played any part in the unraveling? "

His voice was low, reasonable, pitched for sympathy.

"I don’t fault her. I truly don’t. Pain does strange things to memory. But dark magic? Mind control? That’s not a truth—it’s a story. One designed to ease the guilt of walking away from a marriage that was already failing."

For a moment, I couldn’t speak. His words hit too precisely—not because they were true, but because they had been. Once.

There was a version of me that would have nodded along, quietly swallowing blame she hadn’t earned. That version who spent long nights wondering if maybe she’d been too sharp, too emotional, too difficult to love.

And there he was, giving that old doubt a polished voice and a sympathetic tone.

Poor Isolde , he was saying. Couldn’t hold a marriage together, so she built a fantasy instead.

My fingers curled into fists in my lap. I felt the edge of the table under my knuckles.

But I wasn’t that woman anymore.

I had faced childbirth with no one but a kitchen witch and an iron tub. I had walked out of a house he thought I’d never leave with a child strapped to my chest and nothing but a name I’d half-forgotten. I had stood beside a man who never once asked me to make myself smaller.

I looked up at the dais. “Councilors,” I said.

“There’s no marriage left to end. What I left was possession, not partnership.

You can call that bitterness, or failure, or fantasy if you want.

But I know what it felt like to be under that artifact’s influence.

And I know what it felt like the moment it stopped. ”

I turned toward Gavriel, meeting his gaze squarely.

“That silence? That peace in my own mind? That was truth. And I would bet my soul on it.”