Page 124 of Ashes to Ashes

“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 likeparasites, following neural pathways with the single-minded purpose of finding deception that has become indistinguishable from reality.

Wild magic burrows into my very essence like roots seeking water, looking for glamour woven so deep it’s become part of my fundamental nature. But this isn’t gentle—it’s violent, tearing through my psyche with the force of trees growing through stone.

Molten agony replaces my nervous system—not the clean torment of physical injury, but something far worse. The sensation of having my soul flayed while still conscious, of having parts of myself torn away like skin being peeled from living flesh while every nerve screams in protest.

My vision fractures into kaleidoscope patterns—colors that don’t exist, shapes that hurt to perceive, geometric impossibilities that make my brain feel like it’s melting. Sound becomes color becomes taste becomes agony in a synesthetic nightmare that overwhelms every sense simultaneously.

The chamber spins around me as reality itself begins to unravel at the edges, physical laws becoming suggestions rather than rules.

I scream until my voice shatters like breaking glass, collapsing to my knees as three-court magic tears me apart from the inside. But it’s not just pain—it’s dissolution. The horrible sensation that whatever I am is being unraveled thread by thread, identity coming apart like fabric under impossible stress.

Something fundamental is being stripped away. Not just concealment, but layers of identity so ancient and deep that my body has grown around them like bark around a wound. The person I’ve been for twenty-eight years is dying, and something else is being born from the wreckage.

My skin burns and bubbles like acid exposure, flesh reshaping itself in real-time. My bones crack with sounds likebreaking trees, then stretch and reform with grinding noises that echo off chamber walls. Every cell in my body screams as magic forces changes that should take years to happen in seconds.

“Stop!” Davis shouts from his restraints, genuine concern bleeding through whatever protocols govern his mission. His professional composure cracks as he watches something beyond his understanding destroy someone he’s spent years protecting. “She’s human! You’re killing her!”

But I’m not human. That much is becoming terrifyingly clear as the magical assault continues and my body reveals truths I never suspected.

The thorn patterns beneath my skin don’t just pulse—they explode outward in spirals of living light that throw shadows dancing across chamber walls. Vines erupt from my flesh, not emerging but revealing themselves as if they’ve always been there, hidden beneath layers of concealment I never knew existed.

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