Maven stepped forward into the glow of the confession array.
The runes around Celeste’s chair pulsed softly, white-gold light crawling over the floor in slow circles. Every breath she took felt watched. The mana in the machine sat inside her now like cold fire, humming through her veins, pressing against her thoughts, making it impossible to look away from the truth even when the truth itself was fogged and fractured.
Maven did not sound angry.
That was somehow worse.
“Let’s begin with something very simple,” she said. “Simple things are useful. They make it easier to see where people start making a mess.”
Celeste swallowed.
Maven smiled.
“State your allegiance.”
“To…” Celeste’s throat tightened. “To the Knights of Clawdiff. To Caerfaen.”
“Lovely. A full sentence on the first attempt.”
Marvin, standing at the control dais, adjusted one of the dials. The crystal lenses above Celeste’s head rotated a fraction, clicking softly into place.
Maven glanced toward the readings.
“Are you a spy sent by another nation?”
“No.”
The answer came out instantly, pulled from her by the array before fear could dress it up.
“Were you placed here by foreign powers to destabilise Caerfaen?”
“No.”
“Are you a Mythic sabotage asset operating under a false identity?”
Celeste blinked, thrown badly enough by the phrasing that for one absurd second she almost looked offended.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think Mythics would phrase it like that.”
A murmur moved through the room.
Maven’s smile stayed fixed.
“That was not the question. But thank you for the cultural commentary. I’m sure it will be cherished by no one.”
Celeste’s ears dipped.
“Sorry. Still no.”
Maven paced slowly around the chair, claws folded neatly behind her back.
“Are you affiliated with Hybrid rebellion movements seeking to undermine the authority of the Council and the Church?”
Celeste hesitated.
Not because she meant to lie.
Because it was such a very Church way of asking something that had forty smaller answers wriggling underneath it.
The runes at her wrists sparked.
Celeste flinched as a small shock snapped through the cuffs.
Not enough to burn.
Enough to remind.
“Try again,” Maven said pleasantly. “The machine dislikes hesitation. I, on the other hand, find it delightful.”
“I—no,” Celeste said quickly. “Not like that.”
Maven tilted her head.
“Not like what?”
“I mean…” Celeste’s brow furrowed. “I don’t want anyone hurt. I just want Hybrids to stop being treated badly. But that’s not a rebellion. That’s just…”
She searched for the word helplessly.
“Normal.”
That drew another wave of murmuring.
A badger priest at the back gave a cold little sniff.
“Convenient.”
Celeste looked from face to face, increasingly distressed.
“It’s true.”
“It may be true,” Tamsin said from the edge of the circle, “and still not be the whole of it.”
His voice stayed flat.
Tired.
But Celeste noticed something in it now—a habit of suspicion worn so long it had become indistinguishable from thought itself.
Maven lifted one finger.
“Beautifully bleak, Father Tamsin. Do stand there and continue being encouraging.”
Tamsin said nothing.
Maven turned back to Celeste.
“Where did you come from?”
The question should have been simple.
It landed like a stone dropped into dark water.
Celeste’s fingers twitched against the sanctified cuffs.
“I… grew up in a mansion.”
“Location.”
“Swansea.”
The name rolled through the chamber and lodged there.
Maven’s pale eyes narrowed with interest.
“Who raised you?”
“Kenaz Astallan,” Celeste said, then hurried, “and my teachers. Mostly.”
“Names.”
She took a breath.
“Orbal Bentzion. Noodles Toji.”
This time, the reaction was immediate.
Not just murmurs.
Real disturbance.
Two priests looked sharply at one another. One of the robed recorders nearly dropped his pen. Somewhere near the rear of the room, someone whispered, “I thought they were dead.”
Another answered under his breath, “They are supposed to be.”
Celeste’s head turned toward the sound, confusion breaking through her fear.
“What?”
No one answered her.
Maven looked over her shoulder.
“Marvin?”
Dawn Prelate Marvin checked the readings, then reached for a side terminal. His fingers moved quickly across the brass-edged controls.
“Names are recognised in the Church archive,” he said. “Both listed as deceased. Several years ago.”
Celeste stared at him.
“No, that’s not right.”
Maven’s smile softened into something terrible.
“Oh, good. We’ve found the upsetting part.”
Celeste’s breathing quickened.
“They were there. I remember them.”
“I’m sure you do.” Maven circled back around the chair. “Memory is such a confident liar. Very rude of it, really.”
She stopped in front of Celeste again.
“Your mother. Name her.”
Celeste said it without hesitation.
“Willow.”
Silence.
Not puzzled silence this time.
Worried silence.
Maven glanced toward Tamsin.
“Repeat that.”
Celeste blinked.
“Willow Astallan.”
A younger cleric near the wall looked visibly thrown.
“That is not—”
Tamsin lifted a hand without looking away from Celeste.
The room quieted.
Maven’s eyes gleamed.
“How long did you reside at the Astallan estate in Swansea?”
Celeste opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
The question hung there.
The array brightened.
Maven took one delicate step closer.
“How long?”
Celeste’s breathing turned shallow. She looked down, then up again, as though the answer might be written somewhere on the walls if she stared hard enough.
“I…”
Marvin looked at the reading.
“The array is detecting obstruction.”
“I’m not obstructing,” Celeste whispered.
Maven sighed lightly.
“Technically, that is true. Your mind is doing it for you. How considerate. Unfortunately, I am very good at being inconsiderate back.”
She lifted two fingers.
Marvin hesitated only a moment before touching one of the smaller switches.
Pain hit like lightning.
Celeste cried out as the shock tore through her shoulders and back, arching her hard against the restraints. The crystals around her head flared white. For half a second, she could not breathe.
Maven watched with calm attention.
“How long did you reside at the Astallan estate in Swansea?”
“I don’t know!” Celeste gasped.
One of the priests let out a short, incredulous laugh.
“How,” he asked, almost amused, “can you not know how long you lived in your own home?”
Maven raised a hand.
The priest fell silent.
“Please,” she said. “Let her answer. I enjoy a disaster in its natural habitat.”
Celeste’s eyes were wet now, her expression shattered between panic and shame.
“Because I don’t know. I have memories, but…”
She shook her head weakly against the frame.
“Not all of them are there. Not all of them are in the mansion.”
The room stilled again.
The scribes slowed.
Celeste swallowed hard and forced herself to continue.
“I woke up there about a year ago. After a car accident. That’s what I was told.”
A silence fell so dense it seemed to thicken the air.
Tamsin stepped closer.
“Do you believe it?”
Celeste looked at him.
His face had not softened, but his eyes had sharpened.
Not with cruelty this time.
With recognition.
The way a hunter recognised tracks that no longer matched the animal being described.
“That you were in an accident,” he said. “That your life began where you were told it began.”
Celeste frowned, small and uncertain.
“I…”
Tamsin’s voice lowered.
“Some things are only true because we are told they are.”
The words slid into her like a blade finding a seam.
Something changed in Celeste’s face.
Not dramatically.
Not all at once.
Just a tiny fracture in certainty.
A question she had never let herself ask because there had never been room for it before. Her breathing faltered. Her gaze drifted, not to the priests, but inward, toward some locked room in her own mind she had spent a year carefully walking around.
Maven looked delighted.
“Oh, that expression.”
Celeste’s eyes flicked to her.
“That is the face of a door realising it may, in fact, be a wall.”
She turned to Marvin.
“Mark that.”
Marvin’s pen scratched across the slate.
Maven looked back to Celeste.
“Tell us about your mother.”
Celeste’s voice softened automatically, as though memory itself had become ritual.
“She was… beautiful. Elegant. Busy. There was this party once—”
She stopped, trying to gather it.
“There were chandeliers shaped like swans,” she said. “And gold masks, and everyone was dressed in white and silver. She told me to stand straight and not talk too much. There were musicians near the stairs and the food all looked too pretty to eat…”
As she spoke, the image seemed vivid enough to her that, for a moment, even the priests listened.
Marvin looked up slowly from his notes.
“The Swanveil Function.”
Several heads turned toward him.
Celeste blinked.
“What?”
Marvin’s voice grew more careful.
“That event was real. A Pureblood state function at the old Arcturus winter hall. White-and-silver dress code. Swan chandeliers. Gold masks. It was called the Swanveil Function.”
Celeste’s face flickered with fragile relief.
“Yes. That’s it. I was there.”
A priest leaned forward.
“Hybrids would not have been permitted entry.”
The memory faltered.
Celeste looked from one face to the next, suddenly wrong-footed.
“No, I was there.”
Maven’s smile thinned.
“You are certain?”
“Yes.”
The array did not spark.
The answer was true.
That made the room more uneasy, not less.
Marvin checked another record.
“There were children present,” he murmured. “But only Pureblood family members and recognised wards.”
Tamsin’s expression had gone distant.
“The only woman I remember there with a child,” he said slowly, “was Lady Cariad.”
The name passed through the room like a draft under a locked door.
Celeste’s stomach turned.
Tamsin continued.
“She was with Lady Aurora Lovelace.”
Maven watched Celeste very closely.
“Not Willow Astallan.”
Celeste shook her head.
“No.”
Maven tilted her head.
“No?”
“I don’t know,” Celeste whispered. “I remember my mother.”
“Then describe her face.”
Celeste froze.
The room held still around her.
Maven’s voice stayed almost kind.
“Her face, Commander.”
Celeste’s mouth parted.
Nothing.
A long, awful pause opened.
“I…” Her brow creased with effort. “I know—”
Maven lifted one hand.
A tiny pulse of mana snapped through the cuffs.
Celeste gasped, fingers jerking against the restraints.
“Describe it.”
“I can’t.”
The admission came out small and stunned.
A scribe in the back stopped writing.
Celeste looked stricken, as though the answer had betrayed her by not existing.
“I know she was there,” she whispered. “I know she was. I remember her dress. I remember her voice. I remember…”
Her breathing hitched.
“I can’t see her.”
The contradiction settled over the room like dust after collapse.
And now even Celeste could feel it.
Her own truth was no longer standing upright.
It was buckling.
Maven looked almost pleased enough to clap.
She did not.
Probably because the room was already dramatic enough.
“Excellent,” she said softly. “Not for you, obviously. But academically.”
Celeste shut her eyes.
Maven turned to another page on Marvin’s slate.
“Tell us about Kenaz Astallan.”
That, at least, produced a clear answer.
Celeste swallowed and spoke with the plain, painful honesty the array demanded.
“He didn’t let me leave the house much.”
Pens began moving again.
“He was gone a lot.”
More writing.
“And when he was there, he kept asking me to try and use mana.”
A few of the priests exchanged glances.
Celeste went on, voice shaking now from confusion as much as fear.
“But I couldn’t. Not then. I tried, but nothing happened, and he’d get frustrated, and…”
She swallowed again.
“I thought he was disappointed in me.”
Tamsin did not look at the other priests.
He looked only at Celeste.
The more she spoke, the less her story sounded like the polished life of a commander raised in privilege and the more it sounded like a collection of mismatched fragments nailed together and called a childhood.
At last, Tamsin lifted his hand toward the rear of the chamber.
“You,” he said to the observing scholars and Church scientists standing half in shadow. “Look at her records again.”
One of them stepped forward uncertainly.
“Father?”
“Her memories are inconsistent,” Tamsin said. “Not false. Fractured.”
Marvin looked down at the readings, then at the notes.
“Constructed?”
“Possibly layered,” said another scholar. “Or edited.”
Edited.
The word made Celeste’s whole body go still.
She stared at them.
At Tamsin.
At Maven.
At the runes burning around her.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
Maven bent closer, pale eyes bright.
“No,” she said pleasantly. “But you are doing a wonderful job helping us understand for you.”
No one answered quickly enough after that.
And for the first time since the questioning began, the terror in Celeste was no longer only about what they might do to her.
It was about what they might be right about.
Because piece by piece, under sacred mana and hostile scrutiny, her own life was beginning to sound like a story told badly by someone who had not been there.
And Celeste, strapped in the centre of the array, looked suddenly and heartbreakingly lost.
