Room 317 smelled like sandalwood and end-of-day exhaustion. The air shimmered with incense haze and the faint whine of an overworked projector; every desk was half-carved with sigils or initials, proof that belief survives boredom. On the board: MYTH AS MIND — Why We Make Monsters.

Mira took the seat beside me, still in her human shape—ginger hair loose around her shoulders, green eyes bright under the amber lamps, freckles clear enough to count. She’d been like this since lunch: quiet, level, the edges of her attention smoothed out. No restless tapping, no sparks, just a steady pulse of calm that felt impossible under fluorescent tyranny.

I didn’t ask. Whatever had clicked into place inside her, I wasn’t about to break it with questions. Let the world stay kind for an hour.

Kael scanned the masks and rune charts. “This room’s a summoning circle,” she muttered.

“Group therapy for demigods,” I said, sliding in.

Mira smiled, slow and soft. “Auditing divinity for extra credit.”

Her voice had that warm-even tone I only get on rare mornings and after very good nights—like sunlight deciding to nap. Her knee brushed mine under the desk, casual contact that still made my pulse misbehave. Heat, then calm again. Controlled burn.

You good?

Steady. Stop checking my vitals, wife.

Not checking. Admiring. Professional difference.

She bit back a smile, eyes on the board. Professional, hm?

Kael caught the look and sighed. “I’m ignoring this entire vibe.”

“Good self-care,” Mira murmured.

I grinned into my notebook. Four periods of unbothered might be a record. Every time the worry tried to claw up—side effects, whiplash, cosmic warning label—I looked at the quiet curve of her mouth and let it go. If peace wanted to borrow her, it could sign it out under my name.

The projector flicked brighter, cutting a square of white through the haze. MYTH AS MIND glowed like prophecy.

“Finally,” Mira whispered, lashes low, voice just for me. “A class that gets it.”

For once, I didn’t have a comeback. I let her stillness hold.

The door opened like a slow spell, and the room decided to breathe differently.

Dr. Maren Eltridge glided in barefoot, every step whispering against tile. Layered linen the color of old tea, enough silver bangles to qualify as percussion, hair deliberately windswept with a single white feather braided in like punctuation. She set a carved wooden box on the desk—spirals, suns, moons burned into the lid—and smiled like she’d been waiting centuries for seventh period.

“Welcome, seekers,” she said, warm and floaty—voice that could sell therapy and crystals in the same sentence. “Today we explore Fae, Demons, Angels, Shifters—myths as psychological scaffolds. The stories that explain the parts of ourselves we pretend not to worship.”

Mira didn’t move much; she didn’t need to. Attention slid to her and stayed. My ribs loosened a notch. If she was this calm, the world could stay upright for another hour.

Eltridge dimmed the lights; the slide washed her in soft blue. “Across every culture,” she said, pacing like a priest who traded sermons for TED Talks, “there are rules. Always rules. Power never exists without ritual to contain it.”

The bangles kept time, a small, bright metronome. Around us, the class actually listened—rare magic in seventh period. Even Kael stopped doodling long enough to mutter, “She’s either enlightened or recruiting.”

I leaned toward Mira. “Fifty bucks says she has a moon tattoo.”

Left ankle.

Eltridge turned just then, bangles singing. We both knew she’d heard.

She lifted the box again, smile widening. “Folklore bingo,” she announced, fanning a stack of cardstock. “Mark the rules you’ve heard, star the ones you believe, and—this is important—circle the ones you’ve seen.”

She drifted down the rows, handing out sheets that smelled faintly of sage and copier heat. Across the top: Fae · Vampires · Angels · Demons · Shifters · Witches · Dwarves · Merfolk. Down the side: Iron / Silver / Cold Iron · Sun / Fire / Water · Invitation / Threshold · Hospitality / Vows · True Names · Food / Thanking / Gifts · Weapons.

“Consider this a diagnostic,” she said. “What your people call superstition is usually self-portrait.”

Kael eyed the haze. “Fifty minutes of anthropology cosplay.”

I looked down at the grid. Mythic columns, mortal expectations. I could fake some vampire: sun bad, stake good, invitation optional. Shifters I half-remembered from movies. Angels? No clue beyond bad pop and glowing knives. I started starring like I was investing in rumors.

Beside me, Mira’s pen moved with clinical precision. Not checkmarks—notes.

Vampires · Sun: burns; intensity varies by bloodline.

Invitation: threshold compulsion ≠ universal.

Stake: wood → paralysis; fire → finish.

Her handwriting looked like scripture rewritten by someone tired of nonsense. She drifted to Shifters:

not moon-locked; silver irritant, not fatal.

I hesitated over my boxes, painfully human. Most of what I’d witnessed fit one column: Fae. I knew what vows did. I’d watched glamours peel like paint. Everything else was hearsay with better lighting.

“Circle what you’ve witnessed,” Eltridge reminded.

Mira circled Hospitality / Vows without hesitation. The mark tugged at me—a truth we both owed. I pretended to study my paper instead of her hand.

Eltridge turned to the board, chalk squeaking like old gossip.

Fae— Never eat their food. Don’t say thank you. Iron burns. Ashwood breaks magic. They can’t lie. Bargain traps.

A reverent murmur rippled. Pens tapped. Phones hovered. Someone whispered, “That’s why they’re dangerous,” with church-voice.

Mira’s shoulders twitched once.

Then the sound slipped out of her—sharp, small, utterly un-royal.

A snort.

Quick, incredulous, and it cracked the hush clean in two. Incense hung mid-curl. Kael froze mid-note. I felt half the room turn toward us in perfect slow motion. The chalk stopped. The bracelets stilled.

And that single, quiet sound from my very polite, very dangerous wife kept echoing through the room like a dare.

Dr. Eltridge blinked, like the snort had rebooted her nervous system.

“Something to add, Princess?”

Mira didn’t fidget. She sat exactly as before—ginger hair spilling over one shoulder, pen balanced between her fingers, expression mild enough to look safe until you noticed the stillness. With Mira, stillness wasn’t calm; it was the moment before gravity chose a direction.

Don’t, I thought through the ring, pulse-soft. You don’t owe them a lecture.

I owe truth, not lectures. Relax.

Right. Relax. Because that always worked when my wife decided to rewrite theology between bells.

“Iron’s uncomfortable,” she said finally, “not fatal.”

The sentence hit the room like a dropped knife—small, clean, impossible to ignore.

Someone near the windows whispered, “She knows?”

Another kid half-raised a phone before Kael’s chair scraped across the tile just loud enough to sound like a threat and a coincidence at once. The phone disappeared.

Mira’s voice stayed even, almost kind. “Ashwood is décor, not doom. Pretty grain, good for furniture. Doesn’t short-circuit anything.”

Eltridge’s chalk hand twitched. “You’re suggesting the traditional weaknesses are symbolic?”

“I’m saying they’re wrong.” Mira looked up, polite smile intact. “Mostly.”

I pressed a thumb to my pulse point, because she was doing it again—offering forbidden data like it was weather.

The professor beamed. “First-hand ethnographic correction—delightful! And which of these, in your experience, would you consider accurate?”

“Bargains and hospitality,” Mira said. “Those are real. Especially with elders.”

She spoke like she was reading rainfall totals, not dismantling centuries.

“Offer a guest bread or drink, you make a promise with it. Thank the wrong elder, you might owe them a favor. Words matter more than charms.”

A low ripple passed through the class. Humans loved rules; rules made the monsters seem house-trained.

Eltridge leaned forward, bangles whispering. “And deception? The texts say Fae are incapable of falsehood.”

Mira paused, weighing phrasing like she could feel the world leaning in. “We can lie,” she said at last, “we usually don’t. We specify.”

The word landed like a pressure drop—half thesis, half warning.

“I—” Eltridge caught herself, scribbling SPECIFY DECEIVE in the corner of the board. “So truth is… negotiable?”

“For most of us.” Mira’s tone gentled. “Not for me.”

That last part wasn’t confession, just geometry. A law of how she existed.

“I can’t lie,” she added.

Every pen froze. Kael’s eyes closed, slow inhale through the nose of a bodyguard planning three exits and a plausible cover story.

I felt the hair on my arms lift. She’d never said it this plain outside our circles.

Phones shifted again. Kael’s boot knocked the leg of my desk—a warning pulse. I watched her shift her posture, the whole move a silent eclipse between Mira and every possible lens.

Please stop. You’re glowing like a security breach.

They deserve a working syllabus, came back, calm as tea.

Eltridge, bless her scholarly recklessness, leaned closer. “You mean morally, or—”

“Physically,” Mira said.

Silence rippled out. The incense burner gave one lonely crackle.

Someone whispered, “That’s… impossible.”

“Not for me,” Mira said again, simple and true.

It wasn’t pride. It was anatomy. Honesty as respiration. Her cadence didn’t waver; it was the same tone she used when reminding Kael to hydrate or me to eat something that wasn’t caffeine.

Eltridge recovered, voice hushed with awe. “Extraordinary. You’re describing a neurological—or perhaps metaphysical—constraint.”

“Both,” Mira said, unconcerned. “Either. Depends who’s measuring.”

The professor laughed softly, delighted, unaware she was juggling a live file. “Princess, you realize you’re deconstructing centuries of ethnography.”

“Good,” Mira said. “It needed renovation.”

The laugh faltered. Eltridge straightened, gripping the chalk. “Forgive me, I’m only—well, this is remarkable testimony. But for clarity: are you speaking as an expert, or—”

Mira looked up from her bingo board, green eyes bright enough to catch the projector light. “As myself.”

The phrase hit like truth serum in surround sound. Everyone knew what she was—half-Fae, royal by technicality—but hearing her own it without a title or apology stripped the air bare.

Kael’s pen tapped once—three beats, code for change the subject before Dominveil Security gets tenure.

Listen to her. We like not being arrested.

But Eltridge only brightened, misreading it for enthusiasm. “Then let’s stay with the Fae for a moment,” she said. “If iron and ashwood are exaggerations, perhaps the weakness is psychological—belief reinforced by generations of myth?”

Mira shrugged lightly. “Belief shapes the Veil, yes. But it doesn’t invent physics. Iron disrupts energy fields; it’s unpleasant, not lethal. Same way static messes with radio waves.”

Her pen twirled between her fingers. “You can touch it. It just… hums wrong.”

Eltridge nodded so hard her bangles clanged. “Fascinating—hum resonance!”

Mira smiled faintly, half apology for being too factual. “Humans always think we’ll burst into flames if you look at us funny. You should save that for the vampires. They actually combust.”

That got laughter—the nervous kind, but real. A few students even relaxed enough to write again.

Eltridge exhaled, dreamy. “And ashwood?”

Mira tapped her board. “Good for wands, furniture, terrible for propaganda.”

Propaganda. You’re going to give her an aneurysm.

Then I’ll heal it, she sent back, serene.

Kael muttered, “And that’s my cue to draft another confidentiality clause.”

Around us, the air shifted—not magic, exactly, but weight. Mira didn’t seem to notice. She’d laid her truths out like clean stones and was waiting to see who dared touch one.

Eltridge finally remembered to breathe. “Remarkable,” she said, reverent. “Every myth begins in fear, and you’ve just rewritten the entire diagnostic.”

Mira tilted her head, still calm. “Then stop being afraid.”

And that was the moment every student in the room realized she wasn’t guessing.

A chair squeaked two rows back, rubber foot dragging across tile like a dare.

“Then prove it?” a kid blurted—one of the sophomore philosophers who mistook courage for curiosity. His voice cracked on the last syllable. Phones twitched upward like meerkats.

Kael’s head tilted a fractional degree. That was all. Three cameras went back down like they’d remembered the fire code.

Mira didn’t even look at the kid. She looked at me.

That was the only warning—her gaze, steady as a hand on the small of my back. Don’t, I thought through the ring, pulse climbing. Not here.

Her answer came like a spark behind my ribs: There you are. I missed you, heartbeat.

Then she let the quiet inside her widen, like she’d opened a window I couldn’t see. The air sank a degree warmer. The incense thread thinned, as if it had decided it wasn’t the interesting smoke in the room anymore.

Her freckles softened out of existence first.

Ginger deepened to red-gold in a slow spill of light, like copper waking under a flame. The green of her eyes darkened, drowned, and then lit from the inside—starlit brown, the constellations I knew too well, flecks of silver and ember-gold like someone had punched holes in night and let the world through. Her ears sharpened cleanly; her mouth curved, and I saw the suggestive gleam of elongated canines when she smiled. Not theatrical. Anatomical.

The room went prayer-still.

I heard the sound of a pen hitting the floor and rolling until the cap caught on someone’s shoe. No one bent to pick it up.

“Better?” Mira asked mildly, as if she’d just taken off a sweater.

Dr. Eltridge made a noise like academia discovering live wire. “Adaptive mythology… in vivo.”

“Don’t faint,” Kael advised, deadpan. “You’ll hit your head on your chakras.”

The smell hit me a second later—amber and ozone, that impossible warmth that lived under her skin. My throat went dry. Mira, you’re leaking, I sent, panic and want tangled together.

Let them smell it. Let them know what alive feels like.

The air thickened instantly, pressing on my eardrums. The rush of her power surged, amplifying the senses already shared over the ring-bond. The room was suddenly loud with chemistry. Mira's scent—the toasted marshmallow now caramelized, the citrus bright and electric—was overwhelming. But beneath it, I could taste the classroom’s truth: the fear in the sophomore’s metallic-sharp adrenaline; the nervous, sour-sweet edge of confused arousal from the students; even Dr. Eltridge's faint, cold academic sweat.

“Focus,” I whispered aloud, voice catching. “You’re about to make half the room convert religions.”

Mira’s grin turned secret. “Academic outreach.”

She set her bingo board aside and reached for the nearest metal ruler. Stainless steel—school-standard, sloppily engraved inch marks. She held it by the edge, then laid it across her palm, skin meeting cold, unromantic metal.

“Iron,” she said, lifting an eyebrow as if to ask if we were satisfied with the control group.

I felt the entire row hold its breath—the expectation of sizzle so loud it was almost physical.

Nothing.

No smoke. No hiss. No heroic blistering. The ruler just sat there on the warm-soft of her hand like a feral cat pretending it hadn’t chosen domesticity.

“If it stung,” she added, “you’d know. I’m very expressive.” She tipped the ruler to balance on one finger, then flicked it up; it clacked against her knuckles and came to rest between two fingers like a lazy coin trick. “It hums wrong. It doesn’t wound.”

Stop showing off, I sent through the ring, desperate and amused all at once.

You love it when I do, she replied, and the scent pulsed hotter—wildflowers and rain-on-fire, the feral sweetness of her arousal spiking as she looked at my face.

A junior near the windows whispered, “But my grandmother said—”

“Your grandmother’s not wrong about hospitality,” Mira replied gently, as if that mattered more than the physics. “We’ll get there.”

She set the ruler down on the desk with deliberate care and reached for the pointer. Ashwood, pale and lightly grained, the kind of pedagogical wand that wanted to be a staff in its spare time.

“Ash,” she said. She tapped it twice against the desktop—tok, tok—like a gavel closing a case. “Pretty. Good at pointing. Terrible at murder.”

Someone laughed—too high, too relieved. Heat flushed across the class, embarrassment at the laugh folding into deeper awe. We were all suddenly children caught peeking behind a curtain and finding a person instead of a monster. Worse, or better—finding a person who was also a monster and somehow that didn’t make the room less safe.

The sophomore who’d asked for proof swallowed audibly. “So the stories just—lied?”

Mira tilted her head. The light found all the edges of her. “Stories protect people who can’t know better,” she said. “Fear writes warnings. Sometimes the warnings help more than they harm. Sometimes they turn into shackles.” A beat. “The stakes and sunlight warnings? Keep those.”

That got everyone’s pens moving at once. Somewhere behind us, Jace whispered, “So you’re saying vampires are real,” and Ashlyn muttered, “Heard of context?” without looking up.

Dr. Eltridge pressed her palms flat on the desk, bracing herself against how much she wanted this to be a TED Talk. “And hospitality?” Her voice trembled with reverence and greed in equal measure. “You mentioned—guest-right?”

Mira’s eyes warmed, which was somehow more dangerous than when they burned. “Hospitality is binding,” she said. “Bread, salt, water, roof—offer them, accept them, and you’re making a bridge. Both ways.”

Several kids glanced at each other like their kitchens had just become armories.

“It means,” Mira continued, steady, “that even an enemy can be safe at your table. If they come under guest-right, you treat them like blood for the span of that shelter. If you accept guest-right and strike your host, the Veil will mark you.” She looked at Eltridge’s chalk list and tapped a fingernail against Don’t say thank you. “That one’s half a rumor, half a warning. With elders, the words matter. Thank you can sound like I am in your debt if you put the wrong weight on it.” Her mouth slanted. “Young ones don’t care. Old ones grew up in a world where language had teeth.”

Dr. Eltridge wrote as fast as the bracelets would let her. “Language as oath-architecture,” she murmured, like she was taste-testing a dissertation title.

Kael positioned herself with the casual precision of someone who could body-check a charging camera with a backpack and plausible deniability. Two freshmen discovered a sudden fascination with their shoelaces.

Mira set the pointer down and looked at the class the way she looked at wildfire—interested, unafraid, aware it could get out of hand if left alone. “The Veil listens,” she said. “It doesn’t care about your opinions. It cares about your phrasing.”

I exhaled only when I realized I’d been holding my breath, matching the room’s rhythm without meaning to. That particular cadence in her voice—the one that carried the shape of vows—that was the reason nobles obeyed and enemies survived long enough to change their minds.

“Okay,” the sophomore said faintly, as if trying to negotiate with his own worldview. “But if iron doesn’t burn you and ashwood doesn’t break your magic, what does? What’s… the weakness?”

Mira’s smile showed a hint of fang again, not unkindly. “Asking better questions is not a weakness,” she said.

A few people laughed, grateful for the gentle redirect; a few didn’t, too busy staring at her teeth. Dr. Eltridge attempted to save the moment with pedagogy. “Let’s limit ourselves to what’s demonstrable in a classroom,” she said, earnestly, which was adorable considering the current state of the classroom.

Mira reached for the ruler again, held it out toward Eltridge. “You’re welcome to touch,” she offered.

Eltridge startled, then approached with the gravity of an acolyte offered relics. She pinched the ruler at one end; Mira held the other. For a heartbeat it was a tug-of-truth—simple, grounded, ridiculous. Two women, one piece of school-issue iron, not combusting together.

“You see?” Mira said softly. “Your fear built a bonfire where there should be a caution sign.”

Eltridge laughed, breathless. “You are the best problem set I’ve ever seen.”

“Tragic,” Kael murmured.

Mira turned the ruler, offered it to the sophomore who’d challenged her. He flinched, then flushed, then took it, cheeks going pinker when nothing dramatic happened. “Sorry,” he muttered, not sure what he was apologizing for.

“Don’t apologize for learning,” Mira said. “Apologize when you refuse to.”

A girl near the door raised her hand. “So—if hospitality is binding, does thank you really… like… bind us?”

“With elders, sometimes,” Mira said. “Not because of a magic spell you can’t see. Because the words land in a place older than you, and the Veil likes old places.”

“What about gifts?” another asked, quicker, braver.

“Don’t accept gifts you don’t want to owe,” Mira said. “Or be very clear what you’re paying. Clarity untangles everything. The Veil doesn’t trap you. Sloppy phrasing does.”

“That’s the most terrifyingly practical thing I’ve ever heard,” Ashlyn whispered. I watched the board where They can’t lie still glared in chalk and felt the quiet shiver that always runs through me when Mira chooses to be seen. She never does it to show off—only when an error gets too loud to leave alone.

A boy in a varsity jacket lifted his chin. “What about the ‘never thank a fae’ thing with—uh—young ones?”

Mira’s expression softened into the look she used in palace corridors when she was trying to forgive someone for being born last century. “You can thank me,” she said. “Just make sure you’re not promising something you can’t keep while you say it.”

He nodded too fast, relieved to have an instruction. Half the class visibly filed that under Rules That Might Save Your Life—or at Least Your Weekend.

Eltridge, clearly convinced she was either immortal or already published, reached for the ashwood pointer. “May I?”

“Hospitality allows it,” Mira said, amused.

Eltridge tapped the pointer experimentally against the back of Mira’s knuckles. A couple of students winced pre-emptively. Mira didn’t even blink.

“Decor,” she said, and the pointer went back to the desk like a dog told to stay.

“Then why ash?” Eltridge asked, genuinely puzzled. “Why that story? Why iron?”

“Because the stories worked often enough to spread,” Mira said. “Iron disturbs glamours. Ash is common and sturdy, so it got ceremonial work. People confuse ritual with result. If you stop a fae with a stick, you write songs about the stick—not about the three friends who held the fae’s attention long enough for the stick to matter.”

The class laughed again, this time because it was funny and a little because it sounded like strategy. I didn’t laugh. I was too busy remembering a chandelier and a roomful of nobles who hadn’t seen what I’d seen—Mira burning herself down to keep from burning anyone else.

“Note,” Kael said dryly, “that she didn’t say the stick was useless.”

“I didn’t,” Mira agreed. “Some truths are simple. A stick to the head is a stick to the head.”

Even Eltridge snorted at that. Relief vibrated along the rows like a plucked wire—humans grateful for physics, for anything that promised the world wouldn’t float away if you stared at it wrong.

Mira folded her hands. The fangs were gone when she smiled this time; she’d hidden them, either for courtesy or for effect, and I couldn’t tell which made me more feral.

You put the teeth away.

Only for the audience, my anchor. I still have them for you.

“Hospitality,” she said, returning to the point like a compass needle finding north again, “is not about being polite. It’s a boundary agreement. You promise to keep the world outside while you share a table. You promise to step back into war—if war was waiting—after the bread is gone.”

“Bread and salt,” I said softly, before I could stop myself.

Look at my consort, teaching the mortals.

“Bread and salt,” she echoed. “Water seals it if you want to be dramatic. Wine if you want to be remembered.”

Eltridge wrote Bread · Salt · Water · Wine

on the board with little dots like stars. “And the thank you?”

“Think of it as confirmation,” Mira said. “If you speak it with weight, you’re signing the contract twice. With elders, that matters because they were written when the ink was still wet.”

“On the Veil,” Eltridge breathed.

“On the stories that hold it up,” Mira corrected gently. “The Veil is the paper, not the words.”

There was a long, exquisite pause in which half the class fell a little in love with her and the other half realized they already had.

The sophomore extended the metal ruler back like a peace offering, and she took it with a nod. “Thank you,” he said—instinctive, human.

A dozen heads swiveled to her face, waiting to see if the floor would swallow him. Mira’s mouth tilted. “You’re welcome,” she said. “You didn’t mean debt when you said it.”

His shoulders dropped an inch. The room breathed again.

Eltridge clasped her hands like prayer. “I can’t—this is—Princess, do you understand the significance of—”

“Yes,” Kael said, which was the nicest possible way to say the significance is that she’d have to confiscate three phones and file six threats of expulsion by dinner.

Mira’s gaze skimmed the class, lingering on the familiar faces from Gloamhearts—the ones who had already decided they owed her the kind of hospitality that doesn’t fit on a bingo card. Those phones were face-down. Those spines were straight. The secret was safe because it had saved them first.

I am going to pay you back for this later, I sent, the threat sweet and low. The air around me felt suddenly crisp, my frosted citrus scent profile sharpening in anticipation.

I know, Princess. That's why I'm here. Keep me grounded, Cassie. I’m almost done.

“Any other tools you want me to hold?” Mira asked lightly, and a few people choked on their own thoughts. She meant ash and iron. She meant proof. Half the room heard hands and needed remedial English.

“Perhaps,” Eltridge said faintly, “we should pause the… tactile portion of today’s lesson and appreciate the generosity of our guest.”

“I’m a student,” Mira said.

Eltridge’s smile turned worshipful. “Even better.”

Mira’s expression shifted—the smallest exhale, a glimmer gone. She glanced at me, and the warmth that answered her was automatic, helpless. I slid my hand under the desk, found the edge of her sleeve, brushed knuckles.

You're magnificent. Now come back to me.

She didn’t look down. She didn’t need to. “Hospitality is binding,” she repeated, gentler now, for the record and for the room. “Say thank you to an elder with both hands full and you’ll owe a story. Break bread and you’ll owe a boundary. Break a vow and you’ll owe yourself.”

Dr. Eltridge’s marker squeaked to a stop. “Adaptive mythology in vivo,” she said again, dazed, like she’d married the phrase.

“Live,” Kael translated. “And please keep it that way.”

Mira put the ruler and pointer side by side, neat as altar offerings. The class finally remembered how to shuffle paper. Pens resumed their soft scratching. The incense curl recovered its composure. She was still in her fae skin. She was still smiling.

And not one of us had burned.

A boy near the windows finally found his voice.

“So… if all that’s myth, what’s actually dangerous?”

The question hit like a bell. Everyone turned toward Mira again, half expecting her to laugh it off. She didn’t. She set the ruler and the ash pointer side by side on the desk and folded her hands.

“The truth,” she said simply. “And what people do when they don’t understand it.”

Her voice didn’t rise, but the air thickened—faint ozone on the back of my tongue. The scent always came first when her magic stirred: warm metal and rain about to turn to steam.

“You want dangerous?” She looked at the boy, then at the room. “Breaking vows. Betraying oaths. Magic rots on lies. So do people.”

Pens stilled. I knew that tone—the one she used with foreign envoys right before they remembered she wasn’t ornamental.

“Most of us are stronger than you,” she went on quietly. “Faster. We heal when we shouldn’t. We hear through stone, smell blood in rain, see heat on skin. We carry the old elements inside us—fire, wind, light. That’s not bragging; that’s biology. We were built different. But strength doesn’t make us predators.”

She glanced down, tracing a fingertip across the edge of her desk. Tiny sparks followed, gold and white, fading before they could scorch. “I could burn this building to glass if I lost control. I could stop a bullet before it reached the board. My mother commands a court that keeps suns alive. My sister governs storms. Do you understand? We hide because we have to. Because if we didn’t—” she gestured at the class, at their trembling pens, “—fear would do the rest.”

No one moved. Kael’s eyes flicked between the windows and the nearest exits, ready for anyone dumb enough to film again.

Mira breathed out slowly, shoulders easing. “Wars between our kinds have happened before. They end in ash on both sides. You outnumber us; we overpower you. No one wins that equation. So we learned to keep our borders quiet, to let myth take the blame.”

Eltridge’s bracelets stilled. “Then why come here, Princess? Why reveal this at all?”

Mira looked straight at her, then at the rest of us. “Because pretending doesn’t build peace. I’m not here as a secret weapon or a curiosity. I’m here because I like this world. Because half of who I am lives here.”

Her voice softened. “My father’s human. So are my grandparents. My step-mother. My brother. My wife. The people who taught me humor, patience, mercy. My best friends are shifters who guard the Veil from the shadows. I won’t watch mortals stumble into danger just because the truth makes the powerful uncomfortable.”

You are making me burn in front of the sophomore philosophy club, I grated, the intensity making my eyes water.

You burn beautifully, Mira answered, using the heat of her desire to tether her control. Just breathe with me, anchor. Almost there.

She turned slightly toward the board where They can’t lie was still scrawled in white. “You deserve to know what’s real, so you can survive it. So if you ever meet one of us without crowns or glamours, you know how to keep breathing.”

The projector’s hum filled the pause. Someone sniffed; someone else muttered a prayer that didn’t belong to any known religion.

Cassie—keep them grounded, I told myself. Translate before they build a new myth on top of her honesty.

“She’s saying the stories aren’t shields,” I said aloud. “They’re instructions. Respect, clarity, consent. Don’t make deals you can’t define.”

Mira nodded. “Exactly. If you’re offered food, know what you’re accepting. If you speak a vow, mean every word. If you promise love, keep it—or walk away before it breaks you. The Veil doesn’t punish malice; it punishes carelessness.”

Eltridge had stopped writing altogether. Her knuckles were white around the chalk. “You make it sound… ethical.”

“It is,” Mira said. “Magic follows intent, but it answers integrity. Lie to it, and it will turn on you. Tell it truth, and it will burn the world clean for you.”

Her eyes flicked to me on that last part. I felt the heat behind it, the memory of every time she’d burned to protect someone instead of herself.

A freshman whispered, “Then are you… safe?”

“Safer than most,” she said. “Not harmless. There’s a difference.”

She stood then—slow, deliberate. Even in her school uniform, she carried court weight. Her hair shimmered between copper and gold, the light unable to decide what to call her.

“I want you to understand this,” she said. “We don’t hide because we hate you. We hide because we care enough not to break you by accident. But don’t mistake restraint for weakness.”

Her pupils caught the lamplight—two pinpoints of molten bronze. “A dragon breathes fire because that’s what keeps it alive. A fae speaks truth because lying would kill her. Neither of us mean harm by existing. But existence still burns if you reach for it wrong.”

The words rolled through the room like slow thunder. No one dared speak.

Mira’s hands opened, palms upward, firelight flickering faintly across her skin. The glow wasn’t bright—just the ghost of a forge seen through smoke. “This,” she said, “is power. It’s dangerous. It’s also the only reason there are still forests standing on the other side of the Veil. We keep balance. We keep the light moving.”

Then, softer: “And I choose to share a world with you because you keep the same promise—most of you, most days. You build, you forgive, you try again. That’s what makes you worth protecting.”

For the first time since she’d shifted, the class moved. Chairs creaked; throats cleared. It wasn’t fear anymore—it was reverence, and maybe shame.

Dr. Eltridge’s voice came out hushed. “So the danger isn’t you. It’s ignorance.”

Mira smiled, small and sad. “Ignorance breeds fear. Fear breeds fire. And you’ve already seen what I do with fire.”

Laughter broke the spell—uneven but real. Even Kael let out a slow breath, tension leaving her shoulders.

Mira’s form shimmered; the starlight in her eyes dimmed back to emerald green. The freckles returned one by one, as if the universe was remembering to paint them again. The overwhelming flood of Fae senses retreated, leaving only the normal, human sounds of the room—and the faint, delicious residue of her desire on my own skin.

“I’m not here to start a war,” she said, settling back into her chair. “I’m here to make sure there doesn’t have to be one.”

Dr. Eltridge managed a nod, voice cracking on its way out. “Truth as currency,” she said weakly, circling the phrase on the board. “Vow as contract. Integrity as peace.”

Mira gave a soft hum of agreement. “That one’s true too.”

The room exhaled as a single body. The tension bled into awe; awe bled into silence. For once, the quiet didn’t feel fragile. It felt earned.

Eltridge found her composure enough to murmur, “Princess, thank you for—”

Mira’s eyebrow lifted.

The professor caught herself mid-sentence, smile flickering. “—for your time.”

Mira’s grin was pure mischief. “You learn fast.”

The bell rang. Papers rustled; chairs screeched; half the class bolted like they’d been released from a spell.

Kael fell into step behind us as Mira gathered her notebook, serene again. The scent of sandalwood clung to her like applause. Outside the window, the sky had gone gold and bruised, a mirror of her.

As we stepped into the corridor, I heard one student whisper behind us, awe tangled with disbelief: “She could burn the world… and she’s choosing not to.”

I smiled without turning around. Exactly.