The words align with everything I've read in the ancient texts. The fertility goddess transformation was never meant to be a collaborative process—it was conquest, claiming, the complete domination of human will by Fae power.
"Maya is the first human candidate you've selected," Elvinia continues matter-of-factly. "The first one who comes to you already broken down, desperate for any scrap of validation. That emotional dependency isn't a weakness—it's exactly what the magic requires."
She's right. The Fae candidates came to the transformation as equals, expecting partnership and mutual respect. They fought the complete submission the ancient magic demanded, their pride working against the very processes meant to save them.
She's right. The old ways worked because alphas took what they wanted completely, without reservation or guilt. Modern attempts at "ethical" transformation failed because they lacked the fundamental dynamic of absolute possession that powered the ancient magic.
"Continue as planned," Elvinia advises, standing to leave. "Deepen her emotional dependence, condition her to crave your approval, make her desperate to please you in all things. The more completely you own her mind and heart, the better her chances of surviving the final transformation."
I want to believe her. Want to think that falling for Maya will help rather than hinder her chances. But seven graves suggest that good intentions and genuine feeling aren't enoughto overcome magical processes that kill more often than they create.
"Tomorrow I begin the next phase of her conditioning," I say, changing the subject before emotion can undermine my resolve. "Deeper magical integration, more personal contact, introduction to submission techniques that will help her channel power safely."
"Submission techniques?" Elvinia's tone sharpens with concern.
"Maya's personality craves structure and guidance. Her desperate hunger for approval makes her naturally submissive to authority figures who value her contributions." I return to my desk, pulling out charts that track psychological conditioning alongside magical development. "If I can teach her to find satisfaction in pleasing me, in anticipating my needs and earning my praise, she'll associate magical work with emotional reward."
"You're training her to be dependent on you."
"I'm training her to survive what's coming." My voice hardens with determination I don't entirely feel. "The transformation will try to tear her apart from the inside. If she's conditioned to find strength in submission, to channel magical energy through service and devotion, she'll have anchors to hold onto when the power threatens to consume her."
It's a sound strategy. Proven techniques adapted from the botanical work I've done for centuries—teaching plants to thrive under stress by giving them external support structures.
It's also exactly what an alpha would do to claim and keep a perfect omega.
"And after?" Elvinia asks quietly. "If she survives, if the transformation succeeds—what then? Will you be able to let her choose her own path, or will you keep her bound to you through conditioning that makes her dependent on your approval?"
The question cuts deep because I already know the answer. If Maya survives, if she becomes the fertility goddess my people need, I will never let her go. The conditioning I'm using to help her survive will also ensure she remains mine—grateful, devoted, addicted to the way I make her feel treasured and irreplaceable.
"She'll be happy," I say finally. "Valued, protected, loved in ways she's never experienced. If that binding comes through emotional dependence rather than magical compulsion, is it really so wrong?"
"That depends," Elvinia says softly, "on whether you're doing this to save her or to keep her."
Both. The honest answer is both, but I don't voice it aloud.
After she leaves, I sit alone with my charts and my guilt and the memory of Maya's face when I told her she was perfect. The trust in her dark eyes, the grateful flush that painted her cheeks, the way she swayed toward me like a flower seeking sunlight.
Tomorrow I'll continue her education. I'll teach her to channel magical energy through submission and service. I'll condition her to crave my approval above all else, to find deep satisfaction in pleasing me, to associate her worth with how perfectly she meets my needs.
All in service of keeping her alive through a transformation that has a ninety-one percent fatality rate.
And if some part of me is already planning how to bind her to me permanently, how to ensure she'll never want to leave even if she could...
Well. Eight centuries of solitude entitle me to some selfishness when I finally find perfection.
I pull out my personal notes on Maya's responses—not the clinical observations that track her magical development, but the private records of everything that makes her uniquely precious. The way she bites her lip when concentrating. How hereyes widen when I praise her intelligence. The soft sound she makes when I touch her during magical readings, like she's been waiting her whole life for exactly that contact.
By tomorrow night, I'll have introduced techniques that deepen her emotional dependence while advancing her magical conditioning. She'll learn to find comfort in my control, strength in my guidance, satisfaction in earning my approval.
She'll become everything I need her to be.
And if I'm very careful, very gentle, very attentive to her responses, she might survive the process long enough to understand what she's become.
The memorial garden watches my window like an accusation, seven Fae women who died believing themselves equal to the transformation they sought.
But Maya won't be the eighth grave. She comes to me already submissive, already desperate for approval, already broken down by human society in ways that make her perfect for what I need.
Seven proud Fae failed because they couldn't surrender completely.
