These last few challenges created distance between us.
Complications born from Nikki's behavior, from my own failures, from circumstances that made us adversaries when we should have been allies.
When I started Wicked Academy, I wouldn't have given a damn about this woman's opinion of me. She was obstacle to be overcome, hybrid anomaly to be studied, potential threat to be monitored. The ice that defined my interactions with most beings extended to her without exception—calculated distance maintained through careful cruelty, warmth refused on principle.
And yet now...
It all comes back in full circle.
Every dismissal, every coldness, every moment I chose distance over connection—it returns now with weight that makes my chest ache.
The question forms with clarity I didn't expect to find in this moment of reunion: if I was destined to lose Nikki, what would have been my reminder of purpose?
Gwenievere.
The answer arrives without hesitation.
She would have been.
Is.
Has become, through trials and complications and the particular alchemy that transforms adversaries into something closer.
Without her, I wouldn't have any purpose at all. The realization carries weight that threatens to crush me—understanding that arrives too late to be acted upon, awareness that crystallizes only now that the stakes have become impossibly high.
A Fae without purpose...
The thought trails into darkness I don't want to explore.
I know what happens to my kind when meaning evaporates from their existence. We become shooting stars—brilliant momentarily, burning through whatever atmosphere contains us, destined to either land in places that can't appreciate our arrival or fizzle out entirely before reaching any destination that might provide salvation.
That's what I would have become.
Soaring through life—through this odd world of academies and trials and bonds that defy easy understanding—until I had no choice but to return to Faerie.
The thought of home carries no comfort.
Returning to the realm that should have been my haven, presenting myself before courts that witnessed my departure with expectations I haven't met... the scrutiny would be unbearable. A prince returning with no accomplishments, no partnered mate, no evidence that his existence has served any purpose worthy of the resources invested in his creation.
The mockery they all said I deserved.
Finally proven right by my failures.
The weight of potential humiliation presses against my chest with force that makes breathing difficult. Fae politics are brutal in their assessment of worth—those who fail to achieve expected outcomes receive treatment that would destroy beings from less cruel realms. The whispers that followed me before I left would become declarations upon my return. The doubt that shadowed my existence would transform into certainty that I was always destined to disappoint.
Why was I created to begin with?
The question surfaces with bitterness I've tried to suppress since first becoming aware enough to ask it.
Formed out of Nikki's desperate yearning to be male.
Born from her need to escape the feminine form that our Father found insufficient.
Created not as an end in myself but as a solution to someone else's problem.
The King of our realm wanted an heir he could respect—a son rather than the daughter his consort produced. Nikki's magic responded to that desire, to the scrutiny she experienced, to the constant pressure that suggested her existence in female form was inherently disappointing. I emerged from that desperation like answer emerging from question, male manifestation of a female consciousness that couldn't bear the weight of paternal disapproval any longer.
I know when this Academy business concludes, that history will have to be confronted.
