As an author, how would you justify this situation?

There has to be something in it for Davilin. What does he gain by having Nicholas choose between the two things? Maybe Davilin has an underlying motive that will come to light later on. You'll have to add another dynamic to Davilin's motives. On it's surface, and based soley off what you've posted here, there's really no reason to justify it except just to show Davilin is maybe purely evil and loves the fun of torturing someone with these types of decisions. Of course, pure evil characters are 1-demensional.