Page 22 of Veil of Ashes

My armor’s cracked. His too. We’re raw, exposed in ways I didn’t plan. And it scares me more than Rizzi ever could.

I want him. That’s the danger. He sees me—the real me—and I can’t unfeel that.

Can I let him in and still keep my edge? I don’t know. My fingers tighten on the railing, rain slipping between them.

He doesn’t push. Just stands there, steady as the wall behind us. The air feels heavy, charged with what we didn’t finish.

I glance at him. His shirt sticks to his chest, outlining every line I touched. His eyes meet mine, and the pull is still there.

But I don’t move. The city hums below, oblivious to the fire we almost let loose.

One kiss. One mistake. And now the fire’s real.

Chapter 7 – Kieran

The sun beats down like it’s got a grudge, hot and merciless. Last night’s kiss with Sylvara flickers in my head—a jagged memory of rain and weakness, her lips crashing into mine, a moment I let myself enjoy too much before she pulled away.

Dust whips across the lot as I roll up to the Veyra garage, tires crunching gravel.

It’s a fake luxury body shop, stuck on Vegas’s outer rim like a punishment. The outside gleams—shiny signs, tinted windows, a valet booth abandoned for years. Step inside, though, and it’s all oil, sweat, and buried secrets.

I park near the back, cutting the engine. The loading bay greets me with burnt rubber and brake fluid stench. A Bentley sits gutted on a lift, parts dangling like a dissected corpse.

A teenage mechanic glances up, Veyra ink curling around his throat. He nods once, then goes back to wrenching bolts he probably doesn’t get. I nod back, boots hitting the concrete as I move past.

This was meant to be quick. A routine check-in, some low-level courier run tied to accounting receipts from a Paradise Hills poker house. Fifteen minutes, in and out.

But the back room changes everything. I push through the door, and there it is. A box.

Plain brown cardboard, smudged with oil or ink, maybe both. No label, no name, just a black slash across the top, half-finished, like someone started writing and quit.

It sits dead center on the desk, waiting. Like a trap ready to spring.

No one’s here but a kid by the door. Skinny, twitchy, barely eighteen. He shifts his weight when my eyes land on him, hands fidgeting at his sides.

I jerk my chin at the box. “That yours?”

He swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Came in an hour ago. Said it was for you. No signature.”

I step to the desk, fingers brushing the box. I open it carefully.

Inside, three things stare back at me. Sylvara’s stylus—titanium, sleek, etched with Venetian script she once showed me late at night. Her burnisher—matte black, grip worn from years of her hands.

And her magnifying loupe. The lens sits cracked, the frame smeared dark red. Blood.

My stomach twists into a knot.

This isn’t a kill. It’s a message.

I lift the loupe, careful, like the blood might still carry her heat. It’s cold, sticky against my fingertips. I turn to the kid, voice low.

“Who brought this?”

He stammers, tripping over his tongue. “Some driver. Black car. Said he worked for—for the Red Siren.”

Gia!

My vision narrows, the room shrinking to a pinpoint. The kid’s still talking, but I barely hear him.

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