Page 64 of Veil of Ashes

I can’t take it.

I grab her arm gently, tug her a few steps back toward the doorway.

Her eyes meet mine. Flat. Tired.

“He can’t just disappear again,” I say under my breath. “If he vanishes—”

“He won’t,” she mutters.

“I mean it,” I insist. “If he does, it won’t be the cartel that kills him.”

“I heard that,” Enzo calls out from the wall, his voice steady. “Good.”

I turn back to him. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because she needs people who won’t let her fall,” he replies without blinking. “You’re angry. Good. Stay angry.”

“You don’t get to assign me feelings,” I snap.

He smiles, dry. “You already had them.”

Sylvara takes a step forward. Her voice is still low, but there’s steel behind it now.

“You talk like you know who I am,” she says. “But you don’t. You knew a version of me. A girl with charcoal under her nails and stars in her sketchbooks.”

“You still draw,” Enzo says.

Sylvara’s eyes narrow. “I forge. There’s a difference.”

“I taught you both.”

“No,” she says. “You taught me to disappear. I taught myself to survive.”

Enzo lowers his hand from the blueprint. He doesn’t speak.

I look at him, then at her.

Every time he opens his mouth, I see it—how easily she could fall back into orbit around him. Not because she trusts him. But because for years, he was all she dreamed about. The missing piece. The why behind every lie she learned to tell.

She used to dream of finding him.

Now the dream has turned into ash in her mouth.

I pull her aside again, this time gently gripping her wrist.

“Listen,” I say, voice low. “He’s useful, yeah. He knows routes, names. He can cut this war in half.”

She watches me. Waiting.

“But if he turns,” I add, “if he bails, if he disappears again—I’ll put him down.”

“You’re not the only one who would,” she replies.

Her tone is cool. Not cruel. Just clear.

She lets her hand fall away from mine.

Then she turns to him again.

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