Page 9 of Shadowkissed

Most of it’s garbage. Urban legend shit. Blog posts and forums from paranoid superfans and conspiracy theorists who think vampires run Wall Street and dragons sleep under the Pentagon.

But then I find something that stops me cold.

A PEACE incident file, redacted to hell. Timestamped six years ago. Location: New Orleans.

Subject:Unidentified female. Suspected dark fae origin. Eyes violet. Escaped containment during transport. Associated magical surge measured off the charts. Fatalities: twelve. Survivors: zero.

No name.

No photo.

But the way the witness descriptions match—the eyes, the runes, theshadows? It’s her. It has to be.

My stomach knots. I sit back, exhale slow. That night… they called it an accident. I remember it on the news. It was a big deal, especially sice the veil had just started to lift, barley a crack and acceptance to our kind. They had said it was a magical riot, an anomaly. But if she was there—if shewasthe anomaly…

I rub my hands over my face, trying to force the image out of my head. Her eyes just before she vanished. Not afraid of me.

Afraidforme.

Like she knew exactly what would happen if I saw what she really was.

And yeah, maybe I should run the other direction. Maybe I should turn this intel over, scrub her name from my head, pretend this is just another fucked-up footnote in the supernatural clusterfuck of my job of bounty hunting.

But I can’t. Because Isawher.

And more than that—I felt her. That thing inside me, the old blood, the wolf and the guardian both? It didn’t snarl at her.

It knelt.

And that’s the part that won’t let me let this go.

I reach for the encrypted burner I use for off-grid jobs and start scanning for any mention of dancers, aliases, anything tied to “Nightshade” in the last six months.

I don’t get much sleep that night. But then again, I never do.

I sit there, sifting through shadows and half-truths, eyes burning from the screen, heart pounding a beat too loud in my chest because I know I’ll see her again.

And next time, I won’t let her disappear before I get answers.

5

LIORA

Idon’t teleport so much asripmyself out of one place andslaminto another.

It’s not pretty. Or safe. It leaves my magic raw, my stomach twisted, and my limbs aching like I’ve run a hundred miles barefoot through thorns.

But it’s fast.

And right now, fast is survival.

I collapse in the circle of warded trees behind the old greenhouse, breath burning in my lungs like acid. The moss here smells like wet earth and forgotten promises—exactly the kind of place no one comes looking for trouble. Or for me.

The glamour’s gone, fully burned out. I can feel the cold sweat drying on my skin, the sticky tingle of residual power clinging to my tattoos like frostbite. They’re still glowing faintly—shifting, agitated.

“Dammit,” I whisper, dragging myself upright. My fingers dig into the dirt, grounding. The runes quiet a little, but not much.

I didn’t just break cover tonight.

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