Page 4 of The Panther's Price

Later that morning, the streets of Grayridge were a patchwork of fog and filth. The mist rolled in from the old subway tunnels, thick as smoke, curling around the half-dead buildings like fingers. The city squatted on the edges of what most people would call reality—a forgotten pocket where the line between the human world and the Veil Dominion blurred like smeared ink.

Most folks didn’t know the Veil existed.

Not really.

They passed by rusted doorways, crumbling stairwells, subway stations sealed since the ‘80s with concrete and warning signs—and never questioned what lay beyond. To them, Grayridge was just a dying district with bad lighting and worse rumors.

But Evryn could see more.

The Veil wasn’t a wall or a gate—it was askin, a shimmer overlaying the world like heat over asphalt. It cloaked entire cities, buried forests, drowned coastlines.

The Veil Dominion hid within it—a sovereign realm of shifters, old bloodlines, and magic that hadn’t seen sunlight in centuries. Thresholds to it were everywhere, if you knew where to look: cracked mirrors that didn’t reflect right, alleys that twisted back on themselves, elevator buttons with no labels.

And most importantly, mostdangerously—the Veil could hidepeopletoo.

Evryn kept her hood up and her hands in her jacket pockets, one wrapped around the bone-carved charm Eamon had given her years ago.

“Keep this on you,” he’d told her when she was barely thirteen. “Keeps glamours off. Yours and theirs.”

Because out here, you never knew who—or what—you were really looking at.

Most people didn’t notice her. The regulars didn’t care. Junkies, drifters, witches selling charm-ink and shadow-potions in alley stalls, their wares glowing faint under the Veil’s skin.

But Evryn felt it today.

A shift in the air. A pressure behind her ribs.

A weight. Not quite seen. Not quitethere.

But watching.

She ducked into the open-air market, boots crunching over broken glass and crushed leaves. Vendors shouted over each other. One offered rat stew. Another sold something that looked like bottled lightning in tiny vials corked with wax and spells.

The colors here always looked just a littlewrongto her. A touch too vivid. The shadows a little too deep. The way the fog rolled—it wasn’tnatural. It moved like it had a purpose.

That was the cost of the Sight.

Evryn couldsee through the Veil.

Not just the shimmer—past it.

She saw the hidden streets that didn’t exist on any map. She saw cloaked figures walking too smoothly, too silently. She saw beasts in business suits and tattoos that pulsed with living magic. Sometimes she wished she didn’t.

She made her way to the edge of the stall line, scanning the mist-drenched alley ahead.

There. A flicker.

A figure.

Too still. Too focused.

The shadows clung to him wrong, like they weren’t covering him, butpart of him.

She frowned, heart thudding once—hard.

She turned, pretending to browse a table of cracked crystal charms and dreamcatchers tangled with what might’ve been real teeth.

The sensation prickled the back of her neck.

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