Page 2

TWO

EVRYN

T he dream was sharper tonight. More teeth than shadow. More truth than memory.

Evryn Hale woke with her pulse pounding against her ribs like it was trying to claw its way out.

Her breath came in short bursts, her skin damp with sweat that chilled too fast in the cold air of the Grayridge flat.

She didn’t scream. She never did anymore.

Not since the dreams had started whispering instead of screaming at her.

She sat up, pushing tangled curls from her face, and blinked into the dark. The moonlight spilled in through the broken blinds, laying silver stripes across the threadbare blanket and stained floorboards. Outside, the wind howled like it wanted in.

She could still hear it. Faint. Distant.

The voice in the dream.

Not words, exactly, just the ache of meaning. A knowing in her bones. Like her blood remembered something she didn’t.

“Evryn,” it had said. Or maybe just girl . But it was always the same presence, cloaked in smoke and pain and inevitability. It never touched her. Just watched. Just waited.

She hated that most of all.

Evryn dragged herself out of bed and padded barefoot across the room to the sink, where the faucet groaned before sputtering out brown-tinged water. She splashed it on her face anyway, hissing at the cold.

“You look like hell,” a voice drawled from behind her.

She didn’t flinch. Just wiped her face with the hem of her tank and turned to face Eamon.

He leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, all scruffy chin and tired eyes. The kind of man who looked like he’d fought death once or twice and didn’t quite win—or maybe didn’t want to. His coat was the same dusty thing he always wore, patched and faded and soaked in road dirt.

“Nice to see you too,” she muttered.

“You were talking again. In your sleep.”

Evryn grimaced. “Was I?”

He nodded, stepping into the room and handing her a mug of steaming something. Probably bitter root tea again. The man brewed potions like witches were still trendy.

“Same dream?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. Just sipped the tea and looked out the cracked window.

Grayridge was as bleak as ever, crumbling buildings slouched like old men, rusted signs swinging in the wind, streets lined with potholes and patched tar. The Veil’s edge loomed faintly in the distance, a shimmer only she could see, like a mirage half-forgotten by the world.

“Something’s shifting,” she said softly. “I can feel it.”

Eamon sighed. “You’ve been feelin’ it for months, girl.”

“Yeah, well.” She shrugged. “Now it feels like it’s feelin’ me back.”

He grunted, clearly unhappy with that response. “Might be time we moved again. This place’s gettin’ too warm.”

Evryn turned to him then, finally meeting his gaze. “I’m not running, Eamon. Not again.”

“You say that every time.”

“And I mean it every time.”

His eyes softened, even if the scowl didn’t. “Stubborn.”

She gave him a tired smile. “You taught me that.”

“Yeah. My bad.” He scrubbed a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “You’ve got gifts, Ev. But gifts attract eyes. We’re not the only ones who know what the Sight looks like.”

She bristled. “I’m not marked. You said so yourself. No House would even spit in my direction.”

Eamon stepped close then, hand gripping her shoulder. Not gentle. Not cruel. Just real . “That’s what I hoped. That’s what I prayed. But you’re changin’. They’ll come lookin’. And when they do…”

Evryn looked away again.

“I’ll be ready.”

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 a skin , 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, most dangerously —the Veil could hide people too.

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 quite there .

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 little wrong to her. A touch too vivid. The shadows a little too deep. The way the fog rolled—it wasn’t natural . It moved like it had a purpose.

That was the cost of the Sight.

Evryn could see 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, but part 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.

He wasn’t just hiding.

He was folded into the space.

And he wasn’t human. She knew that with the same certainty she knew her own name.

She reached for the knife strapped to her thigh beneath her coat. Just in case.

But when she turned again, the figure was gone.

Not gone like they’d walked away.

Gone like they’d melted into the fog.

Or worse, become it.

“Eamon,” she snapped as soon as she returned to the flat, slamming the door behind her. “We need to talk.”

He was already waiting by the window, rifle propped on the sill, cigarette burning slow in the corner of his mouth.

“You were followed.”

“You saw?”

“I felt ,” he said, exhaling smoke. “Didn’t see a damn thing.”

“That’s not possible,” she muttered, pacing. “Unless…”

Eamon stood slowly, grabbing the charm around his neck. “Unless they ain’t human.”

Evryn froze. Her heartbeat tripped.

“You think it’s… shifter?”

Eamon nodded grimly. “Either that, or worse.”

“I need to know what’s happening to me.”

He sighed. “I’ve told you all I know, girl.”

“You trained me.”

“To survive,” he barked. “Not to inherit a throne. Not to glow when you’re angry. Not to hear damn shadows talkin’ in your dreams.”

She flinched. Then steadied.

“I’m not crazy, Eamon.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

“Then stop acting like I should run every time the wind breathes funny.”

“I’m actin’ like someone who’s buried good people ‘cause they waited too long to leave.”

They stared at each other, years of grit and grief between them.

He looked away.

“We’ll leave at dawn,” he said.

Evryn’s hands curled into fists at her sides.

“No,” she whispered. “I’m done running.”

She stood by the window long after he’d gone to bed, watching the fog crawl down the streets like it had a mind of its own.

She could feel the eyes again.

Somewhere out there, something was watching. Something dark. Something beautiful in the way predators were beautiful—sharp and silent and endlessly patient.

She was always the one to see things others didn’t but tonight, she had been the one who felt seen.

She knew she should be scared, worried. But for some reason, she wasn’t. She felt ready.