Page 8 of Shadowkissed

And there’s a goddamn dent in the dumpster to my right, where the rogue slammed into it like a crash-test dummy.

I turn slowly, letting instinct shift back into focus. The rogue’s still breathing—barely. His body’s twitching like a glitching puppet, twitchy with too much stolen power and not enough control. Magic burns off him like static, wild and erratic. Kid’s untrained. Dangerous. High on something he never should’ve touched.

But not dead.

Lucky him.

I walk over, crouch, and press two fingers to his pulse. It pounds, weak but steady. The bastard tried to take my throat out—would’ve, too, if she hadn’t stepped in.

That’s the part I can’t shake.

She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t run. Not until afterward. Shesaved me. Blew her cover doing it, and then vanished like a ghost with secrets too big for the world.

Fae.

She’sfae.

And not just any fae. I’ve seen fae glamour before, sure, but what I felt coming off her when the illusion cracked? That was something else. That was old, wild, and stitched together with prophecy and apocalypse.

And it makes zero sense that she’s working in a sleazy club under an alias, dancing under strobe lights like she’s trying to pretend she’s just another warm body.

Which means she’s hiding. From what? From who?

My jaw tightens. I don’t like being kept in the dark. Especially not when the shadows might be alive and watching.

I haul the rogue up with one arm—he groans, limp as a rag—and shove a suppression cuff on his wrist. It locks with a hiss, dulling his aura down to background noise. PEACE tech. Ugly, expensive, effective.

“Looks like it’s your lucky night,” I mutter, dragging his ass out of the alley. “Someone else did the hard part for you.”

By the time I get to the PEACE outpost three blocks south, the rain’s coming down harder now. I drop the rogue at the checkpoint, flash my credentials, and file a half-assed incident report that leaves out the part where I got saved by a glowing fae goddess with a bite like a blade.

The handler on shift—a vamp named Clara with a scar down her neck and a permanent sneer—raises a brow as I log the rogue.

“He’s one of Reign’s strays,” she mutters, scanning the guy’s face. “Seen his mug on a watchlist. Word is Gideon’s Torch is trying to stir up trouble again.”

“Big surprise,” I grunt. “Bastard tried to ambush me outside Lux. Came in twitchy, hopped up on wild magic.”

“Lux?” Her tone sharpens. “You good?”

“Still breathing.”

She eyes me for a beat too long. “And the twitchy part?”

“Handled.”

Lie. Sort of.

I leave before she asks more questions.

Home is a loft two stories above a boarded-up warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen. No neighbors. No landlord. Just a reinforced door, blackout windows, and enough wards to give a sorcerer a migraine.

I don’t even take off my boots. I head straight for the war table.

My setup’s messy as hell—maps, incident logs, notebooks, burner phones, encrypted tablets—but I know where everything is. Organized chaos. Like my brain.

I start digging.

Every source I have—official and otherwise—starts turning up references when I plug in the keywords: violet eyes, fae, tattoos that move, shadow magic.

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