All Chapters of A Veil of Ash and Glass: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The Sombra women did not gather.They formed.A single purpose. A single fury. An empire sharpening its teeth.Ricardo didn’t move toward the boy who touched his daughter. He didn’t have to.This was Sombra’s women’s work.Nerisa closed her eyes once. When she opened them again, the softness was gone. Only the cold, immaculate clarity of a storm remained.“Let’s go,” she said.Odesa tied her hair back. Hiraya lifted her palms and let the sigils burn awake beneath her skin.And they walked.The InfirmaryAdrian Holt regained consciousness to the muted hum of medical machines and a nauseating throb in his wrist. He blinked through the haze of painkillers. He thought the worst had already happened.He was wrong.The door didn’t slam open. It didn’t creak. It whispered.Nerisa entered first. Her gown flowed behind her as a shadow dipped in moonlight. Her beauty wasn’t comforting. It was the kind ancient sailors carved warnings about.Hiraya followed, barefoot, braid long, sigils inked in o

The penthouse was a silent, opulent cage.It had been three days since the gala. Three days of Althea being a prisoner in her father’s care. Odesa was her icy sentinel, a constant, impassive presence. The manggagamot had come and gone, her “babaylan” salves healing the bruised skin on her cheek, but leaving a faint, yellowing shadow. Her body was healing. Her mind was suffocating.Ricardo was a paradox. In the morning, he was her Papa. He brought her coffee and pan de sal, his doting a soft, warm blanket. But by afternoon, he was back as the patriarch. He sat across from her, his voice cold, binding force, as he discussed the history of the feud.“It’s not a story, anak,” he said. “It is a debt. And Noah Laurent, the seventh heir, knows it. His heroism is a lie. He sees you as a tool… just like his ancestors did.”She was trapped. Her magic was a volatile predator coiled in her gut, a humming, dangerous force. Her containment of it had a price: a constant, pounding headache and the sh

Umbra was already up, pressed close, as Luca eased Althea to her feet. He moved like a tide, patient and inexorable, folding himself around her without ever closing in. They slipped into the corridor, the campus hushed beneath the weight of midnight and sirens threading the distance. He took the service stairs, the maintenance hall, and the blind corner that opened into a staff passage, and few students noticed. When she faltered, his palm steadied the small of her back—not urging, not directing, only there.“I know this building better than the ones who built it,” he said without looking at her, voice pitched low enough to keep from waking the walls. “Getting you out was never the hard part.”They wove through the school undetected, Umbra following their heels. A side door whispered open to a narrow service alley where a nondescript sedan waited with its engine idling; Luca opened the back, let Umbra in, and guided Althea into the passenger seat with the same quiet presence he had ke

The intercom light went dark. Silence rushed in behind Hiraya’s last word, thick and abrupt. The city was waking beyond the glass—horns, distant sirens, and the faint grind of morning deliveries—but inside the penthouse, it felt like the world had stopped to listen to Althea’s breathing.She was still curled against Luca’s chest, his shirt wrinkled beneath her cheek, his heartbeat slow and implacable under her palm. Umbra lay at the foot of the bed, head lifted, eyes fixed on the intercom panel as if daring it to speak again.Althea swallowed. Her voice came out thin.“She found me.”Luca’s hand, resting lightly at her waist, tightened once before forcing itself to loosen.“You didn’t tell her where you were.”“No.” Her fingers curled in the fabric of his shirt. “She didn’t need me to.”He drew back just enough to see her face. Moonlight had surrendered to early gold, painting her lashes and catching on the bruise, faintly yellowing along her cheekbone. His gaze flicked to the interco

The storm was not the first thing to feel Althea’s binding with Luca.Far above the Ashford woods, where clouds churned like bruised flesh across the sky, the moon should have been hidden. Instead, it glowed.Not bright. Not soft.Alive.A slow, deliberate pulse of silver light beat through the cloud cover as a giant heart thumped behind the storm.The pulse traveled outward—through the sky, through trembling branches, through the damp earth—and into a cavern older than the first whispered name for “god.”In the cavern, surrounded by fossils of forgotten creatures and the glitter of minerals no mortal language could name, a woman made of moonlight opened her eyes. A forgotten god.Mayari exhaled.Her breath frosted the air. Water froze. Shadow straightened.Her silver hair floated behind her as if suspended in the night sky itself. Skin like a polished pearl glowed faintly in the darkness. Her eyes were eclipses—deep, devouring, luminous.Something has woken her from her slumber. Not