All Chapters of THE VEILED BRIDE : Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

DAMIEN"Please help me, Damien."I looked down at Paige. Blood covered her clothes. Her hair was tangled and her face was bruised and there were deep wounds across her arms and shoulders that spoke to a fight she had been on the wrong side of. She looked terrible.I felt nothing. Not because I couldn't see that she was hurt. Because Kiva was missing, and until I found my wife, nothing else had weight.I crouched in front of her. "What happened?"Paige swallowed. "I was attacked.""By who?""The same people who took Kiva and Tamara." She saw something shift in my expression and immediately continued. "There were three of them. I didn't know who they were. They came out of nowhere. I tried to fight them, Damien. I swear I did." I said nothing. I was looking at the room around her. At the specific distribution of damage. At what the blood trail told me about where people had been standing and which direction things had moved. At what the floor said about how the fight had ended."I tried

PAIGEThe drive back was silent. Too silent. The kind of silence that presses down on you harder than any shouting ever could.I sat curled in the back seat, arms wrapped tightly around my stomach, trying not to flinch every time the car hit a bump in the road. Every part of me ached. Tamara had nearly destroyed me, and I could still feel the remnants of her power lodged somewhere in my bones, like something had crawled beneath my skin and left fire in its wake.But the pain wasn't what consumed my thoughts. It was the photograph. I had seen it the moment Damien pulled it from the box. The woman standing beside Ada. The same woman. The same face. The same cold, unreadable eyes staring out from the faded paper. The same mark on her wrist that I now carried on my own. The same woman who had once stood before me and offered me power, the same woman who had taken Kiva and Tamara.My stomach twisted painfully. Who was she? And why had she been standing next to Ada, of all people?My eyes d

DAMIEN.Catherine. The name wouldn't leave my head. I stood beside the car, staring into the trees while the memory I'd pulled from Paige kept playing behind my eyes, over and over, refusing to fade.That face. That voice. That mark burned into her wrist like a brand nobody was ever meant to see. She had been there when Kiva and Tamara were taken. She had known exactly who they were, without hesitation, without confusion. And somehow, impossibly, Ada had known her too. That was the part I couldn't wrap my head around. Ada hadn't looked surprised by any of this, not really. She had spent years keeping the twins separated, hiding pieces of the truth, leaving warnings scattered behind her like she'd always known this day would eventually come knocking.The photograph had proven that much. But why Catherine? What did she want with Kiva and Tamara? And why now, after everything had already been buried for so long?I clenched my jaw hard enough to ache. There were too many questions crowdin

DAMIENThe Priestess stared at me for a long moment, her eyes searching mine like she already knew what I was about to ask before I said it out loud."You want to summon Axel."It wasn't a question."Yes." Her gaze moved slowly over my face, searching for something I didn't particularly care to give her. Regret. Hesitation. Fear. She wouldn't find any of those things where this was concerned. I had already made my decision long before I walked through her door."That's not a conversation you should enter lightly," she said."I'm not entering it lightly." I looked toward the back of the room, where Paige lay unconscious on a low cot. Her breathing was shallow, but steady enough for the moment, steady enough that I could push her out of my mind for now."I need answers.""The dead don't always give them.""Then I'll take whatever he gives me."The Priestess sighed, the sound heavy with something close to resignation."Of course you will."She turned toward the stone table sitting in the

KIVA.Catherine had been gone for less than ten minutes. It felt like an hour. The door had barely stopped echoing behind her when I turned toward Tamara. She was staring at the floor, not angry, not joking, just staring, like she'd gone somewhere in her own head and hadn't quite made it back yet."Tamara."She didn't answer. I shifted against the restraints, the metal digging painfully into my wrists."Hey." Her eyes finally lifted to meet mine."I'm fine." "You don't look fine.""That's because I'm tied to a fucking pole." I almost laughed. Almost. But there was something different underneath her voice, something the usual sharpness couldn't quite cover this time. I looked at the collar around her neck. The strange black metal seemed to pulse faintly against her skin, like it was breathing on its own."I still can't feel my magic.""Neither can I." Tamara flexed her fingers experimentally. Nothing happened. She frowned, then looked down at the restraints circling her wrists."These