Understood, Raven's listening — here's
Chapter Twenty-Three — The Widow's Veil
Ashfall's storm drains howled like dying wolves when the rain came. The water rattled down iron gutters and old stone like it wanted to peel the city's skin off and wash it away. But the city never washed clean — not its alleys, not its bones, not the names that whispered out of dying mouths.
In a backroom stitched together behind a boarded-up laundromat, Camilla DuPont pressed fresh gauze to Selene Kain's torn ribcage. The smell in the room was copper and burned cloth, the only light an old lamp flickering like a guttering candle.
"You hold still," Camilla hissed, her latex gloves tacky with blood. "You move again, you're getting the needle through your lung instead of the wound."
Selene's breath came shallow, sharp with pain. Her jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. She'd dragged herself to this place half-alive, half-shadow, after gutting four Flock men and staggering away before the Bull King could finish the job. The roar of that beast still rattled around her skull — brute bison muscle bred in some Umbra lab to terrorize her streets.
"More… more pressure," Selene rasped. Her hands dug into the edge of the metal table, tendons standing out white against skin.
Camilla's brow furrowed like thunderclouds ready to break. "God, you're impossible. I should let you bleed. I should drag you out and leave you in the street like the rest of this rotten city's secrets."
She dabbed a fresh gauze pad into the wound. Selene's body jerked — pain blinding, sharp as the scalpels on Camilla's tray. A tray that rattled whenever the underground trains shuddered past two floors below.
From the corner, the battered radio hissed static. Camilla smacked it once with the back of a gloved hand. The dial flickered — and Rowan Pierce's voice pushed through the fog of interference:
"…new footage confirms human cargo linked to the Flock and shell corporations with ties to prominent Ashfall lawyer Silas Madox. Police have not commented—"
Selene's eyes cracked open. Sweat slipped from her brow into her lashes. "Rowan… she'll put herself in the crosshairs."
Camilla's jaw tightened. She worked in silence for a moment, sewing torn flesh with quick, expert stitches that looked like they belonged on battlefield wounds. Maybe they did. "You chose this, Selene. You made yourself a storm. You keep dragging people into it."
"I didn't ask her to—"
"No, but they never need asking, do they?" Camilla snapped the thread tight. "You think good intentions will save Rowan from a bullet in her pretty throat?"
Selene flinched. That quiet truth hurt more than the needle. She turned her head away. The cracked plaster on Camilla's ceiling reminded her of her father's face. Broken. Silent. Dead in a pool of his own secrets when the Flock men came calling all those years ago.
---
Elsewhere, in a basement stacked with dusty servers and a humming wall of patched-up routers, Micah Torres — Wraith — stared at his screens. Rows of code scrolled past faster than his pulse. He scrubbed back surveillance frames: the meat trucks rolling in at Dockside. The blurred shapes of terrified women and children hauled in like cattle. The Bull King's bellow vibrating the stolen camera feed as he broke free and painted the floor red.
His fingers danced over a half-broken keyboard. He'd ripped open half of Umbra's hush-money accounts tonight. Enough for a hundred headlines — enough to get Rowan killed five times over.
He hesitated over the Send button. One finger hovered. "Come on, Bird," he murmured, voice raw. "Stay alive long enough to read the truth."
The message vanished into the encrypted void. Micah leaned back, eyes raw behind smudged glasses. Somewhere behind him, an old photograph sat taped to the cracked drywall — a little boy with an immigrant mother, thin as a ghost, candles flickering on a birthday cake that cost half a week's pay.
Umbra never gave his mother a break. And they'd never get mercy from him.
---
Rowan Pierce downed cheap whiskey at the Molted Wing, rain dripping off her hair in fat drops that darkened her notebook cover. Reggie Slate, shoulders broad as an ox, leaned over the bar, drying the same glass for the fifth time.
"You're shaking," Reggie said, voice soft for a man who once cracked a man's jaw with one punch behind a shipping crate in Ironhaven. "Bad lead?"
Rowan forced a laugh. "Best lead. Worst odds."
She turned her phone so Reggie could see Micah's message. The bar's overhead light flickered over the words: Follow Silas Madox. Umbra's shell game. The city's rotten heart.
Reggie's expression didn't shift. The old con knew when not to flinch. "Kid, I remember when the city ate people like you whole. What makes you think the Flock won't feed you to the Bull King next?"
Rowan's grin was a tired crack in the armor. "They'll try. But if the city's gonna burn, I'll be the one with the match."
Reggie snorted. He reached under the bar, fingers brushing the sawed-off shotgun no one ever asked about. "And who pulls you out when the fire comes back for you?"
Rowan's eyes softened — but only for a heartbeat. "Funny. Someone already does."
---
At the Ashfall PD, Iris Calder flipped through crime scene photos. Human cargo. Concrete floors slick with blood. The shadows of The Bull King, bigger than the truck doors themselves.
Navarro leaned against the wall, arms folded. His gun holster creaked as he shifted. "Captain Voss wants this buried. He told me to lose the files."
Iris slammed the folder shut. "Voss wants my badge? He can pry it from my cold hand."
Navarro grinned — but the humor didn't reach his eyes. "Careful, partner. You're starting to sound like the Raven."
Iris froze, then caught herself. "She's a rumor."
Navarro shrugged. "Not to the families she saves. Or what's left of them."
A sharp rap on the glass. Voss glared at them from his office, eyes narrow as a blade's edge. He gestured — Get in here, now.
Navarro muttered, "He's gonna gut us."
Iris squared her shoulders. "Let him try."
---
Back at the Calders' apartment, Nathan stared at his laptop's glow. The encrypted message glared back at him — Umbra's threat pounding in his head like a second heartbeat. "Silence her or we silence you."
Down the hall, Liam crept closer, his bare feet silent on the worn carpet. He heard every hiss of his father's breath. He saw the sweat, the tremor in Nathan's fingers. He clutched his pencil so tight it snapped.
In her room, Maya Cadee finished another drawing — The Raven, bigger this time, wings wrapped around stick figures: her, Liam, Mom. A monster at their feet — half man, half bull.
Safe. The Raven always made them safe.
---
Dockside, where the stormwater pipes roared under the streets, still stank of the Bull King's rampage. The trucks he'd torn open still leaked ghost trails of red down the potholes. Pieces of broken chains swung from a rusted hook where he'd ripped them free.
High above, crouched like a ghost on the gantry's steel beam, The Widow watched the wreckage. Her veil fluttered, silk black as the rain-slicked metal. Her gloved fingers twitched with a spider's hunger.
Poison dripped from her smile. "So many wounds, little Raven. Let's see how many you have left."
---
In Camilla's hideaway, Selene's eyes flickered open again. The ceiling dripped slow leaks from the storm above. Camilla sat on a dented stool, staring at her half-empty mug of instant coffee.
"You should be dead," Camilla muttered without looking up.
Selene's voice rasped like old gravel. "Not yet."
"Maybe that's the problem," Camilla snapped. But when she met Selene's eyes, her shoulders sagged. She dipped a cloth into clean water, wiped the sweat from Selene's brow like a tired sister might.
"You keep fighting monsters," Camilla whispered. "One day you'll look in the mirror and see one looking back."
Selene said nothing. Her eyes drifted to a hairline crack crawling across the plaster. She saw her father again. Her mother's silent face. She saw Maya's drawings taped to the Calder fridge. She saw Rowan's fearless eyes through a TV screen. She saw Umbra's tower of rot, built on blood and easy lies.
"I'm already looking at it," Selene said. Her voice was iron. Soft iron, but iron all the same.
---
At the Molted Wing, Reggie wiped down the bar, shotgun resting just under the lip. On the battered TV, Rowan's face filled the cracked screen.
"Tonight, we confirm Silas Madox's ties to human trafficking through the Flock's shell labs at Dockside. If you're watching this, know the truth is bigger than me. If I vanish — follow the money. Follow Madox. Follow Umbra."
The whole bar went still. Off-duty cops stiffened. Old crooks pretended not to listen. A drunk at the end turned his face to the wall.
Reggie poured himself a whiskey he'd never drink. "Damn fools," he muttered. "Brave, stupid fools."
---
Micah, alone in the hum of his bunker, shut off the monitors. He leaned back, pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Hold the line, Bird," he whispered to the dark. "You don't get to die yet."
---
Outside, Selene pulled herself upright, stitches screaming under her coat. The storm pounded the alley's cracked concrete like a drumbeat. Somewhere out there, The Widow's poison smile was waiting. Kane lurked in the shadows. The Bull King still bellowed in her mind, a beast that wouldn't die easy.
Umbra's noose tightened around Ashfall's broken throat. But Selene's wings were blacker than their night.
And she would fly. One cut at a time. One lie gutted at a time.
---
END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE