A City of Masks

The wind on the rooftop was sharp enough to sting. Veyra pulled herself over the ledge, breathing hard. Her arm throbbed where she’d been cut, and warm blood slid down to her wrist. She wiped it on her coat without thinking.

Across the rooftop, Solis stood waiting. He always looked the same — tall, steady, like nothing in the world could shake him. His mask hid most of his face, but she could still feel his eyes on her.

“End of the line,” he said.

Veyra let out a tired laugh. “You’ve said that so many times.”

“And you’ve run every time.”

“Maybe I like running.”

He didn’t smile. He never did. Not with her. Not with anyone, as far as she knew.

But tonight, something felt off. He wasn’t moving toward her. He wasn’t raising a weapon. He just stood there, like he was waiting for her to figure something out.

She frowned. “Well? Aren’t you going to drag me in?”

“No.”

That one word hit her harder than any punch.

Before she could speak, he reached into his belt and tossed something across the rooftop. It slid to her feet — a small metal drive, scratched and dented.

“What’s this supposed to be,” she asked.

“Proof,” he said. “Of what I’ve been doing.”

She picked it up. The moment her fingers touched it, a faint blue light came to life, and a hologram rose between them.

At first she didn’t understand what she was seeing. Then her stomach dropped.

There she was — in dozens of different places, different nights, different fights. Assassins aiming at her from rooftops. Bombs hidden under her safehouse floorboards. Poison slipped into her drink at a bar she barely remembered.

And every time, someone stopped it. A shadowy figure stepping in at the last second. A hand knocking a gun aside. A masked face disarming a bomb.

Solis’s mask.

Veyra felt her throat tighten. “You’ve been… protecting me.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He stepped closer, slow and careful, like she was a wild animal that might bolt.

“Because if you died,” he said, “everything I’ve built would fall apart.”

She stared at him. “You’re the hero. People love you.”

“They love the story,” he said. “Not me.”

He looked out over the city, lights flickering like a thousand tiny lies.

“The Council doesn’t want heroes,” he said. “They want control. They want someone they can point at and say, ‘Look, we’re safe.’ But they don’t want anyone strong enough to stand against them.”

Veyra felt a cold weight settle in her chest. “So you needed me.”

“I needed a villain,” Solis said quietly. “Someone dangerous enough to distract them. Someone they’d focus on instead of me.”

She let out a shaky breath. “So all our fights—”

“Staged. Managed. I made sure you escaped every time.”

“You used me.”

“I kept you alive.”

“You kept yourself safe.”

He didn’t argue. That almost made it worse.

The wind picked up, carrying the smell of rain. Far below, the city kept moving, unaware of the truth sitting on a rooftop above them.

Veyra closed her hand around the drive. It felt heavier now.

“What do you want from me,” she asked.

“That depends on what you want to do,” Solis said. “If you expose me, the Council will kill us both. If you walk away, they’ll keep hunting you. Or…”

He hesitated.

“Or we stop pretending to be enemies and take them down together.”

Veyra stared at him. She’d imagined a lot of things over the years — beating him, outsmarting him, maybe even killing him — but she had never imagined this.

“You want an alliance,” she said.

“I want a chance to be better than the lie they built around me,” he said. “And I can’t do it alone.”

For a long moment, she didn’t speak. She just watched him — the cracks in his mask, the tired way he held himself, the way his hands shook just a little when he thought she wasn’t looking.

He wasn’t the unbreakable hero the city believed in. He was a man who’d been carrying too much for too long.

“You should’ve told me sooner,” she said.

“You would’ve killed me.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “Maybe not.”

She stepped closer, close enough to see her own reflection in his mask. Then she held out her hand.

Solis stared at it like it was a weapon.

Then he took it.

His grip was warm, steady, almost gentle.

The city below kept shining, unaware that its greatest hero and its most feared villain had just changed the rules.

Veyra let out a slow breath. For the first time in a long while, something eased inside her. Something she hadn’t felt since before she became the person the world feared.

Hope.

And maybe — just maybe — a chance to become something else.