The smell of turpentine clung to the walls like a stubborn ghost. Eliana Brooks stood barefoot in her tiny Brooklyn studio, toes curled into a stained canvas she'd forgotten to hang, brush gripped loosely in her paint-smeared fingers. The sun had long since dipped behind the skyline, yet golden streaks still filtered through the cracked blinds, casting her in a surreal sort of glow. She hadn't eaten in hours. Maybe not since breakfast. She couldn't remember.
But none of that mattered not when she was inside the world she painted.
On the easel in front of her, a woman stood in the rain, her umbrella turned inside out, face tilted upward as if daring the sky to wash her away. The brush trembled in Eliana's hand, not from fear, from fatigue but she kept going, every stroke was a confession and every color a secret.
Behind her, a faint beeping broke the trance. Eliana blinked. Her phone, somewhere under a pile of reference sketches and unopened bills, chirped with a reminder: Jasmine's medication, 6PM.
She dropped the brush."Shit."
In one fluid motion, she grabbed a half-clean towel, wiped the paint from her hands, and scrambled toward the corner desk where her phone peeked out beneath overdue rent notices and rejection letters. The screen lit up with her sister's smiling face, a picture from last summer, before things got worse.
"Hang on, Jaz," she whispered, already snatching her keys.
Her boots thudded against the hardwood floor as she rushed out, still in her paint-streaked clothes. No time to change. The pharmacy would close in thirty minutes, and the trains were always late.
Outside, the city was loud and unkind, horns blared. A vendor shouted about two-dollar hot dogs. Somewhere, a baby wailed.
Eliana moved through it like she always did half-invisible, all grit. She reached the subway just in time to catch the doors sliding shut, wedging herself in between a man with too much cologne and a teenage girl scrolling on her phone. Her mind drifted to Jasmine jus sixteen and too bright for this world, too fragile.
She'd been diagnosed a year ago. Lupus, rare, aggressive which is very unfair, the bills had swallowed Eliana whole but she wouldn't drown not while Jasmine still laughed at her terrible jokes and asked for bedtime stories she was too old for.
She clutched the metal pole in the subway car and closed her eyes, counting the stops, hoping she wouldn't be too late. Around her, people shouted into phones, music leaked from headphones, and the scent of fried food wafted in from someone's takeout bag.
She didn't belong here, but she didn't belong anywhere else either.
When the doors opened at her stop, Eliana sprinted up the stairs two at a time. Her breath came hard and fast, the cold air slapping her cheeks red as she ran the final two blocks to the pharmacy.
She arrived with two minutes to spare.
The pharmacist, a weary-looking woman named Marcy, gave her a pitying smile as she slid the white paper bag across the counter. "Tell your sister I said hello."
"I will. Thank you."
As Eliana walked home, bag clutched tight against her chest, her eyes wandered to the glowing skyline across the river. Manhattan, another world that is cold, glossy, untouchable. She imagined what it would be like to live in one of those high-rises, with perfect views and doormen and refrigerators that weren't half-empty.
It was stupid to dream but she did it anyway.
She remembered how her father used to laugh at her drawings when she was little, how he'd ruffle her curls and call her "Ellie the Great." That was before everything collapsed, before the crash, before they were gone and just like that her mother, her father, their quiet suburban life. A hit-and-run, and suddenly she was seventeen with a little sister and a mountain of grief.
No time to cry because there is no one to catch them.
It had been Jasmine who kept her going.
By the time Eliana got back to the apartment—sweaty, exhausted, but triumphant with the meds tucked under her arm, it was already past seven.
Jasmine lay curled on the worn-out couch, a blanket pulled up to her chin. Her face was pale, thinner than it had been last month but her eyes lit up when she saw Eliana.
"You look like a rainbow exploded on you," Jasmine said, smiling weakly.
Eliana laughed, dropping the bag on the table. "You're welcome, Picasso would be jealous."
"You mean broke?"
"Exactly."
They shared a quiet chuckle, and for a moment, the weight lifted.
Eliana sat beside her, brushing tangled curls from Jasmine's forehead. "You take this, and tomorrow, I'll bring you donuts from that place you like."
"Promise?"
"Cross my paint-stained heart."
Jasmine took the pills with water and winced. "Tastes like trash."
"Beauty comes with sacrifice," Eliana said in a snooty fake accent. "You, my darling, are a portrait of resilience."
"Shut up."
Eliana grinned and pulled a blanket tighter around her sister. The room smelled faintly of jasmine tea and damp wood, an odd comfort. Outside, the wind howled down the alley. But inside, they were warm.
The apartment was falling apart. Cracked tiles in the kitchen, a leaky faucet in the bathroom, and a radiator that groaned like it was haunted but Eliana had made it a home. Her paintings covered every inch of the living room walls. Jasmine's drawings were taped beside them—stick figures with giant eyes and flying cats.
They didn't have much, but they had each other.
Later that night, when Jasmine had drifted into sleep and the apartment was cloaked in silence, Eliana returned to her studio. The painting waited, unfinished.
She stared at it. The woman in the rain looked too much like her mother, she dipped the brush into deep blue and erased the face some things were better forgotten.
Her stomach rumbled. She hadn't had dinner, in the fridge, there was half a carton of milk and one egg. She made toast, if it could be called that, and sat by the window to eat it slowly, watching the traffic lights blink red and green below.
She thought about the life she could've had, if her parents had stayed, if the accident hadn't happened, if Jasmine had been born healthy, if...
She stopped herself. Wishing didn't change anything.
She picked up her sketchpad and began to draw, faces, expressions. Ideas for commissions she hoped someone would actually pay for maybe next month's rent wouldn't be late.
She could almost hear her mother's voice saying, "You're stronger than you think, Ellie." but strength didn't buy groceries.
She paused her sketching when a knock echoed faintly in the hallway—one of the neighbors, probably. Then the muffled voice of Mr. Timmons arguing with his TV again, the apartment building was always alive, always weary like her.
She walked to the kitchen sink and washed her brushes one by one, hands moving automatically. Paint swirled down the drain like little storms, vanishing into darkness.
Hours passed, the city outside settled into sleep. Somewhere in Manhattan, someone was pouring champagne in a penthouse. Somewhere, someone was choosing a diamond worth more than Eliana's entire life. Somewhere, a man stared at a photo of her—Eliana, unaware of the part she would soon play in a world built on power, lies, and desperate longing.
The kind of world that crushed girls like her but for now, she painted, she hoped and she survived.
Tomorrow might bring something new, or it might bring more of the same but she would face it, barefoot and bruised, with color under her nails and fire in her chest because that's what she did.
She endured.
And across the city, the Shadow King was preparing to rewrite both their lives.