Crimson Varnish

In the rain-slicked city of Veridia, art is a religion, and masterpieces are never truly finished-they are just waiting to feed.

Renna is a "Solvent Witch," a rarity in a city obsessed with the Old Masters. While others admire the brushstrokes, she cleans the mess they leave behind. She specializes in "Tainted Canvases"-paintings that bleed, weep, or move when the gallery lights go out. Armed with holy water, turpentine, and a clinical detachment, she keeps the restless spirits of art trapped within their gilded frames.

Then she is hired to restore "The Prince of Thorns."

Kian is not just a painting. He is a mistake of magic, a subject who clawed his way out of the canvas three centuries ago. But existence outside the frame is agonizing. He is cracking, flaking, and fading into nothingness. He needs Renna's chemicals to hold his physical form together, and her touch to anchor his soul to a world that wasn't made for him.

What begins as a job becomes a dangerous obsession. Kian is the perfect man-literally painted to be so-but he is also a starving creature who feeds on "Awe." And Renna is the only one who sees him for what he truly is: a masterpiece of sorrow.

But the Museum Curator desires Kian for his private collection, and he knows a secret that could destroy them both: Kian wasn't trapped in the painting. He is the painter, and he used blood magic to escape death, leaving a trail of cursed pigment that is now coming to claim its due.

She can fix him, but at what cost? Some works of art are meant to be destroyed.