SOPHIA’S POV
ONE WEEK LATER
The Story of Cecilia Veyra and The Veil of Asteria
“Cecilia Veyra lived in the late 1600s, a time when women with too much talent and too much voice were feared more than revered. To the world she was a painter of delicate portraits, her brush praised for capturing light and silk and skin with impossible grace. But beneath the paint, Cecilia hid a secret.
She wrote.
Not poetry and not prayers but fierce essays that questioned why women should remain silent, why desire should be sin, and why knowledge should be chained to men. If anyone had seen her writings she would not have been called an artist but a witch.
When rumors spread of her unnatural ideas Cecilia panicked. One night she gathered her manuscripts and most of her paintings and set them aflame. N
