Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
kaius
The bonfire was nothing but smoldering ash by the time we arrived back at the old air hangar.
The wind was pushing the smoke into thin, broken wisps that disappeared into the night.
Nolan, Vince, and I now stood in the same sand where laughter and music had carried only hours.
Now it was silent. Dead quiet, except for the restless hiss of the wind crawling over the sand dunes.
And at the center of it, carved deep into the earth like a scar, was the spade.
The fire’s glow hadn’t done it justice. Seeing it now, without any distractions, it was impossible to ignore how deliberate it was. Blackened sand formed the sharp, cruel lines of the symbol, standing out against the pale landscape.
I crouched low, running a hand over the hardened surface. It was still warm beneath my palm. Whoever did this hadn’t been gone long, and they had known we were out here tonight of all nights.
Nolan came to stand beside me, his shadow cutting across the symbol. His face was grim, mouth set in a tight line. He matched my position, studying the burn like it might speak if he stared long enough.
“This wasn’t some stupid kids,” he finally said, voice flat. “This was precise. Whoever set this wanted us to get the message.”
“Accelerant,” I muttered, already cataloging the details in my mind.
The scorch pattern was too clean, the black edges uniform. Someone had poured fuel with purpose across the dune. Someone who knew what they were doing.
Vince paced just beyond us, his boots dragging through the sand, restless energy radiating off him like heat waves.
His eyes flickered between the symbol and the rising dunes behind it.
Vince was sharp and unsettled tonight, something both Nolan and I knew was a recipe for disaster.
Vince finally turned his attention toward us.
“Are you saying this was staged before we even arrived here tonight?”
“We would have noticed someone pouring gas through the sand.” I stood, brushing dirt from my hands. The desert stretched out endlessly around us, moonlight catching the shifting sand, and yet the symbol seemed to pull all the light into itself, dark and heavy.
Nolan’s wary gaze met mine. “Then the question isn’t how. It’s who.”
Vince gave a sharp, bitter laugh, raking both hands through his hair. “We already know who. You think anyone but the Death Dealers would use that mark?”
The name hung heavy between us. I felt it in my chest, that old, familiar weight pressing down. The Death Dealers were gone. Broken. Buried with the Spade family massacre. And yet here we were, staring at proof that ghosts don’t stay in their graves in our world.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” I warned, though my jaw was tight. “We don’t know anything yet.”
Vince turned on me, eyes flashing, grief and fury tangled in every word. “Don’t act like I am just making up wild theories here, Kaius. That symbol doesn’t show up out of nowhere. Whoever put it here wanted us to see it. Wanted us to know they’re still out there.”
“Or someone wanted us to think they are,” Nolan countered, his voice calm, measured, but I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands curled into fists at his sides.
His eyes were slightly glazed over, and I knew from years of watching him decode our problems that he was trying to pinpoint the exact moment someone slipped up tonight.
A simple lie, a strange twitch in their body language, anything that could tell him who had done this.
The three of us stood there, the wind pulling at our clothes, the charred spade like a wound at our feet.
My gaze snagged on the faintest detail—tiny footprints along the edge of the dune, almost lost to the shifting sand.
Smaller. Lighter. My chest went tight. Acelynn had been out here tonight, right in the heart of this chaos, her energy off as she watched the fun filtering around the bonfire.
I had thought it was the anxiety of being so exposed to our antics, but could it have been nerves for what was to come?
For a second, the thought struck hard and cruel.
Could this act have been hers? It would have been easy for her to slip away from the crowd when we had first arrived.
We had left my sister and her out by the planes to get more firewood.
It was the perfect amount of time for her to douse the sand with gasoline.
The idea clawed at me. Acelynn had slipped into our world too easily and asked too many careful questions.
She had shadows in her eyes that I hadn’t been able to place.
And wasn’t that exactly the kind of twisted fate that haunted men like me?
That the one person I wanted most was the same person destined to tear me apart?
But then I shut it down. No. Not her. She was reckless, sharp-tongued, and stubborn as hell, but she wasn’t this. Acelynn wasn’t fire in the sand or blood in the dark. She was the one thing in my world that I hadn’t yet corrupted.
I forced the thought down where it belonged—deep, buried, and snuffed out before it could grow roots.
I let the silence stretch, forcing my breath to become steady. I couldn’t afford Vince’s impulsiveness or Nolan’s doubt—not now. I had to see past the fear, past the shadows of the past clawing their way back for revenge.
Finally, I spoke. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing. They had access to accelerant, they had time, and they wanted to send a message. That narrows the field.”
Nolan’s eyes met mine, sharp. “Knights or Dealers.”
I gave a single nod.
Vince swore under his breath, pacing again, fists clenched at his sides.
“If it’s the Dealers, we should be preparing for war.
Whoever survived has been strategically moving themselves across the board in plain sight.
They could even be getting help from inside.
If it’s one of ours…” He shook his head, jaw working. “That’s worse.”
The air felt colder suddenly, the night heavier. My gaze dropped back to the spade, and for a moment, it wasn’t just burned sand I was looking at. It was a memory. Fire and blood. Screams swallowed by smoke. Gunshots ringing out in the night air. The ruin the Spades had left behind.
I shoved the memory down, burying it as deep as I could.
“This isn’t random,” I said, my voice low, final. “Someone’s trying to drag the past back into the light. We find out who, and we end it before they get the chance to make a killing blow.”
Vince broke the silence, voice cutting sharp. “It’s her.”
I snapped my head toward him. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
“You know I’m right,” Vince pressed, his tone low, dangerous. “Acelynn was here. How is it that she knew so much, so fast, about us? Because I sure as hell wasn’t having midnight chats with her. So tell me you haven’t thought the same thing.”
Anger burned up my spine, hot and uncontrollable. I took a step toward him, fists clenched so tight my knuckles cracked. “You think I don’t notice everything she does? You think I wouldn’t know if she was playing the Knights? If she was playing me?”
Nolan shifted between us, tension sparking like a live wire, but Vince didn’t back down. His eyes narrowed, daring me.
“You’re blinded by Acelynn,” he said, almost a growl. “And that’ll get all of us killed.”
I closed the space between us until my words were nothing but a hiss through my teeth. “Say her name like that again, and I swear I’ll make you eat those fucking words.”
For a moment, the only sound was the wind shrieking over the sand. Then Nolan shoved at both our shoulders, breaking us apart.
“We don’t have time for this shit,” he snapped. “Whoever’s behind this, we’ll find them. But right now, we move. All of us.”
I kept my glare locked on Vince a heartbeat longer before I tore it away, swallowing the rage threatening to split me open. But inside, the doubt I’d buried clawed to the surface again, whispering the same cruel thought I refused to believe. What if it really was her?
Neither Nolan nor Vince said another word. But the look in their eyes told me they were thinking the same thing I was.
The Spade family wasn’t finished with us. Not by a long shot.