Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
acelynn
The roundtable room reeked of smoke, sweat, and something heavier, like judgment. The kind that clung to the walls, to the eyes that pinned me down from every angle.
I sat in the chair facing the two double doors, my legs trembling beneath me. No matter how I moved, I could not force them to still. My palms pressed flat against the polished wood, sticky with sweat I couldn’t scrub off, no matter how hard I rubbed them into my shirt.
Kaius sat across from me, broad shoulders tense beneath his jacket, eyes unreadable.
Nolan leaned lazily in his chair to Kaius’s right, but there was nothing casual about the sharp flick of his gaze as it swept over me, dissecting every twitch, every shallow breath.
Vince paced the length of the room, restless, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
He hadn’t looked at me since we’d cleaned up the mess.
The mess.
Alaric’s blood was gone from the floor of my house, his body no longer sprawled in glass and poison.
But I could still feel it on my hands, under my nails, seared into my skin like something that would never wash off.
The silence stretched until it felt like it would crack my ribs open.
Then Kaius leaned forward, folding his hands on the table.
His voice was low, steady, heavy enough to pin me in place.
“You have Knight blood on your hands.” He’d said it earlier, in the wreckage of my home, and he said it again now like a verdict.
My throat tightened as the words echoed off the stone walls.
“That’s not something we can ignore.”
I swallowed hard, trying to steady my voice. “I told you, he attacked me. He came into my house and—”
“And you killed him.” Nolan’s voice sliced clean through mine, calm and lethal. “Doesn’t matter how. Doesn’t matter why. A Knight is dead. That blood debt doesn’t just vanish.”
I flinched, my fingernails scraping against the shallow grooves of the table.
“What are you going to do to me?” My voice was small, raw.
Vince finally stopped pacing, his shoulders stiff as he turned to face me.
His eyes were a storm—dark, furious, grieving in a way I couldn’t quite name.
“You murdered my father, Acelynn. The only living elder who was left of the Knights. You killed him in your house, and now you need to prove that you aren’t against us, prove that you are not a Spade playing both sides, because from where I’m standing, a whole lot of shit has gotten fucked up since you waltzed in here.
Prove you are who you say you are, Acelynn. That’s all we are asking of you.”
The sound of my name—or rather, the wrong name—on his tongue made my stomach turn. Emersyn Spade. Daughter of the Death Dealers’ leader. The girl who’d died in the family massacre. Or should have. My chest tightened. “What do you want me to do?”
Kaius’s gaze sharpened, carving right through the trembling mess of me. “Tomorrow night, a shipment comes through the border. Muze.”
The word itself was poison, the drug whispered about in every back alley, the one that had ruined more lives than fire and steel combined. “We’ve already paid, but the delivery requires a face-to-face drop. A lump sum, no mistakes.”
Nolan leaned in, smirking faintly, but his eyes were all steel. “That face is going to be yours. You’ll drive down, hand off the money, and bring the shipment back to the club. Clean. Simple. No questions.”
My blood went cold. Delivering Muze wasn’t just some errand. It was a test. One misstep, one second of hesitation, and they’d decide I wasn’t proving loyalty. That I was proving guilt.
“And if I don’t?” My voice cracked before I could swallow the weakness down.
“Then we’ll know,” Kaius said flatly, “that you’re not with us. And if you’re not with us, Acelynn…” His eyes burned into mine, cold enough to freeze bone. “You’re against us.”
The room pulsed with silence, the air too thick to breathe. I nodded. Slowly, then faster, like if I agreed enough times, it would drown out the sound of my heartbeat slamming against my ribs.
“Fine,” I whispered. “I’ll do it.”
None of them smiled. None of them eased. Because this wasn’t a victory. It was a leash.
By the time I left the roundtable, I could still feel the weight of their eyes clawing down my spine.
The nausea in my gut was so sharp, I nearly doubled over in the hallway.
As soon as I shut the door of my car, I dug into my pocket for my phone.
My hands shook, fumbling over the screen until it rang through.
“Watson,” I breathed when he picked up, my voice hushed but hard with urgency. “I need you to do something for me.”
A pause on the other end. Then his voice responded, low and cautious, “What is it?”
I pressed a hand against the steering wheel, grounding myself, because if I didn’t, I might spiral into the panic waiting just under my skin.
“Tomorrow night, I need Parsons distracted, out of the way. Do whatever it takes. I can’t explain why.
You are just going to have to trust me. Can you do that? ”
Another beat of silence, then Watson exhaled slowly. “Yes, I can handle that.”
The call ended, but the dread didn’t. Because this wasn’t survival anymore.
It was war.