Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
acelynn
The house still smelled faintly of bleach.
Even after the Knights’ cleanup crew had scoured it top to bottom, I could smell it—the chemical sharpness clinging to the air like invisible ghosts, trying too hard to erase the violence that had stained these walls.
No matter how many times I blinked, I still saw Alaric’s body on the floor, his blood dark and tacky under the weak light of my kitchen.
My throat clenched with the memory of his eyes in that final moment, shocked that I had been the one to end him.
But the Knights hadn’t let me sit with that. They had dragged me into the roundtable room, made me stand beneath the unyielding weight of Kaius’s stare, Nolan’s suspicion, and Vince’s hollow silence. And then Kaius’s words had cut me open like a blade.
You have Knight blood on your hands. Now you have to pay that debt.
I couldn’t shake it. Not in the way Nolan’s hand had lingered near his gun the whole time I spoke, not in the way Vince hadn’t looked at me once.
But most of all, not in the way Kaius had said it.
Like a sentence, not a warning. So now here I was, wearing bruises I hadn’t earned honestly, wearing a mask I couldn’t take off.
I slid into the driver’s seat of an unmarked sedan with a trunk full of cash Nolan had dropped off earlier.
They hadn’t trusted me with this job. They had dared me to survive it.
The desert landscape bled out in every direction, endless and hollow.
Driving at night felt like steering through the underworld, headlights carving out fragile tunnels of light in a sea of black.
The road stretched on and on, cracked and narrow, as if it might collapse beneath me and swallow me whole.
My hands gripped the wheel so tightly, the leather began to cut into my palms. The engine’s low hum was steady, but underneath it I could hear my own pulse hammering.
Every so often, I checked the rearview mirror, half-hoping, half-dreading to see headlights cresting over the hills.
If Nolan and Vince had decided to tail me, maybe this would feel less like a suicide mission.
But the mirror stared back empty, the desert swallowing me whole.
My mind wandered to Logan. Logan, with his wolf-smile, his endless cruelty hidden behind charm.
The ghost of the man who had once called himself mine.
If anyone could light a spade into the sand, it would be him.
Now that he knows I’m alive, it’s only a matter of time before he buries me himself.
And if he knew I was alive, then I might as well just bury myself in my own grave.
My knuckles tightened further as I shoved the thought down, trying to refocus my thoughts.
Kaius hadn’t given me a choice. If I wanted to prove I wasn’t an enemy, I would drive this money down to the border and bring back the Muze shipment without flinching.
No excuses. No stumbles. And so here I was, the perfect little pawn, driving straight into hell.
The first sign of the border meeting point was the smell.
Smoke drifted on the wind, acrid and greasy, the kind of smoke that clung to your clothes and followed you home.
Then came the faint glow, pulsing weakly in the distance—an oil-drum fire eating away at the night.
My stomach twisted as I approached, headlights spilling across rusting fences and half-collapsed gates.
This was natural land that wasn’t technically owned by any governing official.
The chain-link fence sagged under barbed wire, and the leaning concrete walls looked like they hadn’t been touched in years.
A no-man’s-land. The kind of place where you could bury a body and no one would ever find it.
Two SUVs sat just beyond the fence, engines growling low, their shadows huge in the firelight.
A few men lounged against them, silhouettes sharp and restless, guns gleaming faintly at their sides.
Not Knights. That much I could tell instantly.
Knights carried themselves with a rigid soldier’s weight.
These men were looser, cockier—sharks circling blood.
I slowed, my tires crunching over gravel. The men straightened, attention snapping toward me. One peeled away from the others, stepping into my headlights. He was broad, his jacket heavy with patches stitched in symbols I didn’t recognize, but the smirk on his face was universal. A predator’s grin.
“You must be the delivery girl,” he said, voice thick with amusement.
I swallowed hard, forcing myself to keep my tone level. “I’m here with payment.”
He tapped his knuckles against the hood, like I was a toy he was considering buying. “Cute thing like you, running Knight errands? Didn’t think they trusted outsiders with the good stuff.”
My skin prickled. “The money’s in the trunk. Count it if you want.”
He motioned lazily to his men. They moved like jackals, yanking open the trunk, dragging out heavy duffels stuffed with cash. Zippers hissed, and one of them whistled low.
“Plenty,” he said.
The leader didn’t look at the bags. He just watched me with amusement. His grin sharpened. “And in exchange…”
He snapped his fingers. The second SUV opened, and a crate was hauled out and dropped onto the dirt. The wood creaked under the impact, reinforced by metal bands, stamped with a single black word burned deep into the grain: Muze.
The scent hit me immediately—chemical, sharp, bitter as poison. It made the back of my throat ache.
I kept my face blank. “Deal’s done. I’ll take it from here.”
The man chuckled, shaking his head. “No handshake? No drink for the road? You Knights are colder than rumors say.”
I didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. “Just business.”
His eyes lingered on me, longer than I wanted, longer than I could bear. His smirk thinned into something else—something quieter. Hungrier.
“You look familiar,” he said softly. “Got family around here?”
Ice slid down my spine. My pulse thudded hard in my ears.
“No,” I said flatly.
For a breath, he just stared, as though peeling me open, layer by layer, like he could read the name etched into my bones. Spade.
Then, just as suddenly, he grinned again. “Fine. Run along, delivery girl.”
The crate was shoved into the trunk. The slam of metal rang out too loudly in the night.
I got behind the wheel, every muscle stiff, every nerve stretched taut. As I pulled away, I felt his eyes burning into the back of my skull.
Only when the firelight faded behind me and the desert swallowed me up again did I let myself breathe. But the air came in shallow, ragged gasps, and the knot in my chest didn’t ease.
Because I knew tonight hadn’t ended anything.
It had only begun.
The drive back felt longer, the desert darker, the crate heavier, as if the Muze itself was pressing against the air, leeching poison into the car. My fingers itched where they touched the steering wheel. My throat ached with the chemical tang that seemed to bleed from the back seat.
Every bump in the road sent a jolt up my spine, but worse was the silence.
With every mile, I felt more certain I was being followed, even if the mirror stayed empty.
My mind spun with images of Logan, of Death Dealers waiting just out of sight, of Kaius’s cold gray eyes if I returned with even the smallest mistake.
By the time the lights of the city glowed on the horizon, my whole body was trembling. Not from fear anymore. From exhaustion. From the weight of everything I had to carry.
And from the certainty that the Knights hadn’t sent me out here to succeed.
They had sent me out here to prove I could bleed for them.