But the storm didn’t quiet. My body shook violently, shivers tearing through me like aftershocks. And then came the memories—flashes of color and sound, too vivid, too sharp. The truth I had buried clawed its way out of the dark.
The massacre. The blood. The screams.
They roared back in Technicolor, flooding my mind, drowning me until there was nothing left but pain.
The King of Lovelen stood over a body still smoking from fire, the charred scent clawing through the night air until it stuck in the back of my throat. My stomach twisted at the sight of the figure sprawled out on their stomach, arms bent at awkward angles beside them. The flames had chewed through skin and fabric alike, leaving blackened ruin in their wake. My eyes landed on the hoodie, once black, now torn and blistered, but the bleeding spade symbol across its back still screamed through the chaos. My heart stumbled inside my chest. It was the same one Alec had pulled on earlier tonight before everything went to shit.
I crouched lower, pressing myself into the shadow of a pallet stacked high with boxes, their ink-stamped logos glowing in the fire. The sharp edges of wood dug into my thighs, but I didn’t move. I had to stay out of sight if I had any chance of surviving. My gaze traced the cartons, examining each label for a clue to what could be contained in there. Then it caught on one of the sides. Someone had tried to scribble out the letters, but they hadn’t done a good enough job. Through the lines, I could make out the letters: Muze.
My eyebrows pinched together in confusion. The Spades had control over the ring that filtered an assortment of drugsinto the state, which caused some tension between the other clubs and us. The only drug we didn’t touch was Muze, which was the Knights’ domain. So why the fuck were the Death Dealers’ markings stamped on every single box stacked around me? Why had my brother walked back into the flames when he knew damn well I was waiting outside?
A pained moan broke through the silent desert. It rattled against my bones, freezing the breath in my lungs. I slapped a trembling hand across my mouth to keep the cry from spilling free. Nolan Bedivere prowled in the dirt like a starving predator, circling the body and his king with the kind of smile that wasn’t born of joy but of something far fouler. A twisted grin stretched across his lips as he tossed a short blade into the air, catching it again with ease. The firelight kissed every dried bloodstain along its silver edge, making the steel like the stars above us. Behind him, the house smoldered, windows coughing smoke into the desert sky.
And in the shadows just beyond was Vincent Camberly. I had never seen him before, not up close, but rumors whispered themselves through the clubs like prayers and curses alike. How he had poisoned his own mother with the same venom his father had fed to him. His dark hair swayed in the wind, catching stray embers in strands like threads of fire, though his eyes never left the scene unraveling in front of him. Silent. Patient. The kind of stillness that made your soul itch.
“Got ourselves a crispy one, don’t we, brothers?” Nolan crouched, blade dancing in his fingers before dragging it across charred flesh.
The figure screeched out, trying their best to avoid the knife, but they didn’t have the strength to fight back. A gasp spilled from me, and the three Knights’ heads snapped in my direction.
My spine slammed into the rough wood of the boxes, splinters biting through the fabric of my shirt and into my skin.I pressed my shaking palm harder to my mouth, covering my nose and lips, and willed myself to disappear. To smother every trembling sound before it gave me away.
“Probably just a stray kitten that wandered too close to the show,” Kaius Mordred’s voice deep rumbled around me.
I had heard him speak before. Not to me. Never to me. Always in passing, his words dripping from his mouth like slow, heavy drops of rain in the middle of a storm. I had hidden on the roof above my father’s study during meetings, watching shadows move below, greedy to gather scraps of truth about the Knights through the always-opened window.
I had told myself it was curiosity. But every time he spoke, warmth bloomed deep in my chest like a secret I wasn’t supposed to hold. The same warmth I felt now. I had asked my mother what that meant not that long ago, and she had responded back with a certain firmness that had me cataloging the conversation away to remember.
“If you feel that, my sweet Spade…” Her eyes were as bright as the stars that night. “Never let that person go. Hold on to them because they are the one who sets you alive and makes you a better version of yourself. And if you feel you are going to lose them, fight like hell to keep them.”
A shudder ran through me as the feeling grew hotter as Kaius’s voice dragged me back to the present, harder, darker. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Slowly, I turned back to watch the scene. Nolan was still bent over the body, eyes tracking down it to find anything that might jump out to get him. The figure on the ground coughed out something wet and broken in response. No words, just a body that should not have still been alive.
Kaius held out his left hand to Nolan. The silver blade from earlier was laid in the center of his palm at the command. Bending down, he gripped the ruined ankle and ripped it up tohim. The awkward angle Kaius had the man’s leg in had him screaming and squirming, but he held him firm in place. The knife rested between Kaius’s teeth as he rolled down charred denim. Under the fabric, the skin was a bright and bubbly mess of flesh, but you could still see the dark ink of a tattoo. My heart stopped.
My breathing picked up under my palm as panic started to overcome me. A hand of cards was fanned out across the skin, each one labeled with a different suit in the deck. And there, at the edge of ruined flesh, was an ace of spades, my mother’s and my initials etched across the top and bottom.
Alec. The boy who told me to run. Who laughed at this hellhole. Who swore he’d never be caught dead this close to Muze. And yet here he was. Dying. Burned. Tears slicked my hands where they covered my face, sliding down skin too fast for me to stop.
“Hold him for me,” Kaius grumbled around the blade between his teeth.
He handed off the leg to Nolan before removing the knife from his mouth and bringing it down on the skin below the tattoo. The cut wasn’t clean. It never could be. The sick sound of tearing flesh mixed with choked screams filled the air with a noise that would never leave me. I couldn’t watch anymore, biting down on my fist as bile rose so fast up my throat, I nearly choked on it.
It felt like hours before the sounds stopped and a loud thump hit the desert floor. Slowly, I turned back to see what was happening, finding the chunk of skin was now lying in a heap next to Alec’s bloody leg. Red liquid oozed, spilling in a heavy river that turned the desert into a paste of mud and crimson. Kaius wiped the blade across his light-washed jeans, red streaks staining pale threads like war paint.
I knew what was coming before Kaius even reached into the waistband of his pants and retrieved the black gun. The dark metal winked dangerously at me in the moonlight as he stepped around Nolan and stood directly in front of Alec’s head. My brother weakly lifted his skull from the dirt, eyes locking on Kaius with a defiance that I could practically hear him say, “If he is going to kill me, I am going to look him in the eyes as he does it.”
Kaius lifted the gun until the barrel was inches away from Alec’s forehead. “My father once told me that it is not the birth of a person that defines who we are, but what they hold in their heart. The actions they take to ensure those they love are never harmed again. And I won’t let you hurt her or anyone else again.”
The click of the safety releasing rang out through the night air. My breath caught in my throat, but I didn’t dare move an inch. Kaius cocked his head to the side, a dark grin coming across his face. “You shouldn’t have shown your hand so soon.”
The sound of the gunshot was sharp and unmistakable. It cut through the air like a thunderclap, momentarily drawing out all the other sounds around me. A reverberating echo lingered in the back of my ears, and I watched as Alec’s head fell into the dirt underneath him. I spun away from the scene, eyes burning with tears as fear coursed through my veins. Each inhale was a struggle as I fought against an invisible force gripping my lungs. I slammed my eyes shut, trying my best to piece my thoughts together, but only one repeated itself like a metronome.
Kaius Mordred, the King of Lovelen, had killed my brother right in front of me.
And I swore on the ashes at my feet, on the blood seeping into the dirt, that if it was the last thing I ever did, I would paint his perfect town in his blood.
“Poor, sad little Spade.”
