“Alive,” he drawled, as if her survival was an inconvenience to him. “And if you want her to stay that way, you’ll behave.”
My stomach sank at the comment. Logan turned his back, sauntering deeper into the barn, and I followed him despite every instinct telling me to bolt. I must have looked like some pathetic stray trailing behind him. At the far end of the barn, a crude table was littered with bottles and glasses. Logan’s hands shuffled, producing two shot glasses filled with a liquid that gleamed a pale purple color under the fractured shafts of moonlight breaking through the roof. He offered one to me.
“I’m good,” I snapped, forcing my hands into my back pockets, rocking on my heels like defiance alone could shield me.
His eyes narrowed. “Either you take the shot willingly, Acelynn, or I’ll unhinge that pretty jaw and force it down your throat.”
I didn’t move. I wanted him to see that I still had something left, some shred of control. His lips twisted into a smirk. “Break another one.”
At his command, the sound of snapping bones followed by an earsplitting scream that matched Astoria rattled the barn’s metal framing.
“Stop!” The word ripped out of me as I lunged forward, yanking the glass from his hand.
My lips sealed around the rim before I could second-guess, and I threw the liquor back. The vodka burned, but the taste was wrong. Too smooth. Too masked. Poison dressed as fire. I flung the glass to the ground, letting it shatter at my feet. There was hemlock in that shot. And he thought it was going to kill me. Too bad he didn’t realize I had been dosing myself for months now. But what he didn’t know would only kill him in the end. Logan downed his own shot and licked his lips, savoring.
“Ready to listen now, doll?” he asked. I wobbled on my feet, letting it appear as if the world was tilting from under me. My stomach rolled as the drug slid through me. Even with the dosing, the hemlock still gave me slight side effects, fogging my limbs and dulling the edges of my panic. Still, I nodded to his question.
“Good.” His smile stretched wide, a shadow’s grin.
I stepped back, but collided with something solid. My breath froze in my chest. Before I could scream, a hand clamped down over my mouth, fingers crushing my cheeks and yanking me backward. My skull smacked against the ground with a crack that left stars dancing in my vision.
Laughter rolled over me. Not Logan’s. A new voice, darker, harsher. “You promised me you’d burn the Knights for good. Yethere I am, cleaning up your failure because you couldn’t resist crawling into Kaius’s bed.”
I blinked through the haze. The masked man loomed over me. The terrifying skull mask was closer now, the paint mottled with rust-colored flecks I now knew were dried blood. The chiseled mask sat flush against his face, and I could see now that he was wearing full blackout lenses to blend in with the body paint around his eyes. He cocked his head slowly, like a predator examining prey that had already lost. Lifting myself into a sitting position, I scooted myself back just enough to kick out. The heel of my foot caught him in the balls, but he didn’t even flinch. A growl ripped from his throat as he seized my hair at the crown of my head, wrenching me off the ground.
“Stupid bitch,” he hissed.
I thrashed out, kicking and screaming against his hold, but the drug slowed me, dragged me down into my own body. He slammed me back onto the concrete, and the impact forced the air from my lungs, my chest burning as I tried to pull back the oxygen I had just lost in through my nose. Pain shot up my ribs. The masked man straddled me, knees digging into my hips, his weight crushing. The gun in my waistband bit deeper into my hip.
Logan’s laugh slithered across the space. “You’re only making this harder, doll.”
Two hands wrapped around my throat, squeezing until fire roared in my chest. My back arched, nails clawing uselessly at his forearms. Above me, Logan’s face leaned close, the presence of pure evil surrounding me in my fading vision.
“Since you love that fucking Knight so much, you can go down for his murder. We will make it a real Romeo and Juliet story.” Logan’s words were distorted as his knuckles traced my cheek. The masked man’s thumbs pressed into my windpipeharder. “One poisoned, the other killed by his own hand. The news is going to eat that up.”
Dots swam over my vision, my chest heaving up for a breath it was desperate for, but I knew would not get. I resisted the urge to shut my heavy eyes as I let my hands slide from his forearms. With all the remaining energy I had left, I lifted my trembling hands to the masked man’s face, into the crease between his eye and the mask.
In one swift motion, I ripped it free in one desperate pull. The man recoiled, tearing his hands from my throat. Gasping and coughing, I pushed myself backward, my eyes locking on his face. Recognition hollowed me. Horror rooted me in place so much that I didn’t see Logan’s fist until it cracked against my cheek. Pain blossomed, the spray of blood warm and metallic coated the front of my white shirt.
“Enough,” the unmasked man snapped. But Logan wasn’t done. His boot drove into my ribs, knocking me onto my hands. My arms shook under the weight of my body. “I said enough!”
“She ruins everything!” Logan’s voice cracked, frenzied. “She couldn’t even save her best friend without fucking it up.”
Logan crouched low, face inches from mine, spittle flying as he screamed, “Do you see any Knights here? You promised they’d come, but no one’s coming. No one was ever coming for you, Emersyn. You should have burned that night, but your brother couldn’t stomach the guilt long enough to send you back in.”
“What?” I heaved out, my mind racing as it tried to make sense of his words. They were coming out long and jumbled, as if they were bouncing around my brain at a hundred miles per hour.
Logan sneered. “Oh, come on. You’re not stupid. You never were, even if you played the role of dumb little sister like a pro.”
I shook my head, dazed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The back of his hand landed a blow to the other cheek. “You don’t remember? You’re the reason this all started. You couldn’t keep your nose out of the business.”
“The Muze.” The word slid from the other man’s mouth, and my blood froze. I refused to meet his gaze, staring at the concrete instead.
“You stumbled onto the shipment,” he said, his tone deliberate, accusing. “The one meant to blackmail the Knights. The Death Dealers wanted control. Wanted to force a patch over. But you…” His boots scraped closer. “You found it first. You walked in on your father inventorying the product, and that was the moment he decided you were a liability.”
I froze in the doorway of the shop’s mechanic bay, the heavy stench of oil and steel mixing with something far more poisonous. My gaze swept over the table where my father and several of his men hunched, counting out small purple vials into neat little rows. The overhead light flickered, casting a sickly glow over their hands—steady, practiced, and far too comfortable with the trade they were dealing. My stomach lurched. This wasn’t the first time I’d stumbled into something I shouldn’t, but tonight, it felt different. I shuffled back a step, desperate to disappear before anyone noticed me. But it was too late as hands gripped the back of my shirt, yanking me into their body. I tried to squirm from their hold, but it was no use.
