It’s raining by the time I step outside. I don’t bother with the hood. By the time I get home, my clothes cling to my skin, cold and heavy. I sink onto the couch, my limbs tired.The acceptance letter for Ella set on the coffee table. I lift it, running my fingers over the embossed seal and the crisp edges. It’s everything she deserves.Everything I can’t give her.
The phone buzzes again.Cami.
I stare at it, vibrating in my hand. I don’t have any options left—no extra jobs or loans. I only have one way to make enough money fast enough to make Ella's dreams come true.
I grab my phone. “Cami,” I murmur in a hollow tone. “Tell me about the party.”
Her smile is almost audible. “I knew you’d come around.”
I close my eyes.This is my only choice. I will just do one party, just one time,for Ella.
Chapter 4
One Party, One Bad Idea
Violet
Saying yes should’ve felt like the moment where everything tilts, and you realize you can’t go back, but it came out easier than a sigh. Just… yes. Like, I didn’t understand what I was agreeing to. Like I wasn’t fully awake when I said it.
But I was.God, I was.
Making drugs for a room full of strangers—rich ones, the kind who can get away with anything and destroy you without blinking—shouldn’t have been something I agreed to with barely a pause. One wrong move and I’d be in way over my head. This isn’t some movie where the “one illegal favor” turns into a quirky montage, and everyone laughs about it later. This is my actual life; my actual face on the line, and I don’t have the kind of money that fixes things when they blow up.
And then Cami, in true Cami fashion, waits untilafterI say yes to let it slip she usually buys her party drugs from the Crimson Order.
The CrimsonfuckingOrder. The same people whispered about in back rooms. The people whose money touches everything in the city like fingerprints you’re not supposed to see. And I’m stepping onto their turf with something they don’t own.
I tried explaining that to her—attempted getting the words out that this wasn’t a cute, rebellious little hustle, and that this is the kind of thing people vanish over—but she just waved her hand and said something like, “As long as I keep buying the usual from them, one little tab won’t matter.”
Which is… objectively insane. But she believed it, and now I’m here, giving up my only day off from the clinic, ferrying into the city with a backpack full of guilt and caffeine.
The town car drops me at the warehouse, and I swear the place looks different today. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe everything inside me is louder, harder, and more cautious now that I’ve actually committed. The driver hands me the keys like he did last time, and he doesn’t look surprised to see me again. That somehow makes it worse.
I stand outside the metal door for a breath. Not long—I don’t let myself think enough to start panicking—just long enough to acknowledge the shift. The door groans when I push it open, and the sound scrapes something in my chest. I don’t linger in the front where all of Cami’s bizarre luxury clutter is stationed like a museum no one visits anymore. I walk straight back to the thing I’ve been trying not to think about since the moment I told Ella she’d get to go to Langport.
The lab hums under the fluorescent lights, cold, sharp, and familiar in a way that almost hurts. I wash my hands until the water turns too hot, and my skin starts to sting, then I do it again.Fear makes me feel dirty in a way soap can’t fix.
Once I start laying everything out, muscle memory takes over. The precision. The heat control. The way the solution shifts colors right at the edge of perfection.
I check the ratios twice. Then again. I’m terrified to mess up, not because I’ll ruin the product but because there’s no backup plan. No wiggle room. Ella’s entire future sits in glassware, waiting for me to either save it or break it beyond repair.
It feels different this time. Heavier. Like the air is thicker around me, like the building knows I’m not pretending anymore. I’m not experimenting. I’m making Zephyra for a high-class party, on someone else’s turf, knowing damn well what could happen.
But I’m doing it anyway.For Ella. God, it always comes back to her.
When the tabs finish setting, I test the edge of one with my thumb—still warm, smooth, and clean. They’re a tiny piece of chemistry that could buy my sister a one-way ticket out of the life neither of us chose. Or it could take everything from me.
Probably both.
I text Cami when the last batch cools, watching the shimmer settle through the solution like something alive.
Me: Done.
I type, fingers trembling more than I want to admit.
Me: Sealed and packed.
She replies instantly.
