Chapter 4 — Reaper's Kid

Marlowe The door opened, and every single person in that line forgot how to breathe at the same time. He wasn't the biggest man in the doorway. That was almost the worst part. He didn't need to be. Alaric Steele moved like stillness was a decision he made on purpose — dark hair, darker eyes, a scar cutting through one eyebrow that looked older than I was, shoulders built for a doorway twice this size. He stepped into the yard and the fog itself seemed to get out of his way. "Seven," he said, looking down the line like he was counting cattle. "Line up straight. I don't have all morning, and neither do you." The boy at the far end — I never caught his name, he didn't last long enough to earn one in my memory — actually saluted. Actually *saluted,* like this was the army and not a motorcycle club with a body count. "Put your hand down," King said, without even looking at him, "before I decide you're simple." Nova made a sound beside me that was very much a laugh disguised as a cough. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from joining her, because apparently even walking toward my own execution, I still had a sense of humor problem. He walked the line slow, unhurried, the way a wolf circles something it hasn't decided is prey yet. Every boy ahead of me gave him everything in under three seconds — nervous hands, eyes that wouldn't hold, one kid who actually flinched when King so much as glanced sideways at him. "You," King said to that one. "Go home. Come back when you've grown a spine or don't come back at all." The kid went white and didn't move. King didn't repeat himself. He didn't need to. The kid was gone through the gate inside thirty seconds, and nobody in that line breathed any easier for it. Then he got to Reid, who straightened his spine and met King's eyes like he'd been practicing that exact posture in a mirror for a week. "Kastellan." King's mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "Your father vouched for you personally. That's either the best thing about you or the only thing. We'll find out which." Reid's jaw tightened, but he said nothing, and I decided right then I'd never seen a man more determined to prove a point that wasn't being made. Then King reached me, and stopped. He was close enough that I could see the exact shade of his eyes — not brown, not black, something in between that shifted like it was still deciding what color to commit to. Close enough that the smell of him hit first, rain and leather and something underneath, warm and dangerous, and my chest did something stupid and involuntary I did not have time to examine. "Name," he said. Not loud. He never needed loud. "Finch." My voice came out steadier than I felt, which was its own small miracle. "Finch Calloway." Something moved behind his eyes. A fraction. Gone almost before it arrived. "Calloway." He said it slow, turning it over like he was checking it for a hidden blade. "Any relation to Silas?" Every instinct in my body wanted to look away, do the thing ten years of Marla's hand had trained into me — go small, go quiet, give the danger nothing to grab onto. I made myself hold his stare instead. "He was my father," I said. True. The one true thing I had left to hide behind. The silence that followed had weight. I heard my own pulse in my ears. Beside me, Nova had gone completely still — the first stillness I'd seen out of her all morning. "Reaper's kid." He said it to no one, to all of us, to the fog still curling past the fence. Something passed behind his eyes I didn't have a name for yet — grief, maybe, old and disturbed out of somewhere it had been resting for years. Then it was gone, replaced by something sharper, hungrier, and the President of the Ironclad Wolves looked at me like I was a debt somebody had just called due after twelve years of interest. He reached out. Not gentle. Two fingers caught my chin and tilted my face up into the gray light, studying me the way you'd study an engine you weren't sure would run — close enough now that I could feel the warmth off his skin, close enough that every nerve in my body lit up at once with panic, and underneath the panic, something else. Something I refused, absolutely refused, to name. "You've got his eyes," he said, quiet enough that only I could hear it, his voice dropping into a register that had nothing to do with recruitment and everything to do with something neither of us was ready for. I couldn't breathe. Not from fear this time. Not entirely. His thumb moved, just slightly, against my jaw, and his eyes dropped from mine to my mouth for one full, unbearable second before snapping back up, like he'd caught himself doing something he hadn't given himself permission to do. "So I'm told," I managed, voice shaking despite everything I'd practiced. Neither of us moved. Neither of us let go. And the whole yard — every prospect, every motorcycle, every reason I had for standing there in the first place — went completely, dangerously silent, waiting to see what the Ruthless King of the Ironclad Wolves was about to do with his hand still wrapped around Reaper's daughter's face.