Page 12 of Eternal Ruin

How could she say nothing?

June turned away, drowning the room in waves of unrelenting current. “The dean asked me if I knew what the Adane House law was. You know it, don’t you?”

Kidan said nothing.

“I see. I’ll have to find that out myself too.”

With that, June left.

Kidan stumbled against her bed and sank onto it, reaching for her phone, scrambling for the videos June recorded when she was fourteen.

Hi guys. Another incident happened that was pretty embarrassing. We were at this party and I sort of collapsed. Kidan was there, though, she always looks after me.

Kidan’s breathing was strained as she tried to identify any hidden emotion, pinpoint the moment her sister had decided she was worth discarding.

It wasn’t in her videos. This cold, unbridgeable distance didn’t exist then. June loved her. Kidan could hear it in her memories. The only thing that overpowered June’s love for Kidan was her fear of persistent nightmares. With each video, June became more and more withdrawn, her eyes vacant. Then there was the video of Kidan forcing June to take her medication, not believing that someone was following her.

That must be it. The moment June decided she was done.

Because Kidan couldn’t help her anymore. Even she didn’t have the power to break into someone’s consciousness and rid them of their demons.

The one time Kidan had failed, June… abandoned her.

A viselike grip squeezed her heart. She tried to calm her panic, will the room to shift, but it refused. Once anxiety and terror set in, it took leaving the room to make her breathe again. But the door was so far away, and she was gasping too much. Her knees shook as she forced herself up and bent over, braids grazing the floor.

Breathe, a voice not her own clinked in her mind, startling her.Get up and walk.

On shaky legs, she gripped the blankets of her bed and stood. Wincing with each step, she moved.

The hallway, now a forest floor, was clean with dizzying air. The strangely familiar voice disappeared the moment she was safe.

Kidan leaned against the wall, eyes drifting to Susenyos’s room. Bitter pain stabbed at her again. After he got the blade and mask artifacts, he’d leave as well, hunt onward for the third.

She was sick of everyone leaving her. Family should alwaysstay. Her companion should promise tostay.

Kidan hardened her jaw, wiped at the prickle of tears threatening to leak out. Loyalty was dead and only what she offered others mattered. She understood now there was only one way to ensure she was never discarded.

Bind them to you.This time it was her own voice, brimming with malice that unnerved her soul.Make them need you. Always.

Susenyos had told her true power was the ability to set any law in your own home, and only now did she understand its true allure.

Kidan would master this house. She would set her own laws. Her fingers scratched her shapes on the floor: triangle, square.

Three laws. All she needed was three laws.

1. Make Samson take out his own fucking heart.

2. Make GK human again.

This was a secret hope she was clinging on to. And whenever she dreamed of it nervous energy thrummed through her. The house made Susenyos human, so why not GK? If she offered this to GK, he would forgive her. Understand why she’d made him transform into a vampire: to save his life, not because she was the hand of death.

The wall in front of her shifted into GK’s betrayed and terrified eyes as she locked him in Uxlay’s crypt. She shook her head, clinging to this plan. Yes, she had to master the house before bringing GK here. He would be a vampire again once he left the house… but at least he’d have moments where he’d have his old self back. Time to get used to his vampirism. And if he wanted to stay inside all the time, they’d make it work.

Kidan wouldn’t mind living in this house with all her friends. In fact, it’d be quite comforting. Filling the quiet with Yusef’s bouncing laugh or Slen’s violin in the evenings.

Then there would be her final law. The one that left her itching with urgency, desperate to visit Professor Andreyas right now and beg him to tell her all the secrets of mastering a house because she couldn’t fucking wait.

3. Make June feel the pain of last year.