Page 122 of Eternal Ruin

“Come outside with me.Now.”

Kidan stood but she didn’t go with him. She simply reached to take down the portrait, sear away her mother’s judging eyes but her wrist was wrenched back. Susenyos dragged her toward the garden door, twisting in the hallways and outside to where the sun beat down on the overgrown grass and the weeping willow tree.

The moment Kidan crossed the threshold, pain unfolded in her mind. Her flesh and soul coming together at once. Her whole body tremored, and she bolted to the white door but Susenyos blocked her path.

“Do you even know who wrote this?” he asked in a deathly low voice.

“Get out of my way!”

Her stomach was already knotting, her flesh becoming soft, her very heart vulnerable. Kidan was immortal inside Adane House and too human outside of it.

The pure disgust flickering in Susenyos’s eyes rooted her to the spot. In a furious bout of strength, Susenyos ripped the seven-hundred-page book in half.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she hurled at him, her vision filled with rippling pages.

He could barely get his words out. “This philosophy is forbidden at Uxlay. How did you get it?”

She was too infuriated to answer. Good, anger was familiar. It kept the needles scratching at her heart at bay.

Her face grew hot from staring at the savaged book. “I found it in the library.”

If anything, this made Susenyos’s irises catch golden red.

“I never took you for a fool.” He approached like a lion, driving her farther onto the grass. “This book was written as an antithesis to Dranacti. To shatter all bonds of companionship and instead enslave your counterparts as house master. To kill your own family and use their bones—Resurption.” He paused, realization trickling in. “This is where you read about it. You don’t even know who wrote it, do you? It’sLusidio’swords, Kidan. You have been reading Lusidio’s words!”

Her throat dried up, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. “Wh-what?”

“How could you be so easily manipulated?” he continued, nostrils flaring. “The actis under Lusidio’s command use Aseracti to master their houses.”

She didn’t understand how Lusidio’s writing had reached her but more than that she couldn’t stand the way Susenyos was reprimanding her.

“If you knew Aseracti would help you master the house, why didn’t you use it?” she shouted back. “You tried for years!”

He let out a disbelieving breath. “Because I would rather die than acquire power throughhismethods. I would rather watch my soul splinter into a thousand pieces than lose who I am. I cannot become the very thing I seek to destroy.”

The words became a lashing on her very skin. Laced with the poison of her own thoughts about who was truly evil—thoughts she’d buried. She was right to hide this from Susenyos. He would always unravel her.

“How is Aseracti any different thanThe Mad Lovers?” She tilted her chin up inchallenge. “The Mad Loversis an instruction in madness and darkness as well. Butyouread it daily.”

He studied her with something resembling disappointment, stoking her blood. “If you can’t tell the difference, then you truly are lost.”

Her molars ground together, itching to carve out his grim expression. He pulled out his favorite book, with the bleeding grapefruit, and placed it in her stiff hands. He flipped the pages before stopping on one. The annotations, messy writings in the margins, were in Amharic, but only one word was circled on the page, in red bright ink.

Kidan struggled to read it, joining the letters and their sounds in her mind.

“Teyik,” he said in a low voice.

“‘Ask’?” She recognized the word now.

His eyes burned into hers. “That is the difference. Aseracti doesn’t allow you to ask, it commands,compelsyou—” Something changed in his voice at the word.“An ask is the difference between war and love. Between submission and loyalty. The abyss and the dark. It is the only bridge that matters, the only line we cannot cross. Our law, our vow.”

Kidan’s fingers trembled on his book, the garden fading around his intense face. A new emotion unfolded in his eyes, in his held breath—fear. As if whatever response she gave him held all the weight of the world, and it mattered more than the souls who occupied it.

Her eyes fell to the torn pieces of the book. It didn’t matter if he destroyed it, she remembered every word.

Needed it still to stay in control.

“I think you should go.”