Page 137 of Eternal Ruin

Kidan shook her head, pressing a hand to her head. “June. She knows. She told me.”

A twist formed on his lips. “Have I mentioned I don’t like your sister? I can’t help but wonder how easy our lives would be if she wasn’t here.”

Usually, Kidan would reprimand him for this. But instead her finger touched her palm, a faraway look to her eyes. It made him remember.

“Why were you bleeding?” he asked, crossing onto the water. “When you came to my quarters earlier?”

Her hands closed into a fist. “June tried to kill me. For Dranacti.”

Susenyos’s brows rose. He had wondered if the two would ever collide and they finally had. “And?”

“And what?”

“She’s dead, correct?”

“Yos.” Kidan said his name on an exhale, like a smile without moving her lips. It chased away the tension in his muscles.

Her face climbed on the water, rippling in and out.

“Things are finally starting to make sense,” she said. “My mother kept drawing things I didn’t understand all over her journal. Like the number twenty-one. Six lions. But I understand why my mother wanted to change Dranacti. And how she planned to do it. She wanted to break the artifacts, break the binds and become a Sage.”

Susenyos couldn’t begin to guess at what Mahlet Adane had wanted. She kept her secrets close and her shields up so much so he could never inherit or sever the culture of her mind.

But he could see it in Kidan now, pieces of it, aligning in ways that were difficult for him to understand.

“Is that what you want too?” he asked carefully. “To change the need for actis to kill?”

Her gaze drifted over the trees in the general direction of Uxlay. She took a long while to answer.

“If we could spare everyone else the pain we went through, shouldn’t we? Ramyn, GK, and now my sister. They’re all victims of Dranacti.” Her dark eyes found him. “But why do you want the powers of a Sage?”

Susenyos inhaled deeply and told her the truth he could manage. “To kill Lusidio.”

She nodded slowly. “We can do both, can’t we? Free actis from killing one another and get rid of a monster.”

He couldn’t help but tilt his head. “That’s ambitious. And which of us will have the honor of breaking the artifacts?”

Footsteps splashed in the thin water as she bridged the gap between them. Susenyos held his breath, trying not to drown in her tempting scent.

“You will,” she said simply.

Susenyos was so surprised, he exhaled, letting the scent of night oak and crushed Abyssinian rose invade him. He’d always loved the smell of roses. It reminded him of the flower he found in the forest outside his castle. Of hard-won life and divine beauty. It was why he picked rose oils in the Bath of Arowa and let himself soak for hours. But on Kidan the scent was purer, everlasting, the exact notes he’d been trying to capture all these years.

“Just like that?” His voice was suspicious yet growing rough. “You’ll give me the most powerful object known to mankind?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The rapid blinking of her lashes, like a raven’s feathers guarding the sun, used to drive him mad. As if a speck of dirt in her dark eyes would render her sick. And she did it now, blinked again and again. He’d wondered how a human girl who couldn’t see through a dust storm could rival him. What poison would get her sick, what blade would cut her open, what careless car could shatter her lovely bones. And when he particularly wanted to torture himself, he thought about that silver bracelet. The one he kept in his box of Kidan’s things, next to her ties. Her decision to surrender her life. As if it wasn’t the most precious thing on this wretched earth.

“Because I’ve seen what power can do,” she said truthfully, a haunted glaze to her eyes. “I let it consume me. I can lose myself in it. But not you, you know how to keep your humanity.”

“Little bird,” he whispered, fighting the urge to get closer. “What did I say about that word?”

A smile danced across her lips. Her top lip was distinct from her blushed bottom one, darker, a storm descending on a rose. That was his companion, he thought. A soft flower at times, a force to be reckoned with at others.

“You’re more human than me sometimes,” she said.