Page 141 of Eternal Ruin

A shy, small smile played on her lips. “Not even a peck?”

“Not even that,” he said seriously.

Kidan pouted and looked up to the branches, covering the purple and orange sky. “At least you kissed me before I told you my plan.”

Alarm bells made him pause. “Which is?”

Kidan took a moment, blinking until she was fully awake. After biting on her blushed lip for a few seconds, her brown eyes met his. “I’m going to tell Samson you’re human inside Adane House.”

Lessons from the Last Sage

On Companionship

It is a delicate, fragile thing—companionship with vampires.

It is held together by laws, objects, and the blood of actis and dranaics. Two of those can be broken, but blood seeps and flows, endless as the abyss.

Vampires will always need humans. And it took a long time to learn humans need them too.

To feed someone is an act of kindness. But to be consumed? That is to be loved.

It is why we cannot annihilate dranaics, but settle by their side. The way toward peace is always through companionship.

*Accurate to the First Sage’s reflections found inYe Abyssi Tarik, pages 356–57

48.

KIDAN

Kidan explained Obsculion to Susenyos on the walk back to campus. His jaw was taut and he wasn’t so much parting the branches to make way as hacking at them mercilessly. Each time the sound punctured her ears, Kidan winced.

Of course any talk about his lost immortality was difficult, let alone sharing it with his enemy.

“Obsculion, the process of magnifying emotions in visitors,” he said without expression. “I’ve read it in Mahlet’s journal.”

The exact opposite of House Locking. A relieved smile touched her lips. Perhaps this was an opening. “Yes. I know we can’t kill him, but the house can help me draw out the truth from him. About where the Nefrasi hideout is, about where the blade artifact is. But the seeds of an emotion must be present first. Samson doesn’t have enough trust in me but he’s beginning to…”

Kidan’s voice drifted, a harrowing grief unfurling in her. Etete’s death had been the price and still, it wouldn’t be enough to sway someone as cautious as Samson.

Susenyos stopped walking suddenly, the frame of his shoulders so still. “You think telling him I’ve lost my immortality will help bridge this trust between you two?”

“Yes.”

She watched his face transform, become guarded.

“Why not carve out my heart and give it to him?”

His words threatened to make her retreat, but she kept pushing. “He wantsto punish you. Not kill you. For whatever you did to him, he wants to see you weakened.”

“I’m not weak.” Susenyos’s pupils contracted, a devilish red, with a fleck of gold sparking in the middle.

She shielded her eyes at the sheer brightness. “Let him think he won, Yos. Let him feel powerful for a day or a week so you can have everything you want.”

Taj and Iniko had stopped several steps behind, anticipating this fight and wanting to spare themselves.

“Never,” he said in a final tone.

“This is how we get him to lower his guard!”