Page 145 of Eternal Ruin

“It’s okay,” she encouraged.

“I did it because Slen asked.” Yusef stared deep into her eyes. “It’s as simple and awful as that. I’d do anything she asked. Do you know how terrifying that is? To give someone that much control over your life? I’m a danger to myself, to everyone, as long as I listen to her.” The guilt remained etched on his face. “But I can’t help it. All I want is to see her happy… and I don’t trust myself around her.”

His fists tightened and Kidan swallowed, finally understanding.

The Dirt Diggers were right to be nervous about Yusef’s vote. Even Kidan didn’t know which way he’d land in the end.

Though a prickle of shame stung her for violating his privacy, it’d worked. She could use Obsculion on Samson and glean information from him. She just couldn’t be afraid to feel. Everything.

How many times had her mother used this technique?

The power of houses was frightening. The law crawled onto the carpet, golden and shimmering. Kidan tried to absorb it. A cold blade of disappointment pierced her when her palm remained empty.

A soft click at the front door chased away Yusef’s haze.

He blinked, then avoided her eyes. “I don’t know why I just told you all that.”

Kidan was about to speak when Susenyos, handsome in his long coat, appeared at the entrance of the lounge. Yusef quickly gathered his things and moved to the door.

“Good luck,” he told her.

Kidan nodded, watching his head of curls disappear.

Alone, Susenyos gave her a smile, his soft lips stretching lazily. It sent her right back to the woods. What they’d done against that tree. She’d dreamed about their kiss. And if she wasn’t so nervous about what they had to do, she’d be wondering about doing it again.

Because Kidan had never experienced anything like it. Every nerve ending in her body was still recovering, twitching with aftershocks of pleasure. His memories had been filled with—her eyes, her mouth, her body. Everything about her intoxicated him. She was afraid nothing in her life would ever taste or feel as good.

It almost made her want to abandon her plan. Stay in this pocket of peace for a little longer. But it was too late to turn back now.

As if Susenyos realized it, the house filled with the stench of a rotten forest, the walls cracking with blackened roots.

What is this?Kidan wondered, trying to read his eyes.Why does this image keep haunting him?

The smooth planes of his face were struck with worry lines. But he quickly masked it. “Where do you want me, little bird?”

50.

GK

Without blood, the vampire body would enter a state of self-consumption. The body wouldn’t die, but it would feed on itself, in a continuous and painful cycle until the host took their own life.

GK had not fed for two months, from the day he turned. The people that took him, the ones who called themselves Nefrasi, kept him in a concrete cell outside their estate.

For the first few days, they brought him blood to drink. He refused. Then they left him to his solitude. Any other soul would have ended it—this, he believed wholly. But the duties of Mot Zebeya involved daylong meditations and complete and utter stillness in the alcoves of their mountains. GK was experienced in brutal loneliness and in it, he drowned.

In GK’s mind, he would always be kneeling in the crypt of Ahnd Cemetery. Told to wait. He reached for his chest and his left rib, the move no different than shards being rubbed into a wound, and touched the now healed skin. They had stabbed him twice. Yusef and Slen, one shaking, the other calm as a silent storm as they parted his soul from his body.

GK had not screamed. He had not fought back.

A voice had told him to sit still.

Her voice, and like a beast shackled to its master, he had obeyed.

Kidan Adane.

GK’s grip on his finger bone chains tightened at the name. She was the handof death itself, and she frightened him. Not for the first time, he wished he’d never met any of them.

Yusef with his noisy roasted pumpkin seeds, Slen with her cold eyes and scarred palms, Kidan with her sadness, searching for her sister.