Page 15 of Eternal Ruin

He bent down, and she stilled, aware of his every movement. He retrieved the Abyssi myths book, his fingers brushing against her calf on the way up. So gentle she wouldn’t have felt it if she hadn’t been paying attention. She drew in a breath and held it, unsure if he’d done that on purpose. They stood there, without speaking, for a long time. Until the urge to lean closer was nearly painful.

Focus on the book.

Clearing her throat, she spoke. “Some pages are missing. About the three artifacts and the three binds.”

Kidan studied his smooth face for any sign of the truth.

“There are enough myths about the artifacts to drive you crazy if you let them.” His tone sounded reasonable, but he was careful—from his words to the guarded way he stood before her.

They couldn’t have been more than a step apart, close enough to embrace, but the book and its lost knowledge were a cold reminder of the distance they had yet to bridge.

Kidan’s gaze dropped to the cracked leather spine. “Lying to you doesn’t remotely brush against the horrors I’ve committed. You said that to me once. About how you will always protect the knowledge you have about the artifacts, no matter what happens.”

It wasn’t something he denied, which, oddly, she appreciated. Like two con artists, they could be honest in their secrets.

“Knowledge isn’t always power. It’s a prison too,” he said. “Dranacti students enter the Philosophy Tower every semester free and unburdened until they learn the truth of what they must do. They can never unlearn and neither can you. It is its own curse.”

Without his vampirism, the rich glow of Susenyos’s skin was tempered, and it was easier to take him in. The house changed him, rubbed off all his immortal ease and left him melancholy.

“I can’t remember who I was before I learned about the artifacts,” he continued in a low tone, his black pupils carrying a burning desire. “I dream about them, Iworship them, and I’ve wasted countless years in pursuit of them. That is what knowledge does. It doesn’t bring anything closer to you, it separates you. Drowns you in loneliness.”

Kidan wanted to chase away his severe expression. “But if you tell me, I can keep you company. Isn’t that what we vowed to do?”

She remembered the companionship ceremony clearly. Her words before his fangs were buried in her throat.

I pledge to treat you as my equal, ask no more of you than I would my own blood.

When Susenyos said nothing, Kidan dared a step closer, enough to count his lashes. He watched her carefully but didn’t move away.

The mist around them thickened. And in it, a ruinous truth she could no longer deny bloomed to life. This house had been unbearable without him. Cold as a husk, lifeless like her old apartment. Without the sound of his cursive writing or the simple pleasure of looking up and finding him by the study fireplace, face concentrated over a book or artifact, it’d all been robbed of sunlight. It was something she could only discover in his absence—how annoyingly comforting his presence was.

Being left behind was her first language, how she measured her connection to others. Why June and GK carved a larger space inside her at the moment. And Kidan had prayed she wouldn’t feel anything when Susenyos left—not this quickly, not for him. But there was a flicker, a taste of something addictive. It wasn’t as complicated as love or as simple as attraction, but a disturbing need to keep him close.

Whatever the word for that was.

She’d only discover the extent of it if he left her behind again. And she refused to feel everything for him at the very moment he abandoned her.

So he had to stay.

In this house.

With her.

Kidan studied the curve of his mouth, full, soft, and deceptive. No one could imagine he hid such monstrous canines beneath. But her skin remembered the sharpened tips of his fangs, like a pair of poisonous thorns—swift, painful, then delirious. She wondered what those lips would feel like against her own. If his mouth was capable of gentleness, careful like his fingers had been in her coarse hair.

Don’t let me kiss you. It will be the last thing you ever do.

The back of her neck heated, muscles spasming low in her belly. Maybe thatwas why he’d stopped her at Cossia Day—afraid his fangs would cut her tongue into pieces. It was growing difficult to not ask him to do it anyway.

Prove that he still wanted her, when no one else did.

And in this hallway, right now, he was human. His kiss shouldn’t hurt.

She reached out to touch his cheek, unable to help herself. He froze like granite. Emboldened, her fingers traced lower, across his jaw. She wanted to see his triumphant smile at the fact she’d initiated something.

Instead, he flinched. As if she were made of thorns rather than flesh.

Her finger snapped to her chest at once.