Page 153 of Eternal Ruin

“She noticed, though.” Samson’s pupil dimmed slightly.

Susenyos knew who he was talking about by the way his voice became soft soil, a seed of Samson’s old self buried deep.

“Talaa came to heal my burning feet as you paraded around.”

Those memories slipped in and out, but all Susenyos recalled were the cheers of his people, the flush of adrenaline. He hadn’t turned to see where Samson had gone. Nor his betrothed. Hadn’t cared truly. His father was finally acknowledging him after months of silence, after blaming him for his mother’s death, and he wanted to bask in the light for as long as he could.

Samson kissed his teeth, voice stone again. “You knew you couldn’t protect her. Not from your father. Not from that forest.”

“I was human then.”

In a flash, Samson kicked apart the cellar and fisted Susenyos’s collar, the other vampire’s face close. “Cling to that excuse for the rest of your miserable life. But no immortality, no power will have erased what you did in that forest.”

His old friend had not smiled or laughed genuinely since the day Talaa died. Besides blaming Susenyos for her death, Samson would never forgive him for finding joy after Talaa.

He would never be satisfied until he made sure Susenyos could never laugh again.

Samson was his creation, a friend he needed to kill once and for all. But even now, he kept seeing what was not there, a glimmer of his old friend that slayed raiders and drank so much they thought the sky was falling. There was this hope that came with an immortal life, that the seasons would return his old friend back, thaw his hatred and make Samson forgive him.

It was foolish.

Samson believed only in shared pain, shared misery, shared torture. Even as younger boys, Susenyos had seen Samson’s calculated savagery. When a village boy begged for forgiveness after spraying sewage water on him, Samson had buried his head in piss water until the boy swallowed most of it. When a lord seduced and left his sister ruined, Samson had plotted for two years, courted, and left the lord’s three sisters in disarray. He became cruel and consumed with doling out perfect, accurate punishment. Always obsessed with righting the scales. And no one in this world had hurt Samson more, taken more from him, than Susenyos had.

Susenyos’s punishment would only grow, and it would be as unforgiving as a horsewhip.

It was why he was prepared for what came next. Had prepared for it for decades.The pounding of fists against flesh, a sharp awareness of his weakness drilled into him again and again and again. Samson would beat him until his bones broke, but he’d never give him the satisfaction of crying out. Susenyos had always been able to remove himself from physical pain, go to a space deep in his mind where it was safe.

The first time he’d done it, he’d been thirteen, clinging to his mother’s dead body. Assassins had bypassed their guards and snuck into the main castle. His mother had grabbed his hand and hidden him in the tunnels, but the attackers knew about the hidden paths too. His mother took the blade meant for him, right through the chest. He’d never forget the sound, like butter being squelched with a fist. He had held her in that cobwebbed tunnel, brushing away the spiders from her body. A few had gotten stuck in the blood.

His father never forgave him for surviving that attack.

The next time, he was nineteen, lost in a forest with Talaa. There was rot, black and gnarly like twisted roots, the type of rot that bled from nostrils and traveled through veins until death captured the soul.

And there she was again—his Sage. A dream of salvation crafted for him.

Run, she’d told him, voice mighty and cracking, face blinding around the edges of her mask.Run and live.

Susenyos had clung to life after that, and as he took on fist after fist and pain screamed through him, he felt her again, coming to him at the edge of death.

He won’t kill you, she’d reassured him, her voice light, the scent of roses lingering in the wind.You will not die.”

Like always, he believed her.

54.

KIDAN

The golden threads around Samson’s chest grew with every hour he tortured Susenyos. Kidan tried to block out his pain, so similar to the times he suffered in the observatory, and dined with Samson in the quiet.

Kidan usually avoided the dining room. It was a preserved thing, an odd display for a large family that no longer existed. Two giant wall-to-wall tables, one red, one white, occupied the space, playing host to an angel and devil. At the white-covered table, there were five chairs, and on it five cups, a name carved on each of the five plates. Kais Dawit. Yodit Adane. Silia Adane. Mahlet Adane. Aman Yisak.

Samson had settled on the red-clothed table with Kidan at the opposite end. Here, it was fifteen chairs, fifteen metal goblets, no plates. The names etched onto the goblets were older: Ruth. Daric. Beniam. Susenyos. Kidan eyed Susenyos’s goblet and imagined him here, sitting among the others, laughing and drinking. The dranaics pledged to her family. Before he murdered them all.

Her meat was tasteless, and it only made her think of Etete’s spice-infused siga wots. Kidan could still hear the violent snap of her neck, see the moment life fled her kind eyes. Etete would haunt her for years to come, and all Kidan could do was try to honor her one wish—to work with Susenyos and stop fighting him.

Though she was afraid of pushing too soon, risking the plan, Kidan was growing impatient. She couldn’t sleep with Susenyos chained in the cellar. Couldn’t get his grunts out of her head.

Slowly, Kidan chewed on a piece of steak and asked, “Where do you go when you’re not here?”