Page 157 of Eternal Ruin

Yusef’s brows disappeared into his hairline and Slen straightened in her seat. Blood roared in Kidan’s ears. Maybe it was unwise to ask blatantly. A rumor of the Last Sage’s settlement discovery had gotten her parents killed and Kidan didn’t want to give Slen or the professor any indication it was true.

Professor Andreyas studied her reaction for a while. “What is a Sage’s powers? Can the binds break? How do the famous artifacts work? These are questions Uxlay will always come to, mysteries that hover above us.”

That wasn’t enough. She was sick of mysteries.

“But the answers are in the bookYe Abyssi Tarik, aren’t they?” Kidan pushed, unable to stop herself. “You would know. You must have read it.”

As the oldest vampire here, there was no book their professor wouldn’t know inside out.

Tense silence swallowed them all.

Yusef gave her a pointed look to leave it alone, but she ignored him.

The professor didn’t look angry, merely amused. “The secrets found in that book require decades of study. Knowledge of language and philosophy. None of you are able to understand it at this point, which implies you’re not ready.”

Kidan was tired of his condescending tone. “Why make it so difficult?”

The vampire’s pupils turned black, frightening wells. “Myths are spun from a thousand sources. They are told from ancestors to descendants and each time, they transform. They are impossible to capture, difficult to discern truth from lie. It is difficult because you want a simple answer. Simple stories. The origin of things rarely is simple. Has the study of Dranacti taught you nothing? Unless you challenge yourself to seek more and build enough space in your minds for a paradox, to tear down everything you know and build it again, you will not understand the beginning of dranaics and actis and sages.”

Kidan dropped her gaze, working her jaw. She was searching, reading. Her mind swirled with the myths she’d read over the past few weeks—stories about Demasus.

The firm set of the professor’s mouth made her want to crawl under the desk.

“Though it is curious,” he said. “How your sister knows more aboutYe Abyssi Tarikthan you. Which is why it was a true disappointment to learn she’d dropped out.”

Kidan’s head snapped up. “She did?”

Did trying to kill Kidan wake June up? If June had dropped out, where was she now?

The professor tilted his head, reading something in her face. “Your sister has excelled far more than expected. When I wish to dismiss a student, I ask one question. A question about the Six Manes of Blood because not one student of mine under the age of fifty has answered it. Until June.”

Kidan’s heart pounded, the desk beneath chilling her to the bone. She didn’t know what or who the Manes of Blood were.

Another thought struck her. Her mother’s journals. Drawings of six lions wielding different silver weapons. Was that who they were?

Professor Andreyas’s unrelenting gaze flicked over to Slen and Yusef, and she breathed out a sigh of relief. Neither of them appeared to know either.

“Ye Abyssi Tarikbegins with the Six Manes of Blood. With Varos the Night Lion, the first vampire.”

Slen furrowed her brow. “I thought Demasus was the first. The Fanged Lion.”

An expression Kidan couldn’t identify flickered in the professor’s eyes, a cross between amusement and disappointment. “Demasus was the first to forge peace. Varos was the first to forge war.”

The edges of their room darkened. His ancient gaze slid to Kidan, and she felt ice cold. He was searching her mind. “It’s a true shame we lost your sister’s mind. I believe she holds most of the answers to your questions.”

Kidan didn’t listen to the rest of the class, thinking of June. If the professor had noticed she was this impressive, the question was, when had June learned all of this? They hadn’t spent that much time apart. Could it have been enough to learn a whole new language like Aarac and discover deeply withheld knowledge?

Varos the Night Lion.

The name was like a cold breath on the back of her neck, the thing of nightmares. Kidan shivered, wishing she hadn’t heard it. And she worried about her sister, who had learned about more terrifying creatures than the Nefrasi.

56.

KIDAN

A new truth slid out of Samson during their third night together. He was well-fed on Kidan’s blood, and there was a rare ease to his dark features. Where he once felt like reinforced iron, he was now pliable, like softened clay, and Kidan could mold him as she wished.

“Where do you go when you’re not here?” she asked again.