Page 166 of Eternal Ruin

“I’m here.” He grabbed her hand and felt it slick with sweat.

“It hurts, Yos.” She cried into her pillow.

Susenyos’s eyes filled with pain.

He grabbed her face, and she shook like she was both cold and hot.

“Am I dying?” she whispered, teeth chattering. “Feels like it.”

“No,” he growled. “You’re sick. That’s all.”

She tried to smile but it came out as a grimace. “Maybe death wants me now.”

“I want you. I need you and I will set this house on fire before I let you die,” he said with lethal promise.

Her rich brown color had become pallid, but her eyes were still dark brown, and they studied him with such warmth. He couldn’t bear it.

Something final crossed her features. “June… we never talked.”

“No.” He clenched his jaw. “None of that.”

“Yos—” Taj started but one furious glance from Susenyos silenced him.

The pain must have extraordinary because Kidan went limp, falling unconscious. Susenyos’s ears roared like a tumultuous sea.

He was frozen, unable to discern if Kidan was still breathing.

He was back in the tunnels with his mother, in the woods with Talaa. He prayed this time would be different. He wouldn’t lose another person he cared about.

The quiet was ceaseless. It broke him into a million pieces.

Then a soft sound traveled to his ears. A bird’s heartbeat. Delicate and weak… and yet… he could hear it.

One, two, one, two.

He could see the invisible lines on Kidan’s wrist where he couldn’t before, pinpoint exactly where her butterfly bracelet had slightly irritated the skin. He could count the individual strands of hair woven into her sleek braids and smell the different notes to her body—the traces of rose lingering on her clothes, the smell of citrus on her lips, and the odor of yeast from her rotting hand.

But most of all, his maddening thirst for her blood was back with a vengeance.

Susenyos was a… vampire again.

In Adane House.

Why would the house return his immortality now?

Then his gaze shifted to the wall, and golden thread reflected on his face, his eyes sliding into the motion of reading. Horror eclipsed his features.

If Susenyos Sagad endangers Adane House, the house shall in turn steal something of equal value to him.

“No,” he whispered.

Susenyos staggered back until Taj righted him.

“What is it?” Taj’s worried face came in and out.

Susenyos used his friend to focus.

“I’m doing this to her,” Susenyos whispered. He studied his palms, saw the invisible blood, and then looked to her limp body. “I did this to her.”