Page 47 of Eternal Ruin

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Kidan laughed under her breath and tried to go back to sleep. The faintest of crinkles sounded. Finger bones. Or an old house creaking.

God, don’t let me lose my mind now.

But a part of her whispered it was far too late for that.

19.

KIDAN

Drastfort Prison was Kidan’s least favorite place. The fortress-like brick walls, the constant searches and scrutiny gave her goose bumps. Then there was the smell from the days she’d spent in a prison cell awaiting her trial—concrete and putrid alcohol—before Dean Faris bailed her out.

Kidan and Slen hovered near the wall, letting Yusef and his father stare at one another. The silence stretched on and Kidan shifted, scratching at the collar of her sweater. Yusef was never quiet. His very nature was to buzz and emit sound like the crunching of roasted seeds. The lovely shade of his brown eyes had misted, almost like the night Slen carried him through Adane House, sweater and face bloodied.

The night he’d killed.

Once they passed through the processing, Omar Umil’s eyes immediately went to Yusef’s injured hand. The stiff way he carried it. His attention drifted higher, settling on the new silver house pin all graduates wore. Kidan still wasn’t used to hers, the light and dark mountains winking back at her from her sleeve.

“Who?” Omar asked, in a voice rough and unused.

Yusef startled at the sound, then followed his father’s gaze, touching the silver pin on his chest.

“Rufeal Makary,” he said quietly.

Omar studied them all one by one, taking in their silver pins, that intensity about him remained, his lids unshifting, like a lion at night. Slen looked to Kidan, who couldn’t quite breathe.

Finally, Omar… smiled. “That’s my boy.”

Yusef snapped his head up, releasing a disbelieving sound. Kidan exhaled too.

It still took Yusef an extraordinary amount of time to form words. “You… you’re not angry?”

It was a question encompassing everything.

“The Makary vermin have been after us for decades. Trying to dissolve and fold our house into theirs. Imprisoned me. You took one of them down. Angry? I’m proud.”

Kidan couldn’t see Yusef’s face, but he wiped his sleeve across his eyes. The emotion in his words made her own chest tight. “I’m sorry for leaving you all alone here,” he said. “I’m going to make this right. The 13th will pay. I’ll get you out, Dad. I promise I will.”

As the two talked, Kidan and Slen retreated to the back of the wall. Slen studied them intently, a line between her brows.

“I don’t understand,” she said, and they were such rare words, Kidan turned to pay attention. “Omar was arrested because Yusef testified against him. In the last fourteen years, he didn’t visit him once. Yusef ignored all the letters, all the attempts to bring him here. Those are unforgivable mistakes. Omar should hate him.”

“Some children are lucky,” Kidan said, thinking of Mahlet Adane.

Would she have forgiven her for something like this?

Slen appeared lost in thought, her coffee-colored eyes trained on Yusef, who smiled broadly. A trace of emotion passed over her eyes, almost like longing, a flicked-on lighter before the cool tone returned.

“My brother left,” Slen said.

“What do you mean he ‘left’?”

“He left Uxlay and he’s not coming back.”

Kidan heard the words beneath a hundred layers of stone, thrumming with emotion.

He left me.

Kidan’s hands balled into a fist.