Page 49 of Eternal Ruin

Kidan nudged his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Fourteen years in prison.” His eyes swam with new emotion. “He can’t spend another day. I have to get him out.”

If her parents were alive and in jail, she’d have burned down the prison to free them. The crushed leaves below her feet floated up, new air and life flowing inside her. A deep exhale left her. She decided she could no longer avoid learning about her parents.

Once they settled in their spot in East Corner Coffee, Kidan pulled out her laptop and entered her new ID. She inhaled deeply and, for the first time, typed her mother’s name.

After spending her entire life avoiding the memory of her parents, she’d mastered the skill well.

They’re dead. What’s the point?She hadn’t wanted to know how it happened or any detail that would bring them close to her.

All she’d cared about was June.

Until now.

Now June felt farther away than last year. Now Kidan was a graduate, not a girl eaten by guilt at what she’d done to Mama Anoet.

She had friends. A future.

And she had to decide if she would inherit her legacy or sever it.

She was mindlessly scrolling through the results—awards and accolades, pictures of them at the Acti Gala, when she caught a title that made her breath catch.

The Murder of Mahlet Adane and Aman Yisak.

20.

KIDAN

Kidan’s finger hovered above the headline, a pulsing motion making the word bounce and blur. Her heart picked up speed and slammed against her ribs.

You know they died, she told herself firmly.

But it was another matter to know the details. Until now, they were a faraway entity, floating by, and if she kept reading, she knew she’d ground them to her, anchor them as a part of herself that had been stolen.

Kidan didn’t do well with things that were taken from her.

Don’t. Keep scrolling.

She was back in that pitch-black room again, five years old with eerie warm breath tickling her neck, a monster watching. Kidan squeezed her eyes shut and wished for June to be there, to hold her hand as they read about their parents. Her large eyes would likely fill with tears. Kidan scowled. She shouldn’t be thinking about protecting June. She was on her own now.

It took her a few breaths to read the article.

Uxlay is no stranger to shocking deaths, though none rocked the campus so violently as when young parents Mahlet Adane and Aman Yisak were gruesomely propped up at their dinner table with everything intact except their hearts. It’s said the brutal holes were wide enough, you could peer right through them.

Kidan jerked back, feeling the coffee she’d consumed rise to her throat.

They took out… their hearts. Left them sitting at the dinner table. Pieces of their features she’d gleaned from the portrait hanging in the house rearranged themselves into gaping mouths and soulless eyes.

Adane House dranaics Susenyos Sagad and Tasi Lonar discovered the scene.

The murderer, infamously nicknamed Daric the Cruel, was detained in Drastfort Prison for six weeks before he was found dead. His heart was also missing.

His killer was not found.

The Adanes’ hearts were never recovered.

—Uxlay’s Grave Site