Page 61 of Eternal Ruin

“Don’t start. I know you don’t like Slen.”

A curl formed on his lips. “If she had succeeded, I would have been in Drastfort right now.”

Sacrificing Susenyos for your sister seems like the very thing you’d do—those were Slen’s words to her last semester, under the control of the 13th. But things were different now.

Susenyos studied her. “What did you want to talk about?”

Kidan exhaled. “My parents.”

The word “parents” nearly tripped on her tongue but she inclined her chin, ignoring it.

Susenyos paused, clearly not expecting that.

“You killed him, didn’t you? The vampire that murdered my parents? He took out their hearts.”

Kidan had wanted to sound neutral, but her lip quivered. He’d been there. He’d seen their bodies.

Susenyos’s face darkened. “It’s done. Leave it behind.”

“Where is Daric’s heart?”

A furrow shriveled Susenyos’s smooth forehead.

“I want it.”

“Kidan.”

“You killed him, didn’t you?” she insisted.

Susenyos didn’t hesitate. A line lengthened along his jaw. “Yes.”

“Then tell me where his heart is.”

Kidan shook, and his eyes dropped to her trembling finger, the involuntary drawing of her symbols against her thigh. His own hand moved before it stopped. They both stared at their hands, a few inches apart. One frantic, the brown of the earth, and the other still as death, near onyx. She’d seen his long fingers reach for a jagged blade as easily as an inked pen. His need to spill haunting words or righteous blood overwhelming him. And right now, for a second, he’d reached for her that same way. Like it was instinct, and she belonged in his hands. She’d always wanted to be part of someone’s instinct, their very subconscious. Difficult to shake once she’d taken root. But she couldn’t be part of him. Not safely at least. Not without him taking a lot more from her.

“Yos,” Kidan said, harder now, the water cleared from her voice. “I need to know.”

Susenyos studied her pupils, searching, perhaps hoping she’d drop it, before saying, “Under Adane House. I buried his heart below the dining room.”

Her mouth fell open in surprise.

Of course.

What had he said about Samson once?We remove his heart from his chest and bury it beneath our house.

“Adjoa Piran.” Even saying her name tasted like poison. “Did she order him to do this?”

“The courts found her not guilty. I don’t know why Daric did this.”

Kidan searched his eyes and found only the truth. She nodded, her shoulders dropping. “Why?”

“Greed.” Susenyos’s voice gleamed with violence. “It was the rumor. Someone betrayed them. Spread word Adane House had discovered the Last Sage’s artifact in Axum and Uxlay turned on your parents. Their own vampires turned on them. Thankfully, God gave us Cossia Day to deal with the unworthy.”

Kidan’s eyes widened, recalling the list of Susenyos’s kills she’d read in the library last semester. How he had earned the name Savage Susenyos. Why he was the only dranaic left in Adane House.

“You killed them… one by one.”

There was no mercy in his pupils, one of his twists cutting across his eye like a lethal blade. “Of course.”