Page 99 of Eternal Ruin

Slen spoke with a clenched tone. “I don’t want peace if it means surrendering my legacy.”

Susenyos had always suspected Slen Qaros had a keen mind and an even steelier heart. A thing great warriors were made out of. If she had been on Kidan’s side, the two would have been unstoppable.

Yusef sprawled backward on the curb, pressing his fists to his eyes.

Iniko climbed onto the window. Silent as a shadow. “It’s our lucky day. That makes one more acti for the Nefrasi.”

“Not him.”

She frowned. “He would be an easy recruit.”

“Yes,” Susenyos said, watching the pathetic boy. “But she needs him. Needs them both.”

Iniko’s gaze pierced his side. “Kidan?”

The question was full of disapproval.

“I should have let you pull out her heart at the Acti Gala,” Iniko said, not entirely joking.

“What a tragedy that would have been.” His lip twitched. “Thank you for tempering me.”

Iniko blew out a breath. “Taj tempers you. I encourage you.”

“And what would your encouragement have me do?”

Her sharp cheekbones flexed. “Find out if you can truly trust her.”

“And what if I can’t?” he said truthfully, leaning heavily on the wall.

He smiled when Iniko repeated something she once said to him across a battlefield, facing a creature with white hair.

“Then let’s dance with the blades and hope we don’t bleed.”

There is no such thing as companionship. No equal footing when one’s fate is to be the lamb, and the other’s, the lion.

The only true power actis have is their house. Inside their walls, they are no lamb, but a dragon. And a dragon doesn’t give away its blood without a price.

There is a hierarchy, older than time itself—the human serves the vampire and the vampire serves the master. Any deviation from this results in catastrophe.

The true test of a master is how many laws they can take on. How easily they can force vampires to their knees. How their will commands all wills.

Are you the master or the vampire? If you’re the human, you’re already dead.

—“On the Hierarchy of Vampires, Houses, and Humans,”Aseracti

36.

KIDAN

Kidan knocked on the door to Susenyos’s quarters with a bag of her own blood.

His room was number 28, down the hallway of the beautiful ornate paintings. She no longer shuddered at the tortured portraits blanketing the path, but felt welcomed by them. This place was for the macabre and beautiful, a golden palace of immortals. And she’d begun to carve a place for herself here and she wouldn’t run scared. When she passed the blood courting room, she touched her shoulder, unable to help herself. Feeling his bite.

She hadn’t wanted to visit this place for all the memories it stored. More than once she had let Susenyos see a part of herself no one else did. Vulnerable in the Bath of Arowa, on her knees before the other dranaics, intimate during Cossia Day.

The only reason she went to him now was to steal back a little control.

June was actively avoiding her, hurrying across the courtyard, exiting the house the moment Kidan entered, leaving her all alone again. Sometimes, Kidan wondered how easy everything would be if June wasn’t in her life. To forget her completely. More than once, she had picked up her phone to delete June’s old videos. But couldn’t do it. They were the only proof Kidan had. She hadn’t imagined the love her sister had for her.