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T HE HALLWAY’S CARPET RIPPLED LIKE A TONGUE, SALIVATING FOR Kidan to step forward, and were those… eyes staring at her? Her pulse jumped to her throat, and she grabbed her door, ready to shut it, when the cry came again. Someone in agonizing pain.

Kidan gritted her teeth and stepped into the dark, her skin prickling at once. Unsettling warm breath fanned her neck, raising hair along her back. Her body jerked. She knew this monster. After her parents died, it’d visited her night after night until Mama Anoet slayed the beast. How had it found her again? She whirled around, and the foul breath vanished.

“Who’s there?” she shouted.

Only her voice echoed down the hall.

“Get a grip,” she muttered to herself.

The pained shout came again, and this time it was a man in torture, suppressing grunts. Kidan descended the stairs, following the sound to a room she’d explored and dismissed because it featured nothing but draped furniture pushed aside. What distinguished it was that it branched out from the main house, and it had a domed glass ceiling. Kidan guessed it served as an observatory.

At this hour, the moon was at its highest point, washing the entire space in a deep ocean glow.

A shadowed figure was on its knees. Susenyos, bare chested, mouth agape in a silent scream. He stared at the night stars with fogged pupils. Kidan stepped forward, eyes widening.

What the hell…

“No.” Etete appeared out of nowhere, making Kidan flinch. “Don’t go in there.”

Kidan clutched at her pounding heart. The woman hurried to drape Susenyos with the blanket she’d brought and helped him to the hallway.

“I’ll get some water,” she said, and disappeared around the corner.

Sweat dotted Susenyos’s forehead, and his shoulders shook as he checked his watch. When he realized Kidan was there, he went still. His eyes returned to themselves, burning like night fire.

“Did you come into the room?” he demanded.

She crossed her arms, still confused about what was happening. “What if I did?”

Susenyos moved toward her, the blanket dropping from his muscled shoulders. He placed his hands on either side of her head, trapping her. Kidan’s chest rose and fell in sync with Susenyos’s labored breathing.

“My bloodlust is uncontrollable in that room. If I find you in there”—he leaned into her neck and inhaled deeply, making her stiffen—“you will die.”

His scent was too sharp, summer rain and wet earth. Moonlight rippled across his contracting dark muscles, the power in them vast and threatening. Kidan grew aware of her vulnerability, her body’s softness. What chance did June have? June, who cried when a spider was killed. Kidan’s fingers danced in a pathetic rhythm. Susenyos glanced down and stepped back, satisfied he’d scared her.

She was just preparing to snap at him when… June materialized, honeyed eyes creased in a smile, standing behind him.

The ground fell away.

“June?” she squeaked.

Her sister’s image faded like a candle blown out.

Susenyos’s smirk was slow, knowing. “I assume it’s beginning.”

Kidan shook her head. What was going on with her?

“You can’t stay in this house without paying the price.”

“What price?” she bit.

His laughter rumbled low in his throat. “You’ll see.”

Kidan stormed away from him, roaming the hallway, searching for what, exactly, she didn’t know until… June’s ghost was there again, speaking without sound, ignoring the shadowy figure behind her back.

Kidan squeezed her eyes shut. This was just that same nightmare. Kidan always behind a window, pounding furiously, her warnings fading into inaudibility, a vampire reaching for June’s neck, brushing blood on her lips with his thumb, burying his head in her exposed neck.

“ Kidan! ” June screamed.

Kidan whirled around, heart jackhammering against her rib cage, in her throat. She slapped herself in the face, two quick raps to make sure she was awake.

“Kidan? Hurry!” June shouted once again, loud and clear. Kidan nearly face-planted in the darkness of the hall, running from wall to wall. But it was as if her sister was imprisoned behind the plaster, and if Kidan could just claw through, she’d find her.

“June!” Kidan’s yell echoed loudly.

“Kidan. You never want to do these videos with me.”

Kidan slowed. She knew this recording, had deleted it from June’s videos. She never wanted to hear it again—so how was it playing clearly in this hall?

“My sister doesn’t like cameras. Anyway, where was I? Right. My parasomnia has gotten worse.

“I haven’t told anyone except my sister, but I think there’s someone following me. For the first few weeks I thought I was imagining it, because they kept disappearing whenever I checked. But one of my friends noticed it too, and ever since then, I can’t concentrate on anything. I see that shadow everywhere.”

The fear in her voice broke Kidan apart, and she clamped her hands over her ears.

“Stop!”

“ You have to take your medicine ,” Kidan said.

“You don’t believe me.”

“Of course I do. But you’ve been seeing things all your life, June. How do you know if this is…”

“Real?”

Silence.

“ I know what I saw ,” June said, angry.

“We’re safe, June. I promise you that. Just please take these.”

A rattle of pills being exchanged.

The sound rolled down the walls and echoed in the lamps, turning them erratic.

“Stop,” Kidan managed weakly as she sank to her knees. She couldn’t bear to hear this.

Footsteps echoed closer to her. The shadowy shape had come to take her too. A frowning boy squatted before her. Ice shot through her when she remembered who it was.

Susenyos cocked his head, checking his watch. “Barely a minute.”

She hid her face from him. “What are you doing?”

He brushed her braids away, lifting her chin to delight in her pain. “It seems I was worried for nothing. You are not strong enough to master this house.”

She slapped his hand away, focusing on his face, her gaze darting from his eyebrow to the middle of his forehead and then to his chin and back—again and again. In a chaos of triangles. Anger repressed the fear.

“Leave Uxlay,” he warned. “Or this will only be the beginning.”

He walked away, stealing the anger from her, and leaving only thick air. Kidan drowned. Time grew endless, the silence ate away at her flesh, and the world, already bleak, darkened entirely.

This loneliness was so potent, so violent, that she clawed at her beating heart for a moment of reprieve. She had to end it now. Her bracelet, her pill. A soft hiss escaped from the charm as the clasp broke.

Warm hands and soft skin found her, and Kidan felt herself being dragged, led upstairs, settled on her comfortable bed. For a moment, she thought it was Mama Anoet, and she wanted to weep. Her room cleared her thoughts like a wet rag.

Etete returned with a plate of wheat bread. “Eat. You’ll feel better.”

Kidan chewed the soft crust and whispered, “What’s happening to me?”

Etete’s tone was heavy. “The house is echoing your mind.”

Dean Faris had mentioned something similar, but this? This was far from what she’d imagined.

“Does it affect you as well?” Kidan’s voice became haunted.

“Yes. But you two have suffered great loss, and so the house weighs on you more heavily. It returns whatever you feel. Different rooms represent different emotions. It’ll get better.”

Kidan thought of the observatory, the coldness leaking from it. Susenyos on his knees, in agony even though he was alone.

“Does he go in there often?”

Etete’s mouth thinned. “I told him to let me know before he does. One day, I fear I’ll be too late. So I’ll give you the same advice. Never stay in the hallways for long.”

“Hallways?”

“Yes, they hold your pain now.”

Kidan would rather climb out her window than do that again. Her brows met. “But why does he go in there?”

“To be a master of a house, there are many steps you must go through. The first is to conquer all parts of your mind.”

Her eyes widened slowly. Dean Faris had conveniently left this information out. Probably because she’d gathered Kidan would never have entered this place if she’d known. Kidan’s worst enemy was her mind. How was she meant to survive this?

“What’s the second step?”

“I believe the house shares its body with you, grants you some of its strength. I’m afraid I don’t know details. Only Professor Andreyas knows the true art of it.” Etete’s voice carried grief then. “Susenyos has worked for years to change the present law.”

“What is the house law?” she asked suddenly, remembering Dean Faris’s instruction.

“I’m afraid I don’t know. Only potential heirs can read it.”

If Susenyos was putting himself through hell to master this house, it had to be pretty important.

The law will be hidden in the room you least want to visit.

Skewering her mouth, she stared at the rippling hallway.

“Can you help me? In case it gets too much? I need to find out the law.”

Etete’s eyes creased, a tone of defeat in her words. “I will. Just like I helped your mother.”

Kidan’s head jerked up. The portrait of her mother flashed before her. High forehead, sharp eyes, and hair like June, soft in texture and curling at the end. A resigned, careful look leveled at every observer as if she had walked through life with undeniable purpose. A cold wave of numbness spread through the room. Kidan averted her gaze from the kind woman. A part of her wanted to ask more, but what point was there in that? Her mother was dead. And knowing if she was a gentle singer like June, horrible at cooking, or good with her hands like Kidan would only make the loss more potent. Her chest already ached enough.

She tightened her jaw and cleared the image. Refocused. This house law, whatever the hell it was, held Susenyos’s secrets. Perhaps it even held June.