R AMYN. ” K IDAN GLARED AT S USENYOS IN THE LIVING ROOM.

“Yes? Do you want to accuse me of something?” Susenyos lowered his book, eyes filling with light and anger.

No. Dean Faris had been very clear. She clamped her lips together and shook with the effort not to scream.

His gaze took on a satisfied glint. “Good. Dean Faris won’t be happy about this personal vendetta of yours. We can’t have everyone thinking I’m capable of such a grotesque murder. But perhaps you are, yené Roana.”

That name again. From Kidan’s limited knowledge of Amharic, she now knew “yené” meant “my,” and she’d learned that Roana was the lead character in the twisted Mad Lovers book he was always reading.

Roana was abandoned outside a church for her unholy thoughts. She’d sought men and women with the hunger of a starved wild animal. Caught after a murder, she’d been dragged to the priests to be purged. She pleaded with the night stars for a new heart, and the heavens granted it. She left to live in an abandoned village, smothering any traces of her violent urges with solitude. It didn’t last. The story truly kicked off when she hid a young man wanted for massacring a nearby village. His name was Matir, and he carried his own darkness.

Kidan didn’t understand why Susenyos was so fascinated by this story. It was grotesque—and worse, he associated her with it.

My Roana.

Her eyes turned to slits. “Don’t call me that.”

“Why? Do you know what it means?” His voice was teasing.

“It’s not my name.”

“I see, little bird.”

“Don’t call me that either.” She gritted her teeth.

A shadow of a smile curved his lips as he turned to the fireplace, warming himself. “If you’re going to kill an acti, there are many more pleasurable ways to do it.”

Her voice threaded with horror. “You mean drain their blood.”

She didn’t need to see his face to know he was smiling. He opened his golden flask and drank.

“Only a fool wastes precious acti blood. There are so few of you.”

Kidan’s vision became transfixed on that flask, a new panic launching her heart. Whose blood was that? Susenyos had no companions, and Aunt Silia was dead. Could it be June’s blood?

Her fingers became erratic, her vision blurred. Evidence. She had to get that flask to the chief detective.

For a couple of days, Kidan studied Susenyos’s drinking pattern. She noted exactly when and where he drank from the flask. He drank whenever she walked into a room where he was, insulted him, and, especially, brushed past him. They gave each other enough space to avoid the matter, but sometimes they accidentally reached for a doorknob and touched, at which point he’d glare and drink. Then he’d return the flask to his chest pocket. The only time he lost possession of it was when he went for his daily “soak” in the prohibited Southern Sost Buildings. At that point, he’d leave it on top of his dresser. Every single day, this was the routine.

Kidan carefully stole it on the third day, making sure her fingertips weren’t on it.

She gripped it so tightly that if she was one of them , it would have dented. Her nose moved toward it as if, like a hound, she’d be able to smell her sister’s blood.

The chief detective took it with a gloved hand and deposited it in a sealed bag.

“It will take some time,” he told her.

Kidan nodded. She didn’t know if she wanted it to be June’s blood or not. Either way, she’d have an answer soon.