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A DANE H OUSE HELD DIFFERENT PARTS OF K IDAN’S MIND, AND SHE became many souls as she traveled through it. The front door pulled anger, the kitchen pulsed with longing, the hallways crowded with grief. Sometimes she leaned against a wall and let sadness engulf her, pouring into her like a relentless waterfall, before a creak from elsewhere reminded her to keep walking.

There were good thoughts too. The corner bedroom indulged her fantasy. She imagined a kind woman’s smile in the vanity, felt the invisible suits in an empty closet, replaced the scent of wood and dust with skin and perfume. It unsettled her how deeply she longed for her dead family.

Then there was his room. She sat across from it when he wasn’t there, like now, and stared it down like a stubborn pet. Shadows from his scrolls rested against her feet, the stories of many women calling her in. Kidan reached out a hand and touched the door. Unlike the first day she entered it, there was now a horrifying yet distinct absence of hatred in its space.

Why? This room had killed hundreds, this room took June, this room… invited her in.

She had a sense that if she simply crossed into that room, the weight on her chest would ease.

See ? June’s voice echoed. It’s because you are like them.

Kidan shuddered at the coldness. This wasn’t the real June.

On the wall, the house law shimmered, taunting her.

IF SUSENYOS SAGAD ENDANGERS ADANE HOUSE, THE HOUSE SHALL IN TURN STEAL SOMETHING OF EQUAL VALUE TO HIM.

What did “Adane House” mean to her parents? Etete said Susenyos was desperate to change the law, and by how persistent he was in his suffering in the observatory room, Kidan assumed that something of value had been taken from him. It left her circling around to the same question.… What did Susenyos value the most?

“What are you doing?” A low earthy voice echoed.

Kidan startled. Susenyos stood at the end of the hallway. She hadn’t heard him come in.

“I was just leaving,” she replied unsteadily, but made no move to stand. Her legs were still heavy. How long had she been here? Time warped itself here.

Susenyos approached slowly, studying her for a moment before taking a seat next to her. He felt solid, a sudden wall against the dark hallway, so her grief ebbed and flowed like a current. Warning pulsed through her. Perhaps it wasn’t only his room. He affected the spaces of this house. The spaces of her mind.

“Don’t sit next to me,” Kidan said, sliding away from him.

“I’m afraid I must. Etete won’t forgive me if I walk away from a dying girl looking so pitiful.”

“I’m fine.” She stared ahead, eyes glassy. He, on the other hand, kept watching her.

Time stretched into eons, and she sank deeper into the loss of it all. She let her eyes shut. There would be no end to this pain.

“I didn’t drink from June.” He sighed, making her lift her lashes. “I don’t know how her bracelet got in my drawer. I don’t know why your foster mother evoked my name. So I will say this once and never again, because I have spent my entire life accused and judged and I refuse to prove myself to anyone.” His unwavering coal gaze held hers. “I did not take, harm, or kill June.”

Her body went numb with the words, blood pumping in her ears. He’d never said it this plainly before and never this genuinely.

Kidan stared at the floor. “Why are you telling me this now? After all this time?”

His expression was unreadable. “To ease your mind, if we are to work together.”

A wave of suspicion rolled through her. June’s eyes flashed with warning. The carpet rippled under her. It grew wet, and she lifted her hand to see blood. She wiped it furiously on her lap, but after a moment, nothing was there.

“I don’t think it’s helping,” she admitted, knees shaking.

He studied the light curtains swaying in his room as if he could hear them speak. “It’s normal to feel the house more the longer you reside in it. It heightens your emotions, so you must work to control them.”

He shut his eyes, lashes resting against smooth skin, as if he was doing just that.

Kidan’s head lifted to the flickering hanging lights above them, souls on the verge of being extinguished. She was back there, in her apartment, in the unbearable silence, with the scratching of paper and the stove being lit. An unending loop with no way to break free. The world grew dark around the edges again, her lungs working twice as hard.

The scrolls of his room grew longer shadows and stretched along her feet with a new wave of moonlight. The tendrils wrapped along her ankles, gentle as a mother’s touch, and encouraged her to speak without her will.

“I can feel June here. Mama Anoet should have protected us.” Kidan’s voice shook with the effort to keep the words to herself.

She felt it again.

That unbearable need to cry and cry until she dissolved into nothing but water. It built inside her like a volcano, but her eyes couldn’t find the emotion. She hadn’t cried since Mama Anoet’s death. What kind of monster didn’t mourn their mother?

Susenyos watched her intently; the weak lamp above them flickered again, washing them in extreme dark and light. Silence yawned between them.

Kidan met his eyes slowly. They had gathered the lamp’s glow. He blinked, and they settled into their darkness.

“Those we expect to protect us often fail us,” he said, jaw hard. “We must find a way to survive on our own.”

On our own. Kidan thought about being on her own. Without June. Alone in that apartment. Even the thought wounded deeper than any blade. There was no life in that loneliness, was there?

Behind his shoulder, June’s face shimmered. Her lips bled red, and blood ran down her chin, her face cut in fear. The dying lamp fought like hell overhead. The shadowy man came again, hovering by June’s neck. Kidan’s face contorted in pain, a sudden force squeezing her body. Air faded from her lungs at once, and she gasped aloud.

Take me instead.

The light switched on and off. On and off.

“Kidan?” Susenyos sounded too close.

Take me. Take me.

The lamp struggled and she struggled with it. Kidan’s breathing followed. On. Off. On. Off.

She clawed at her chest, digging at her hummingbird heart, but the tension only tightened and tightened. The lamp became erratic, ready to burst. Kidan wanted to scream, but her mouth could only gape soundlessly.

Off.

Susenyos led her into his dark room. She swallowed huge gulps of air, but it didn’t reach her lungs.

“Kidan,” he said urgently. “You need to breathe.”

“My chest… It’s too tight.” She gasped in painful bursts.

“Kidan, if you don’t calm down, you’ll pass out.”

She started to scream.

A wretched, agonizing scream that poured out of her in earth-shattering waves. It was a scream for Mama Anoet and June. A scream for all the blackened parts of her soul. A scream for someone dying—because she was.

Her nails dug into flesh, tight around his forearm, the same way she had killed that bird and drained its life away.

Susenyos tensed at the contact but remained in place, solid and unbreakable, so that all of her assaults landed on him.

Breathe.

The house allowed her mind another fantasy, a moment to trick her body into calm waters. This wasn’t Susenyos Sagad she braced against. It was reprieve, in the shape of monster or human, it hardly mattered. It was her fault to have let it get this rampant. Back home, she’d listened to June’s videos to control her panic attacks. She could never predict them. Months would go by where she was completely fine, then she’d be keeling over in a grocery aisle. But in this house, she suffered alone with nothing to alleviate her pain.

“Kidan?” His voice reached her through the pocket of the universe they’d cut into.

He still hadn’t stepped back, his form towering over her.

“Why… why are you helping me?”

“You need to control your emotions,” he said, voice burning low. “It’s starting to affect the house. Me.”

She was glad the dark hid his face. For all she knew, she held on to death itself. Yes, death. This way, she could rest her body a little longer. Death was warm. She’d expected it to be like the ocean at night, cold and unforgiving.