Page 43

D RASTFORT P RISON REMINDED K IDAN OF HER OWN ARREST. S HE stood at the entrance, finding it hard to cross. She was back there again, the night of burning skin, handcuffs on her wrists, throat raw from smoke inhalation.

She’d been human up until she crossed the threshold of the police station, at which point she became an animal, pushed, goaded, and thrown in a cage. Hair frizzed, body dirty, soul scarred. Wide-eyed and waiting within cramped walls.

Kidan had never loathed herself so potently as she had in that cage.

“You coming in?” an officer called from within the dim chamber.

Kidan shook herself and crossed the threshold, lungs constricted. “I’m here to visit Omar Umil.”

The officer had the eyes of a hawk. “Purpose of visit?”

“He’s an old family friend.”

“You can sit inside the waiting area.”

An hour later, she was allowed in. Omar Umil was a man of sixty, brown skin dotted with blemishes and a gray beard. He sat across the table, attention on the ceiling corner.

“Hello.” Kidan glanced at the corner. There was an elaborate spiderweb, nothing else. “Thank you for finally seeing me.”

He said nothing.

“I have some questions for you, if you don’t mind. I know you were—”

“That web,” he cut in, voice rougher than sandpaper. “Bring me some of it.”

“Sorry?”

Omar Umil stared at the corner again.

“Why?”

No answer.

“This is really important, if you can give me a minute of your time—”

“The web first.”

Kidan tightened her jaw. She stood, dragged one of the chairs to the corner, reached high, and shook her fingers through the web, wrapping it like cotton candy before depositing the tattered mess into his large hands.

She rubbed her hands clean. “So, my questions. I want to talk about the 13th.”

This time, he lifted his attention from the ball of web. Something like recognition flickered in his heavy-lidded eyes. “Kidan Adane. Silia’s niece. Mahlet and Aman’s daughter.”

Kidan blinked in surprise. She thought so infrequently of her biological parents, it was a shock when others brought them up. The sadness of it, she didn’t like. The distance of it, she didn’t like.

Omar Umil studied her features, taking note of her eyebrows, hooded eyes, the straight slant of her nose, different colored lips.

“Where is your sister?”

Kidan straightened. “June?”

“Yes, June,” he recalled. “Your family was the smallest in Uxlay, so much canvas space. Easy to paint, but difficult not to feel the lives lost. Two grandparents, two parents, two children.”

“Only the two children now,” she said quietly. “The rest of the family is dead. June is missing. That’s why I’m here.”

The frown on his face appeared genuine.

“I think the 13th or Susenyos Sagad had something to do with June’s disappearance. I just don’t know how they connect.” Kidan leaned in. “Please, if you know anything, tell me.”

Umil fell silent, rolled his web ball back and forth, back and forth.

Kidan pushed. “I need to know what they want. You were part of their group. What happened?”

His face shifted like the surface of a black lake. “The 13th promise a new structure within our society. A man should be able to set his own laws within his house, to protect himself and his family first, not Uxlay. That’s what they spew.”

Kidan’s brows drew together. Dean Faris had spoken about the importance of all houses uniting as one, with the same protection law so no outsider could infiltrate Uxlay. So the 13th wanted each house to be a separate entity… but why risk making the university vulnerable?

“They are a poison, and Uxlay is infested from within.” He spat, startling her. “Loyal houses are falling to their movement, and dranaics are scheming.”

The pressure increased on the ball of web, flattening it entirely.

“I know what they call House Umil: the Slaughterhouse. But they were spies, almost all of them. They infested my house, where my wife and son ate and slept. I had to remove them. They swore companionship but plotted against me.”

Kidan understood the madness that clung to him. That need to remove the stain of those who betrayed you. It visited her often.

“What happened after?”

His tone only soured as he spoke. “They needed me to be the butcher. To prove their principle that the laws should first protect every member of a household and its dranaics. That the threat was greater inside Uxlay than from outside it.”

Kidan’s skin prickled. The 13th were appealing to both actis and dranaics, reeling them in for a revolution, promising them a chance to wield the powers of houses. This had to be why they hated Susenyos. He was named inheritor of a Founding House and wouldn’t listen to their agendas.

“How many houses have joined now?” Omar Umil asked.

“Four, as far as I can tell—Ajtaf, Makary, Qaros, Delarus—but the 13th seem to want more.”

He laughed, a rough, gutting sound. “The House Makary vermin. Of course. They’ve been after my house for years.”

A sense of injustice ballooned in her chest. Rufeal Makary’s gleaming eyes flashed before her mind. Did Omar Umil know they were coming for his son?

“Do you think the 13th took June?”

Umil’s eyes darted around the room, corner to corner. It wouldn’t be unsettling if Kidan hadn’t displayed the same pattern with the taps of her fingers. Like her, he was disbelieved, a murderer, abandoned by his family. Was this where she would finally end up if she wasn’t careful?

“The 13th need an heiress for House Adane,” he said. “A house by itself is useless. It can’t cast powerful laws or pledge allegiance. If they have your sister, she’s alive.”

An heiress for House Adane. If that was why they took June, had Kidan somehow ruined their plan when she arrived in Uxlay?

“Where would they keep her?” she asked urgently.

“It could be anywhere.”

Kidan dug out Aunt Silia’s journal and the patterns and lines Kidan had drawn herself. At one end was Ramyn Ajtaf and at the other was Koril Qaros. She needed help connecting them, making sense of everything. She showed it to him.

“Ramyn Ajtaf was sick and looking for a life exchange. The 13th came to her rescue, saying they’d get her a life exchange—before they killed her.”

His eyes held grief, fingers gently touching the words of Ramyn’s funeral address. “Helen’s daughter.”

“No, Reta’s daughter.” Kidan had studied the Ajtaf family tree carefully.

Umil said nothing. After a moment, Kidan continued. “I was thinking about why they’d kill her. Ramyn was innocent, liked by almost everyone. A lot of houses were outraged by her death, and some, like House Delarus, even joined the 13th, thinking they needed more protection.”

Umil’s lips twisted. “Each death is calculated by the 13th. It needs to serve not one but two purposes.”

What had Ramyn’s death achieved besides luring in other houses?

“Here’s what I don’t understand. Koril Qaros was arrested for Ramyn’s murder. He’s a 13th member. Why turn on him?”

Umil shook his head. “Koril has inherited Qaros House. The 13th need that slippery snake. They’ll get him out before the day ends.”

“But they haven’t let him out. He’s still in prison.”

At this, Umil drew his elbows inward. “When did they arrest him?”

“Three days ago.”

“Days?” He studied the name on the paper as if it held the secrets. “That can’t be right.”

“That’s what I thought. Why would the 13th abandon one of their own?”

Kidan’s frustration returned. She was on the tip of something, but every time she tried to grab on, it slithered out of her reach.

Umil drew the journal forward, muttering to himself. “Koril is one of their strongest. Cunning. Smart enough to kill while standing in a room full of people. Why abandon him now? What are they planning?”

Kidan’s ears perked up. “Wait. You said a house by itself is useless, that it needs an inheritor, right? If the 13th only care about true owners… what about Koril’s children?”

“The siblings?” He mulled this over while Kidan’s throat grew parched. “Have they passed Dranacti?”

“One is in my group. She’s intelligent, on her way to passing.”

Umil’s black eyes pierced hers. “Then they’ll have their Qaros heiress.”

That would mean… She stared right at Yusef’s father. Breathing became difficult as she leaned back. He had said something else that now pulsed in her ears.

Smart enough to kill while standing in a room full of people.

Slen had stood with them in that tower as Ramyn Ajtaf plummeted to her death. A death that imprisoned Slen’s abusive father.

“No.” Kidan ruffled through the journal. “I must be wrong somewhere. Slen wouldn’t—couldn’t—be part of their group.”

She went over her past suspicions. There could be other reasons why the 13th needed Koril framed and arrested. She just had to find them. But her handwriting became difficult to read, her fingers tapping. Square. Square. Triangle. Square.

Umil studied her quietly, reaching over to stop her jittery hand.

“Leave.”

“What?”

“Leave Uxlay. Today. They’ll know we’ve spoken, and they will kill you.”

Kidan withdrew her hand. “I can’t leave. My sister, my classmates. They’re in danger.”

Miserable silence suffocated them.

“I wrote that I’m in a study group with Yusef.… You haven’t asked me about him,” she said quietly.

Umil turned his head away. “There’s nothing to ask.”

“Why do you all do that?” Kidan’s voice lashed out. “Why does every parent I know harm their child? Why give birth to us, why raise us, only to abandon us? You can’t blame us when we try to hurt you in turn—you’re meant to protect us. Yet…”

She bit the inside of her cheek. Slen’s father had led Slen to this. Mama Anoet had led Kidan to this.

“Family loyalty.” Kidan’s nostrils flared hot. “What a lie it all is.”

It was possible she wasn’t angry at him but at her recent discovery. The safe space she’d foolishly found was losing its very gravity.

Slen.

Out of everyone, why did it have to be Slen?

She gathered her things quickly, the need to know for certain unbearable.

“Kidan,” Omar Umil called out when she reached the door. “Protect my son. If he passes Dranacti, he’ll be first in line to inherit. Yusef will refuse to join the 13th, and they won’t let that happen. Do you understand?” Umil waited until she nodded. “In my house, under the basement floorboards, five squares from the top left corner, there’s a box with a lock on it. The key is under it. There are some weapons. Use them. Destroy all silver from your house first. It gives vampires too much power if it touches their blood.”

Kidan was stunned and grateful. “I… will.”

Yusef would always be safe with her. She didn’t abandon those she cared about.

The problem was Slen Qaros. Slen’s flat eyes struck Kidan, followed by Ramyn’s soft brown ones. Her heart ripped in two. One half led to destroying all traces of evil and earning forgiveness. Everything Kidan came here to achieve. The other led to a slippery, dangerous hope that her torn, wretched soul had finally found its twin. In a girl who wore fingerless gloves, no less.