Page 53

I NEED YOUR HELP WITH Q UADRANTISM.” K IDAN APPROACHED SUSENYOS’S desk, her shadow falling over his letters.

When he focused, he tapped his pen twice on the period ending a sentence. There was a cadence to his writing, a scratch, a scrawl, a dash, dot, dot, that she liked.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing serious,” she said casually. “Just wanted to know what your purgatory is?” She traced the edge of his desk.

His hand eased on the pen. “You might as well ask me to split my soul and give it to you.”

“Well, if you prefer that, I wouldn’t mind.”

A playful arch found his lips. He rested his pen and came around, closing the space between them.

Kidan drew in a sharp breath when he touched a hand to her inner thigh. His fingers circled lightly, and her chest tightened and loosened. This new dynamic of theirs was strange, and she hated herself for not being repulsed by it.

“What are you doing?” Her voice became breathy.

“You know about the human body’s connection to bite, yes?”

After a pause, “Yes.”

“Which of my thoughts would you glimpse if I bit you here?” Even through her pants, the trail of his fingers was sending shivers of pleasure up her spine.

She caught his wrist. “I don’t know.”

“Sin.”

Her eyes widened at once, making his lip quirk.

“So, you see, that’s the only way to learn the truth.”

She pushed him back slightly, not so much that she couldn’t count his lashes but enough so she could think clearly.

“Or you could just tell me.”

“No, I much prefer this.” His smile was victorious.

She dug her fingers into the underside of the table, concentrating her alarm there. “Because you want to look into my mind as well.”

“Always.”

“You already know what mine is. What I did to Mama Anoet.”

He trailed his index finger along her brows, forcing her to look directly at him. “If I did, there wouldn’t be such a look of terror in your eyes. What is it, yené Roana? What are you hiding?”

She dropped her gaze to his chest. “Nothing.”

As punishment, he removed the warmth of his hand, and she fought the urge to lean forward.

“It’s a pity to fail Dranacti after coming all this way.”

“This is an ask.”

“Then so is mine.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I can imagine your sin anyway. You killed many people.”

His smile revealed his fangs. “We both know there are some acts far worse than death.”

She hated how his eyes bore into hers, reaching deep and pulling out the mangled thoughts that spoke of her debauchery.

He walked to one of his shelves, continuing with his work. Kidan peered out the window, the haunted outlines of the university buildings visible through the trees of Adane House’s grounds. She could hear the corridors rustling with the afternoon wind, the lion-shaped lamps waking to part the shrouding fog. Uxlay held on to its mysteries but demanded that its students peel their flesh apart and bleed. Its ancient stone would only be satiated if it fed on their misery.

Dranacti. A morbid kind of study.

Kidan unbuttoned her pants.

Susenyos’s hand hovered by a scroll. “What are you doing?”

She didn’t give herself time to think. Thinking hurt, and she only wanted relief. She took her pants off and climbed on the high desk, tiptoes barely brushing the floor.

“Like I said, I have an assignment.” That was all this was. An assignment.

Susenyos’s lips tilted as he approached slowly. Eyes locked with hers, he knelt between her legs and carried her thighs on his shoulders. Kidan’s stomach tightened. This felt different from the Bath of Arowa… more intimate. Blood pumped close to her skin. What would they see in each other’s minds?

His tongue touched her skin, and her grip tightened on the corner of the desk.

“I want to learn about you.” He breathed pure fire on her. “The fact that I can glimpse your mind by exploring your body is one of the few things in this wretched world I’m grateful for.”

His words danced in her ear, blurring the room around the edges until the only sensation remaining was his lips on her.

“Don’t judge me, yené Roana,” he warned.

Her thighs contracted when he grazed along a muscle with his fangs.

“I will always judge you.” Her voice came out stilted. “The day I don’t, I want you to kill me.”

He smiled against her skin. “The day you don’t, I’ll want you in my bed.”

Before she could process his words, he bit into her. Hard.

Kidan hissed, sinking her fingers into his coils. She threw her head to the ceiling. Her skull rang with the pain of the bite. Balls of sunlight spun in a furious streak until her eyes rolled to the back of her head. Clipped images flashed in the darkness.

Susenyos, human, boyish. A crown upon his unkempt hair. A court full of people who adored the new but naive emperor.

An attack on the castle walls by monsters who bore fangs. They’d come to drink the blood of the young emperor. An emperor’s death for a country’s freedom. Fair trade. Yet the emperor cowered in the face of death.

He ran, cheated death, and resurrected himself as one of them. He took his revenge and stood half-naked in a throne room, reborn with insatiable hunger. Yet it was not for blood. He craved company, eternal company.

He hunted vampires, imprisoned them, tortured each to relinquish their immortality to his people. The palace bled red as Susenyos forced his court to feast on vampire blood, leaving humanity behind. For six days they slept, then awoke one by one.

The first to wake was a boy with a deep scar along his neck and an injured hand.

Susenyos, dranaic, cruel. Older. A circle of blood running down his forehead. A court full of vampires loyal to their new sire.

The image passed by quickly, years melting into decades as they were on the hunt for something. Revenge. Power. An army of incredible strength behind their emperor as they marched into darkness. The darkness reached back, long fingers of shadows eliciting horrible screams. He’d led them to endless torture.

The scene morphed, the boy king’s eyes red and fixed as the image faded. Kidan touched her temple, fighting the rush of air that always followed the experience.

“Did you see enough?” His voice came from the ocean, murky and wet.

Kidan blinked several times. She regarded the dranaic between her legs. Same boy, yet entirely otherworldly and cruel.

“You said your court died,” she said with heavy breath.

“They did.”

“No—you killed them—” she stammered, thinking of the artifact room, a collection of hundreds of items. “Everyone in your palace. You… forced them to become vampires.”

His eyes were cut open, unflinching in their truth. Lips slick with her blood.

“Yes.”

Kidan couldn’t comprehend the violence of it. “How old were you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Old enough to know better.”

“There’s that judgment.”

She shook her head. “But toward the end… you were all trapped in never-ending pain? What happened?”

“Let’s save that for our next uncomfortable violation of privacy.”

He retrieved a bandage, ripped it open with his teeth, and placed it on the bite marks. Kidan dressed slowly, trying to read what else he hid. He took out his flask and drank deeply. He must not be satiated. Then why stop? Was it because he didn’t want her to see any more? Could he control how much she saw?

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I saw in your mind?” he asked, wiping his mouth.

Panic beat in her heart, a pathetic bird feeding on her last secret. She moved to the floor-to-ceiling window, a spatter of rain and condensation bringing in a sudden cold, making her rub her arms. In the reflection, she saw him as a sentient shadow, one that was getting too close.

“Are we so different?” he murmured, coming to stand behind her, chest brushing against her back. The goose bumps of her skin evaporated at his touch, a jolt of warmth curling her toes.

Her body kept betraying her. Even now when she wanted to leave, it wouldn’t move, reacting to his presence without her control.

“Go on,” he said against her back. “Ask me.”

Her throat closed, but she pushed against it. “What did you see?”

“You want to stop,” he whispered. “You want to let her go.”

Kidan braced against the rolling ache. June’s long lashes and full smile filled her vision. It no longer brought relief from her anxiety but called it.

“That’s not true,” she said as no more than a reflex. There was little point in lying to him now. “The 13th took her, and we’re going to find her. Rufeal’s dead… so that’s a good start.”

She was still looking, doing something. But it had been weeks since she watched June’s videos, and in the memory of her she found not joy but punishment. Restriction.

“You targeted Rufeal for June, no other reason?” he asked.

Kidan said nothing.

“You chose to save Slen but punished Rufeal. Slen is complicit in murder and a member of the 13th, so why?”

Kidan’s brows drew together. She folded herself inward.

“I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“Then stop talking,” she said.

He sighed against the back of her head. Kidan relaxed again, following the rain pattern on the window; the swirls and blots of gray mirrored her mind. He was asking her to make sense of it, smooth out the intertwined webs.

“You want to know why I haven’t killed Slen.” Even saying the words felt like acid.

But even Kidan didn’t understand it. Why were these new friends different? Why was she allowing them to mold and fit themselves around her life? At first, it’d been to investigate them, but very soon she’d glimpsed the smudges of darkness that lingered around their souls. The Scales of Sovane test proved that. They’d been willing to let their partners fail to progress. She should have distanced herself then. Yet if these students were a little broken as she was, could they help her?

“The rules of your world bend and break for them. It’s dangerous, yené Roana.” His voice tickled her ear. “You need to find your reasons. They’re the only thing we can use to guide us.”

He shifted his cheek against hers, and she loathed how delicious it felt. In his touch, she found herself unraveling one twisted thread, making sense of it.

“If I give in to my reasons, they’d tell me to leave my friends. I can’t be alone again.” Her brows drew together in concentration. “They make me question what’s right and wrong. None of them are who I think they are. Slen is all sharp edges until you see her taking care of her brother. Yusef is light, but every time he picks up a pencil, darkness possesses him. Then there’s GK. He views the world in a pure way. I’m curious about his faith. I want to see if he keeps it. I… want to see what our friendship becomes.”

Susenyos was quiet for a beat. “I’ve seen the peace they give you.”

Kidan turned, almost laughing.

“Peace? No one gives me that. I don’t think I’ll ever have peace. I’m just trying to avoid more pain.”

His expression caught shadows. “No, I’ve seen you. In the courtyards or cafés, you listen to them talk, and there’s this ease to your features that I don’t see anywhere else.”

Kidan frowned, gazing at him from under her lashes. When had he been watching?

“You and I have looked into each other’s minds, yet you still don’t feel at ease with me. Why?” As he spoke, he cocked his head, black eyes searching, pulling the truth out of her.

“You don’t carry doubt in your violence,” she whispered. “You don’t question or regret your murders. I’ll never feel at ease with you because doubt is the only thing that makes me human.”

The backs of his fingers traced the spine of her ear. Letting his voice pour into her like silk, she no longer fought her body.

“You shouldn’t fear the madness you keep company during the night, but the chaos of the day. You expect me to hurt you, so you guard yourself—but leave yourself defenseless against others. When will you recognize that humans are the most despicable creatures to exist?”

When she didn’t respond, his eyes lingered for a moment, and then he returned to his desk. A chill snaked up her back and along her neck and settled like a noose. He’d given words to the thoughts that found her alone, haunting her with the question of what horror awaited them, and if they could be saved at all.