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I N HER M YTHOLOGY AND M ODERNITY CLASS, K IDAN HAD RESEARCHED a selfish and lonely god. To decorate his empty heaven, he scoured the earth for the purest hearts that shone like stars and collected them into his pockets. He left the wicked and corrupt to rot among themselves on earth. To ensure that they wouldn’t join his heaven, he gave them three lives instead of one, as death was the only way to be free of their world. They survived miraculous feats, these vile men impervious to death, and rained terror upon innocents. Her paper had explored evil’s tenacity, its ability to survive.

But Tamol Ajtaf would have served as a much better study. Crushed lungs, broken collarbone, head injury. Alive.

Well, mostly. A coma had to be induced because of the excruciating pain, but it was hoped he would eventually recover with the gradual aid of dranaic blood.

Both of them lay in Uxlay’s Rojit Hospital. Kidan’s body hurt like bruised fruit but was healing. She’d be out that night. The nurses told her several times how lucky she’d been. All she felt was out of luck.

“We need to talk to Yusef.” Kidan stood next to Slen in the cemetery. “We have a common enemy. So we need to tell one another everything.”

Slen had iced Kidan out, ignoring all her calls, since she learned that Titus had been killed.

“Confess to Yusef?” Slen said, incredulous. “No.”

They stood there until the waking sun dipped behind a cloud, casting shade on their skin and lengthening their shadows. Ramyn Ajtaf’s grave was littered with fresh flowers. Kidan had come here on purpose so Slen couldn’t escape her.

“I was thinking about why I don’t hate you, Slen. For days after you told me the truth, I waited to feel a sense of rage, disgust, anything. Out of everyone, you deserve my hate the most for what you did to Ramyn.”

Last night, Kidan engaged in one of her secret rituals. She’d pulled out the Woman in Blue picture, Rufeal’s blood casting two dried, morbid lines across it, and curled Ramyn’s scarf around her fingers, smelling the girl’s peach perfume. She needed to get rid of these mementos but couldn’t. She’d lain Mama Anoet’s bracelet next to them, wondering if these objects were true companions of one another, losing herself in the violence of it all.

Susenyos had made her see it. The traitorous peace to be found in violence. The path forward.

“I want to hate you, Slen.”

Slen’s focus fell on the headstone’s epitaph— Death is not the end . “Why don’t you?”

Kidan released a defeated sigh. “Because I understand you. I know you don’t enjoy what you’ve done. You were desperate. Willing to do anything to save yourself and your brother.” Her voice tightened. “Because you are me, Slen.”

Kidan’s chest tore open, spilling her soul.

“You’re an anomaly, Kidan.” Slen’s brows drew in. “I don’t know what to do with you.”

Kidan’s lips lifted in a ghost of a smile.

Slen tipped her head skyward, softening her cheeks. Wind picked up, chilling them. “All right.”

“All right?”

“Let’s try it your way. Death seems unable to touch you. Maybe we can all survive this.”

Gathered in their private tower room without GK, the three of them appeared insignificant against the weight of the bricks and stone of Uxlay.

After Rufeal’s murder, Yusef had shrunk into himself the most. For instance, he’d taken to washing his hands longer than necessary yet always smelled of disinfectant. Without an anchor, his erratic actions would swallow him into the depths of a sea he couldn’t swim against.

Kidan didn’t really know how to say her next words. Her confession would undoubtedly puncture a hole in his world. Unlike Slen, there was no telling if Yusef would survive it.

She inhaled deeply. “Before I came to Uxlay, I burned my house down with my foster mother inside it.”

This was the first time Kidan had given voice to the story trapped in her bones, and it was painful, slow.

“She was meant to protect me and my sister, but instead betrayed us. June was taken by a vampire because of her. She was kind before that, though. Raised me, clothed me, fed me, and I… killed her.”

Yusef stared, blinked, and stared some more. Kidan waited, heart pounding. He had to process her words and decide on his own, without her encouragement or pressure. She wanted to create something here, a place where all their demons danced above their heads and gave them reprieve. Each of them had to see the beauty in absolution.

Once enough time passed, she continued, “There’s a group here inside Uxlay called the 13th. They want each house to pledge allegiance to them and back their new reforms. I believe they took my sister.”

Kidan’s chest rolled into a tight ball. She prayed this would work. She didn’t know what she would do if it didn’t.

Yusef rubbed his hands. “Susenyos told me Rufeal made me fail last year. That my father was manipulated by the 13th to murder his house dranaics, leading to his imprisonment.”

Kidan gaped. Why would Susenyos tell him that?

When Yusef lifted his eyes, they were gripped with horror. “You killed someone, Kidan.”

She studied the table. “Yes.”

The tremble in his hands returned.

Kidan faced Slen, who wore a warning in her eyes. They must have stared at each other for a long moment, because Yusef called uncertainly, “Slen?”

Slowly, she told him about Ramyn’s murder and her father’s arrest. The shock breaking over Yusef’s face was raw.

“You’re a member of the 13th?” Betrayal thickened his voice.

Slen’s gaze dropped to the table for a moment before it hardened. “It was the only way to get rid of my father.”

He stared at her with an emotion Kidan couldn’t place. It had an effect on Slen, making her adjust her fingerless gloves repeatedly.

“And now?” he asked. “Are you still a member?”

Kidan didn’t trust Slen to answer this properly.

“She’s helping me eliminate them,” Kidan said quickly. “We need to protect ourselves—that’s why we’re doing this. You’re not alone in this, Yusef.”

Yusef placed his head in his hands. “This is hell. We’re murderers. We’re ruined.”

Kidan shut her eyes. Afraid of this.

“No,” Slen said strongly. “We are tragedy itself. Nothing can ruin us unless we let it. I won’t let it.”

Slowly Yusef lifted his head. Slen’s unwavering gaze fixed on him, clearing his wrought expression like streaming sun through fog.

Kidan could see it. Finally. Her life beyond this year and the next. This space they’d create, sharing their awful truths and cleansing themselves, would fulfill her deepest craving. For humans, not vampires, to see into her soul and not flinch.

Under the table, Kidan snapped her bracelet free, and something dislocated inside her. June’s voice rushed at her but was severed at once. Kidan’s lungs expanded with clean air, breathing deeply.

They’d help each other eliminate the 13th. Live an honest life from this moment on. She didn’t need her blue pill right now.

Finally, Kidan asked for help. “A group called the Nefrasi controls the 13th. I need your help finding out who they are. If we destroy the Nefrasi, the 13th will cease to exist. I can’t do it… alone.”

In the stillness, she found them united, ready to redeem themselves.