Page 6

K IDAN DRESSED SLOWLY, PULLING HER TURTLENECK SNUG AROUND HER neck. She liked to cover as much of her skin as possible, particularly her throat. Either a scarf or a tie always fitted around it, a layer of protection she’d taken to.

She positioned her long braids around her shoulders. Their roots had loosened, strands cobwebbing onto themselves. Lack of natural sun had leached the rich brown of her skin to a cool, yellowed tint. Her mouth curved into a frown. She reached for some hairstyling cream and gave herself the appearance of cleanliness.

Kidan had read the first few pages of Aunt Silia’s book before throwing it against the wall. There were no answers in there, only more questions.

Aunt Silia had entrusted Kidan and June to a place that hadn’t been safe enough, and then she had failed to find June.

All the women who had vowed to protect Kidan abandoned her.

She reached for her butterfly bracelet on instinct. If Kidan peered closely, she could see streaks of blood still stuck to its wings. Its owner’s blood added a macabre ruby detail to the silver metal.

“ Butterflies ,” the voice of the owner echoed in her ears. “It reminds us we’re in constant transformation.”

Tucked inside was a small blue pill. It would only take one swallow to leave this world behind.

Kidan was too young at the time to recall her parents’ deaths, but the feeling that came after was haunting. Each moment of her life, she felt like she was alone in a pitch-black room except for an unsettling warm breath tickling her neck. The thing, whatever it was, kept breathing, launching Kidan’s heart into a painful frenzy. It never pounced, only waited. Watched.

Mama Anoet had vanquished the beast with tender fingers—parting Kidan’s coarse hair, making spiced chicken dinner, slipping on Sunday church dresses.

Safe. She’d tasted safe. A word more unfamiliar than moss growing on skin.

A year ago, during the night of their eighteenth birthday, it’d all been torn to shreds. She shut her eyes against the memory, but it was no use. That visual was stark in Kidan’s soul, in her very core.

June slumped in their garden, bathed in soft moonlight, her lips stained red with blood. Kidan struggling against the locked door of the lounge, pounding furiously as a shadow of a man gathered her sister and faded into the night. Kidan had told the police this many times—without mention of vampires. She’d told the fucking world. But June’s room had been packed up. Every trace of her gone. She was labeled a runaway girl. A legal runaway girl.

Kidan had tortured and killed to learn the name of that shadowy vampire. This whole time, had he been waiting in her Family House? Had he fed on June that night until she died? Or was he keeping her captive? Kidan’s vision swirled, and before she knew it, she was pulling out her phone, calling the number at the top of the admission letter.

Dean Faris answered immediately.

“It’s Kidan,” Kidan rushed out before she could second-guess herself. “I’ll attend Uxlay.”

“That’s excellent news.”

“On one condition,” she said slowly, trying to breathe. “I need your best lawyers for my trial. It’s in eight months.”

A long pause. Kidan needed time to search for June.

“And why would I agree to that?”

Kidan settled backward against her bed, voice steady.

“Because you don’t want Susenyos Sagad to inherit House Adane any more than I do.”

There was a beat of silence. Her heart drummed.

“Very well. I’ll send one of my trusted members to escort you here.” The dean hesitated. “But a warning, Kidan Adane. Legacies at Uxlay are not simply inherited. They must be fought for. Are you ready for that?”

Goose bumps climbed along the skin of her back.

“I am.”

After she hung up, Kidan sat there in the punishing silence, drawing her shapes.

Uxlay. She was going into their very lair. To live with him. To kill him.

The moonlight seeping in through the window lengthened Kidan’s shadow, distorting it to a thin and eerie shape on the carpet barely distinguishable from the figure who’d taken June.

You’re not them.

But she was a monster of her own making. And it broke Kidan’s heart to know she’d leave her sister behind again at the end of all this, after June was found and kept safe. June wouldn’t want to talk to her, let alone touch her, once she learned who Kidan had killed. Even if it was in June’s name— especially because it was in her name. June wouldn’t be able to forgive her, and that was something Kidan couldn’t live with. She shivered and played with her blue pill. All that was left to do was hunt and cage all evil inside her so when she did inevitably go, she’d leave the world a little cleaner.