Page 64

H ER PLAN HAD BEEN TO SEDUCE HIM, TO MAKE HIM CONFESS GENTLY and slowly, and it may have worked. He’d said it pulled the truth out of him better than torture.

But when she laid eyes on his relaxed back on the study couch, comfortable, handsome, with an air of triumph that he’d completely led her along blindly, desire abandoned her at once.

Fire caught on the walls of the study, smoldering with her anger. It was just the two of them. Etete was away for the night.

Kidan brought with her the gun from Omar Umil’s basement. Ordinary bullets did nothing to dranaics. Grinding down impala horn and burning it, on the other hand, was entirely different. Inspired by her Weapons of the Dark book, she’d coated the bullets with the ash. The warriors of the Last Sage had used tar to smear horn ash onto their arrows before shooting them into dranaic hearts.

She fought her hands moving toward the gun secured in the back of her pants. This wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to speak to him. Truly listen and understand.

But the room fed on her rage, and rage saw no reason. She gritted her teeth as fire ate at her in violent bites until her fingers pulled it out halfway. Her other hand bent the spine of the Myths book.

“I can feel the room being drenched with your anger,” he called out, absorbed in one of his letters. “What have I done now?”

She said nothing.

He kept writing, amused. “Do you want to see what I’m working on? I apologize that my reply to your letter is delayed. You didn’t include your name. It took me a while to figure out it was you.”

Her forehead creased before her mouth parted. He’d found the letter she hid under his scrolls? Read her tortured, revealing words? Her face heated at once, and she had the massive urge to disappear. But she had a book and a gun in her hands, anchoring her in place. She tightened her grip and threw the book of myths at his back. He snatched it from the air with ease, disposing of her outburst like he would an annoying fly.

“The Nefari, a name created by villagers of Gojam in Ethiopia. Your country.” Kidan’s teeth ground.

“Technically, it’s your country as well.”

“You’re part of the Nefrasi.”

Fire engulfed the ceiling, roaring above her.

Susenyos set down his pen and finally turned to face her. A grin spread across his lips as if he’d finally been caught. “Forgive me, but I never thought you’d discover the truth. Allow me a moment to be proud, will you?”

If he hadn’t smiled, she could have contained her anger. She could have walked away and returned calm. But he was enjoying himself.

Smiling at her. Smiling about lying to her.

Her vision went red. Kidan drew her gun out all the way and pointed it forward.

Susenyos’s smile broke like glass. Caution brimmed in his eyes at once as he sensed her struggle on the trigger, her shaking form, the fire above. “Don’t give in to your rage, little bird.”

June had disappeared from her mind the past few days, too angry at Kidan’s choice to keep working alongside Susenyos, but now her voice slithered in.

Now.

Kidan’s arm jolted as she fired, the force making her stumble and almost drop the gun.

The bullet narrowed her fury into a single point and exploded it out of her in delicious waves. She wanted to do it again and again. Susenyos shouted a string of curse words, dancing between English and Amharic. He gripped his shoulder where the bullet had pierced it, hissing, face caught between pain and pure shock. She could see on his face that he knew something from an impala horn was now inside his body.

More. The room crackled like cinders in her ear. More. He took me.

She walked to him, squatted low, found his black eyes, and pressed the gun against his kneecap.

His head eased forward. “You’re losing yourself. It’s the house heightening your emotions. Fight your rage, Kidan. Now .”

“You think I want to do this?” Her voice became a tortured, bleeding thing. “Why did you lie to me?”

His chest rose and fell rapidly, his gaze focused on her anguished expression. “Give me the gun and I’ll tell you.”

He reached for it, but she lurched back. He bared his foul canine teeth, almost catching her neck, but was weakened from the bullet. She sprang to her feet and took several steps back.

Something shot out of his mouth, needle-fast and coming right at her. Kidan dodged the silver nail by sheer luck. It nicked her ear and punched through the window, leaving the house with a tiny hole.

Her eyes split wide. Had he actually tried to kill her?

“You missed,” she snarled. “Try to remove the bullet, and I’ll shoot again.”

“Fine,” he spat.

It had finally worked. There was no trace of amusement in his eyes.

She sat down on the opposite couch, gun resting on the arm of it.

“Now, let’s try this again. Where the hell is my sister?”

He glared. “Have I not answered that exhausting question? I don’t know—”

Her fingers started to tighten on the trigger. “Stop lying to me.”

“I can’t tell you!” he shouted. “That would be endangering the house, and it will cost me—”

“Don’t worry about this house taking your immortality, because I will kill you, Susenyos. Talk. ”

His gaze drifted to the gun and back to her face. He didn’t find any hesitation.

He glowered his hatred. “If you cost me another room, I will kill you .”

She raised her gun higher, defiant. He tipped his chin toward the ceiling, shaking his head.

“I should have taken that impala horn from you at Cossia Day.”

“Who are the Nefrasi?”

His mouth twisted. “You still haven’t made that connection? They’re my court.”

Kidan gaped a little. The court he forced to transition into vampires and then abandoned?

“We survived, thrived, across Africa and beyond because of me. We were liberated in a way you could not possibly imagine, and drunk on it. I named us Nefrasi, one born of a silver monster.”

Her teeth rang. “I should cut out that black tongue of yours.”

His laughter sounded half dead. “I have no more reason to lie. You are aware that if the ash reaches my heart, I die. Let me take the bullet out.”

He tried to move, but she refused. “No. I suggest you speak faster.”

He swallowed, lips parting and closing as if he were starving. Maybe she did shoot him too close to the heart, unknowingly quickening the process of ash finding that vital organ.

He pointed to the book he’d dropped. “How good are you with your myths?”

She didn’t answer.

“Weha, Tsay, and Mot. The Three Binds. The Nefrasi’s goal was to shatter it. We wanted to be unleashed into our most primal selves. Drink from anyone we liked, harness the power of the sun, and sire our own army without sacrificing our lives.”

“You’re telling me you chased myths like children, trying to break a thousand-year-old curse?”

“When you have immortality, there’s time for everything.”

“What does this have to do with June or me?”

“My self-consumed Roana, this is about me. My story. You’re the unaccounted character that wandered into my play and will eventually be killed off if you’re not careful.”

She fired at the tall lamp by his head, making his eyes widen. He clutched his ringing ear, howling.

“ This character gets impatient when she doesn’t get what she wants.”

“It’s your family that’s important! Not you or June! Far too intelligent and curious for their own good, your damned parents left a legacy you still fail to see the power of.”

She thought for a moment. What legacy did they reign over?

Then she laughed. “The Axum project. The fucking archaeology site?”

Susenyos lowered his hand, rueful. “Fourteen years ago, a rumor emerged that a portion of the Last Sage’s old settlement had been discovered. Part of the untouched and preserved civilization from his earliest existence, along with treasures he used in the creation of the Three Binds.”

“A rumor,” she repeated.

His next words dripped with arrogance even as he sweated along his temple like a dying man. “Except it wasn’t. I discovered it alongside your parents. They entrusted me to protect it. I have one of the prophesied artifacts that’ll break the Second Bind.”

Kidan leaned forward, heart drumming. She hung on every word, the golden truth finally here.

“Go on.”

“That very night, an attack was made on this house, killing your family. I remained to protect the artifact.”

Kidan pressed the side of the gun against her head. The warm touch accelerated her pulse.

“That’s why they left the house to you,” she said to herself. “The house law. All this time…” Her eyes creased with the betrayal of it all. “And no one told me.”

“I’ve killed and tortured thousands in protection of the artifact. Lying to you, Kidan, doesn’t remotely brush against the horrors I’ve committed, so stop giving me that wounded look.”

She blinked, looking away. The Sun Bind had significantly weakened dranaics. But if this was their weakened state, Kidan couldn’t imagine the full extent of their power.

“You’re telling me that somewhere in this house lies one of the Last Sage’s artifacts?”

“Yes.”

“Have you tried it?”

Even in his debilitated state, he gave her a shrewd smile. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Give it to me.”

He rolled his head back as if it was too heavy to carry. “Come, now. You don’t think it’s that easy, do you? We’re talking about an object that can shift the gravity of our world.”

She looked him over. “I assume you don’t have it on you now, or you wouldn’t be held at gunpoint.”

“Quite the poor judgment on my part, believing I didn’t need protection from you.”

Kidan stood and paced. Her eyes drifted to the artifact room. Was it in there? No, he wouldn’t keep it in a place so obvious. Moreover, why would her parents trust him with such power?

And then she realized… “No, you don’t have it yet. You wouldn’t stay here if you did.…”

Susenyos remained still, but the house curtains rippled, the walls hummed, the bulb above her flickered, giving her the answer.

“They hid it in the house.” Her voice rose to the ceiling with awe.

Susenyos squared his jaw. She stared with her mouth open. Her parents were geniuses.

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

“Adane House” referred to the Second Bind artifact. The Sun artifact.

They never gave him the artifact but nonetheless forced him to protect it. He was here to break one law that weakened him and set one that granted him terrifying strength.

“It all makes sense now. The Nefrasi want to kill you for whatever you did to them. And you want to possess the Sun artifact and hide in Uxlay, safe from harm.”

All color leached from his face. “I’ve been running my entire life, Kidan. Don’t judge me because I desire to live. There are horrors waiting in the outside world I never want to face. An immortal is in love with life. I can’t bear to see the end of it. Mine or anyone else’s I care about.” His eyes dropped to her bracelet, simmering. “Unfortunately, not all can be saved.”

Kidan touched her bracelet unconsciously. “This danger you keep mentioning. What is it?”

He sank further into his seat, eyes like black water. Haunted.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to kill me.”

She snarled, holding up the gun. “Tell me.”

“I can’t. I physically cannot speak of it.” He spat. Her brows pinched in confusion. “You only need to know the Nefrasi are messengers of it. They’re the beginning of the end.”

A line twitched in her jaw, betraying her steely gaze. “When did you know it was your court that took June?”

The question was important.

Had he known the Nefrasi had June from the moment she set foot in this house? Had he known when he’d comforted her during her panic attack? During Cossia Day? She wanted to know which memories of theirs were tainted by his lies.

Susenyos’s gaze cleared, serious.

“I thought you came to frame me for June. Then we discovered the 13th… greedy family members going to such lengths to destroy me, but it didn’t make sense why they hated me so much.” His lip curled. “It wasn’t until Titus mentioned the Nefrasi by name at Cossia Day—when he said he’d gift you to them—that I realized who’d been playing in the shadows.” He sighed as if exhausted. “I hadn’t heard from my court in sixty years. I believed most were scattered or dead. Consider my surprise when you discovered June’s bracelet in my drawer. Your foster mother mentioned my name. All their little signs, games, telling me they were coming, and I was blind to most of it.”

He stared at the ground, expression unreadable. Kidan remembered Cossia Day, Titus’s manic words as he nearly tore out her throat.

“You killed Titus because he was going to expose you.”

“I killed him because he had his hands on you,” he dismissed sharply. “Keeping you from discovering their existence was an added advantage.”

She wanted to scream, but instead her voice came out strained. “I asked you about them, and you lied to me. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was too late by then.” His eyes shifted like the tides of a dark ocean. “I knew that sending you to them would cost you your life, and somehow I’d fallen into the habit of saving you.”

“Don’t say any of this is for me,” she whispered, more afraid his words could be true than of anything else.

He stared at her shaking form for a long moment. His words slowed as if he spoke through a bleeding lung. “No, you’re right. It wasn’t for you.”

She exhaled in relief. “Then why?”

“What other choice was there? The Nefrasi wanted you to seek them out and fall into their trap, become the dutiful heiress, and surrender the artifact. Spies and tricks. This is how the Nefrasi handle war. It’s how they acquired the Water artifact. I can’t let them acquire this one.”

Kidan drew in a sharp breath. They were already in possession of an artifact. Did that mean two of the Three Binds were at risk of being broken? What would that do to Uxlay? To the rest of the world?

Fear tightened her gut. All this time, it had been some sick game, a web she had no business getting caught up in.

Kidan pressed the mouth of the gun to his forehead, a desperate thought sinking into her. “What if I give you to the Nefrasi for June?”

Susenyos stilled. “You won’t.”

“I won’t?” Only searing pain lingered in her throat. “You don’t know what I’ll do for my sister, and you’ve made yourself so easy to be rid of. Lie after lie.”

He gave an exhausted laugh, though his eyes were ice-cold. “I lied. I broke your rule. I made shallow mistakes, and your instinct is to throw me aside. To kill me. What is my crime compared to those of your murderous friends?”

She bit her lip and looked away. Unable to think. “They’re… different.”

“They’re human. And so deserve your endless forgiveness !” he shouted, and the fireplace roared to life. With the flames raging behind him and his hair coils loose, he truly became the devil she wanted him to be. Kidan staggered from the white heat, the gun nearly slipping from her grasp.

“You don’t loathe my actions, Kidan. You hate my soul, the very essence of what I am. You hate that I live forever, that my damage is endless, my darkness boundless. You will always want to kill me for it, because you haven’t accepted yours.”

The carpet spread with a dark stain—blood, as if the house was hemorrhaging from the inside. Kidan tried to backtrack, but it was everywhere. Leeching from the walls in ugly tears. The fire climbed around the columns, and the family portrait shattered. The picture of her mother and father became engulfed.

“What’s happening?” she shouted, trying to follow the cracks along the wall, her mind.

Susenyos stared at his feet with wide eyes and inhaled deeply. Exhaled. Trying to calm himself. The fire burned lower, retreating like a dragon into its cage. “You have to let me take this bullet out so I can heal. I won’t be able to keep my anger at bay for long.”

“Your court has June.”

He closed his eyes, voice slipping in and out of strength. “And I’m trying my best to make sure they can’t have you.”

Kidan threw aside the gun and grabbed both sides of his face. He blinked awake, fading gaze focused on her. Startled.

“Where are the Nefrasi?” she pleaded. “Please, Yos. Just tell me.”

All fire in the room extinguished, leaving only thinning smoke.

He regarded her with a defeated smile. “You’re not afraid of death, are you, my saddest Roana? You have your long-awaited truth. So go and turn over your wrists to the Nefrasi, they’ll slit them for you.” He pressed his wet mouth to the veins of her wrist, just above her butterfly bracelet. It burned like black lightning. “I won’t be the one to do it.”

With those haunting words, his head slumped forward as he fell unconscious. She held him out of instinct, cradling him, then stepped away with a start.