Page 67

K IDAN RETURNED TO HER HOUSE AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR. S HE LEFT Slen and Yusef to hide GK’s body and wait for her call.

She stood in the middle of the living room, guided by the moon’s faint touches along the windowsill. The lights had been turned off. A sharp whistle of wind stung her cheek, thanks to the nail that had torn through the window. It was the only fracture upon the house to suggest what had happened.

He was here. By now, she could find him in darkness, taste his thirst for violence like mist.

“If you want to punish me, get on with it.” Her voice carried through the rough outlines of furniture.

Something reached for her hand. Fingers, long and hard. They grabbed and pulled. Kidan’s heart tugged backward as the world spun. Wind slashed along her skin in tiny scrapes, and her lungs stuttered for breath. She was flying, falling, or both, gravity pulverizing her body in all directions. A sudden and terrifying stop buckled her knees, and bile lurched to her mouth.

She groaned. “Do you really have to do that?”

When her eyes stopped rolling, she was standing on the narrow ledge of the highest tower of the campus, alone.

She tried to scramble backward but found only wall. The courtyard yawned, only splinters of gold light from the lion-shaped lamps revealing its ground. Way, way down below. Her knees turned to water.

“Susenyos!” she yelled against the ruffling wind.

The night didn’t answer back. Panic beat in her ears. He hadn’t left her here, had he? She splayed her fingers against the engraved wall to anchor herself, but she was entirely untethered. One unintentional step and she would fade from this world.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to breathe, think. “Fuck. Fuck.”

“For a girl who preaches about death, you look quite frightened.”

Relief flooded her soul. She found him a few paces from her, sitting with one leg dangling over the edge, a striking presence under the stars.

“Susenyos,” she said, wary.

“Yes, my love?”

“I know you’re angry.”

“Oh, anger is such a human emotion. I’m dissatisfied. I had a vision for what you and I could become, and you laid it all to waste.”

“Look, I’m sorry—”

“You cost me another room.” He cut her off, fire betraying his calm voice.

She froze. “What?”

“Another room that I’m weak and vulnerable in because you forced me to tell you about the artifact.”

Her eyes widened. She opened her mouth and closed it. Any action Susenyos took that risked the artifact must punish him. He became human in the observatory when he tried to leave the house, and now this.

“You stole many things from me, Kidan. But I won’t forgive you for this.”

“All I wanted was the truth, to find my sister.”

He stretched his arms like a bored cat. “As you’ve proved countless times. Everything else that doesn’t warrant your affection be damned.”

“You lied to me.”

“And you killed me.” His response lashed like a whip, indignant. Then he smiled, remembering himself. “Well, almost.”

“If you’d told me about the Nefrasi earlier—”

“Do list my numerous faults. It’s your favorite habit. If I’d told you about them, all you would have done was run to your death a little sooner. Missed the few months here you enjoyed with your little friends. If I had told you the real truth, the house would have stripped me of my immortality .”

She felt herself move forward, and it was a conscious and straining experience to keep still. She stared at her shoes, backing them into the wall a little farther. Appease him , her mind offered. Apologize .

“You were right about them. They killed… GK.”

The words were no different from expelling a sword lodged deep in her chest.

This surprised Susenyos into a cruel and mocking tone. The moonlight graced his angular face, casting him half in shadow.

“And for so long you thought me the vile beast. Didn’t I warn you of the company you keep during the day?”

“Please.”

“Begging, are we? That is delicious.” Susenyos stood with an unnatural ease for a person balancing on a ledge. He started toward her, and her heart thudded at the menace in those eyes.

“You can’t kill me before I bring GK back,” she pleaded.

He stilled. “What did you say?”

“We’re going to turn him.”

“And whose life were you going to exchange for his?” He bridged their gap in a flash, snarling. “Mine?”

Kidan wavered with his presence, stepping a fraction forward.

Stop , she screamed at herself.

“No.” She met those raging eyes. “I want to take one of them, the Nefrasi. For all they’ve taken from us. I want one of them to give GK his life back.”

Susenyos cast her a sideways glance, surprise breaking his anger. “What will you offer them? The Nefrasi will require payment, and it’ll be cruel. Most likely, your life.”

Her legs moved forward again despite her will. “I won’t give them that. I will fight to live.”

He watched her feet kissing the very edge.

“My dearest Kidan, you can’t even fight a strong wind.”

They knew there was no wind pulling her forward—this was something else, deeper than her consciousness, a monster she had yet to slay.

“Here you are again, little bird. Messing with injured souls and giving them three deaths instead of one. Let your friend die.”

She shook her braids wildly. “No. Not him.”

He cocked his head. “You are a beautiful study. A human girl both in love and at war with death.” His next words surprised her. “Fine, I will save GK.”

Hope tightened her chest. “You will?”

“Yes. The Nefrasi will not rest until they come for me. I can safeguard against it. The only issue remains you. Your unpredictability and complete lack of consequences.”

He stepped away and stared into the darkness, hands folded behind him.

“So, a final ask for such a gift. I want your life.”

Kidan’s heart sank. This was his punishment. Crueler than a bullet in her thigh, he’d dragged her here to make her reckon with all she had become and finally choose.

Her lips barely moved. “No.”

“For what reason?” He gave a short chuckle. “I’ll undertake your duties and protect your friends. Better than you, if I might add.”

“Yos.”

He stiffened as if struck, voice lower than hell. “I’m Susenyos to you. You have lost the privilege of calling me that.”

His dark eyes exposed how truly she’d hurt him. It surprised Kidan that she could wound him like this. What could she do? This was her nature. She hurt everyone around her.

“Answer my question,” he said louder, speaking as if he was onstage, in front of thousands. “For what reason shall you, Kidan Adane, continue to exist?”

She tipped forward, nearly falling, before she reversed her momentum and it carried her backward.

“Stop.”

“Let’s end it here, my miserable Roana. Set us both free. What reason is there to fight so hard?”

“You need my… blood. My companionship.”

“So you exist for me?” He laughed.

“No.”

“Then for what reason?”

Her mind splintered with the question. He’d never be satisfied until he wrenched out a final confession from her. Her selfish, grotesque truth.

“What reason—”

“ No reason ,” she hurled back, familiar fury drowning her fear. “I don’t need a reason. I want to live, so I will. It’s my life to do as I please. Mine. ”

They glared at each other as the earth and sun did. Burning and blazing and scorching until her soul ignited.

Finally, he extended a hand. “Very well. Give it to me.”

For a moment, she was confused. His eyes fell to her wrist. Kidan unclasped her butterfly bracelet with shaking hands and gave it to him. He wrapped his fingers around it, eyes unreadable.

Then, when he was certain she truly believed her words, and trusted him, he spun them on the narrow ledge. Her back arched toward the waiting darkness, the balls of her feet swaying on the edge. A strong hand around the waist caught her before she fell.

His angry gaze darkened on her lips. For a wild, unreasonable second, she thought he was going to kiss her. Wings clapped in her stomach, and her braids fluttered in the strong gust.

She bunched his shirt tightly, unsure if she wanted to pull him closer or shove him away. “Yos?”

His fingers disappeared from her waist. With nothing to support her, Kidan fell.

Her heart remained on the tower with him. A force had wrenched it out of her skin, and as she plummeted, it cried out for her. In all Kidan’s ideas of entertaining death, she hadn’t realized the path down would be a pulsing and immediate regret.

Kidan woke on a couch, head spinning. She shifted forward on her elbows, blinking away her drowsiness. She checked her torso, her legs, her arms. All uninjured. He must have caught her.

Susenyos stood by the floor-to-ceiling window.

“I can’t come with you. As I’ve said before, I can’t leave Uxlay. Taj and Iniko will go with you. They’ve been tracking some Nefrasi in town.”

Kidan was too stunned by his words to say anything.

He fixed her with a concealed expression. “I can’t leave.”

“The house law. I get it, Susenyos. And I won’t ask you to put yourself at risk again.”

He walked to her. “With the lengths you go to for your loved ones, I somehow don’t believe you can keep that promise.”

She tried for a smile to break the heaviness crowding him. “You sound jealous.”

A line marred his forehead. “Of that terrifying love you reserve only for a few? Very.”

“We don’t need love, Susenyos. We are bonded by something much greater. You’re my companion.”

He wore an expression she couldn’t read, a dark film sliding over his eyes.

“Don’t die,” he ordered. “Fight to live, like you said.”

Kidan’s heart contracted in her chest. She offered him a real smile this time. “Haven’t you heard? Death doesn’t seem to want me.”

His attention drifted to her wrist, then settled on her chest as if he could hear its slow, hesitant pounding. “Even death can’t resist if you keep flirting with it this much.”

Uxlay law was clear on its engagement with rogue dranaics. For students, an immediate suspension pending a court hearing. For adults, an immediate removal from Uxlay society. Dean Faris used the protective universal law to alert her to any mass dranaic movements against the campus. Even if the Nefrasi were in Zaf Haven, they couldn’t find the university.

An abandoned community hall on the very edge of town was the sole place to engage with rogues. Kidan and her friends traveled in the back of an infirmary vehicle. Taj drove, unusually quiet. GK’s body lay on a stretcher between them.

Iniko adjusted her silver knives along her forearms. “A couple of Nefrasi are staying in Zaf Haven. Taj and I will bring you a dranaic. Act quickly, because if they find us, we can’t fight them all.” Iniko’s eyes creased with disapproval again. She didn’t think this was a good plan, but Susenyos ordered it and they obeyed.

Kidan was grateful.

The silhouette of Uxlay’s towers grew smaller. Her skin prickled with the sensation of being overexposed.

“You think we won’t be able to live with ourselves if we don’t revive him,” Slen’s flat voice came from beside Kidan. “But what if I could?”

“Slen.”

Her obscured eyes met Kidan’s. “I’m not saying it to be unkind, but I could walk out of here and leave you all. It would be the easiest thing I do.”

Kidan sighed. “Well, I hope your ambition doesn’t fuck us all over.”

“For your sake, I hope so too.”

After dropping them off at the eerie hall, Taj and Iniko sped off. Slen retrieved a heavy bag full of supplies they’d need for the forced transformation. Iniko had reluctantly given Kidan back her gun. It only had two bullets left, but it would be helpful.

Their shoes left dusty imprints on the floor as they walked to the empty stage. Moonlight streamed through the stained glass, leaving red and blue hues washing over their faces. The wall had yellowed in the shape of letters that once decorated it.

Kidan checked her phone. They had little time left before GK’s body wouldn’t be revivable. She settled down on the cold bench, remembering the Mot Zebeyas’ ritual as they turned Sara Makary.

Yusef paced, unable to sit as time ticked down frighteningly fast.

“Shit,” Yusef said, watching the exit. “What if they don’t make it?”

Kidan had nothing but blind hope to cling to. “They’ll make it.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed.

Suddenly, the door banged open. Taj and Iniko dragged a writhing, gagged figure inside. Kidan jumped into action, giving them more of the horn ash. It wasn’t enough to subdue him entirely, nor did they want him so poisoned that he’d die before he transformed GK.

“He needs to be chained upside down,” Slen said. “It’ll be easier to drain him that way.”

Taj and Iniko hesitated. Kidan figured that treating one of their own like an animal didn’t sit right with them.

“Please,” Kidan added. “Tie him upside down.”

They managed it far more easily than expected. The snarling dranaic was suspended from a fixture with multiple curtain ropes. They moved GK’s body under the vampire and took off his shirt. Someone needed to make an incision over his heart.

“I can do it,” Slen said, and knelt by GK.

They had to slit the dranaic’s throat and drain his blood through a tube and feed it into GK’s heart. Kidan’s fingers trembled as she retrieved the surgical knife from the bag. She tried to think of it as slaughtering an animal—there was nothing else to it. Across from her, Yusef’s face turned.

“You don’t have to look,” she told him.

“No, I have to.”

After taking a deep breath, Kidan brought the knife to where the vampire’s carotid artery would be. His skin was hot as her two fingers searched for the vein. His eyes widened with fear, he screamed through his muffling gag.

Suddenly, Taj gasped, eyes widening.

“Taj?” Iniko became alert.

Taj swayed, then fell forward, a silver blade skewering his back.

The knife in Kidan’s hand slipped. Iniko bolted toward him, deflecting three silver needles spitting from near the dark ceiling. Finally, one pierced Iniko’s thigh and she fell, groaning.

Kidan started toward her, but Iniko’s yell made her blood cold.

“What are you doing? Run!”