Page 69

S AMSON RESTED THE PHONE IN FRONT OF K IDAN, ON SPEAKER, HIS snakelike eyes fixed on her. The Nefrasi vampires leaned and shifted inward to listen as it rang. No sound came from the ceiling.

“Kidan?” Susenyos said, voice urgent.

“Malak Sagad, my brother. How I’ve missed your voice.” Samson studied the upper level of the hall, his friends. “Susenyos the Righteous. The same man that forced an entire court to vampirism, only to abandon them to hell itself. Your loyalty could write sonnets, wendem.”

Susenyos didn’t respond.

Several seconds passed before Samson let out a long breath. “Very well. I prefer to speak face-to-face. Taj and Iniko are apprehended. I have your pretty companion and her friends in various stages of distress. I simply want the artifact in your possession.”

“Petty blackmail? And you were playing at emperor so well until now.”

The Nefrasi leader’s mouth twitched. “You’d keep hiding like a coward in that wretched campus.”

“I quite like this campus. It keeps the rats out.”

Samson barked a brash laugh that made Kidan flinch. “The rats will tear your lovely friends into pieces if you don’t come.”

“The girl means nothing. Her friends even less.”

The Nefrasi leader grabbed Kidan’s head and slammed her against the nearest bench. Her ear exploded as she cried out. In its shattering, she heard her friends’ screams of protest as well. She forced her swirling vision to focus. Slen gritted her teeth against the vampire that was buried in her throat, feeding on her. Yusef struggled uselessly as well.

Stop! Kidan shouted, but no one heard her.

Samson lifted her by fistfuls of her braids, and she groaned, trying to ease the pressure at her scalp.

“Come face us, you coward, or I’ll kill her.”

Not an ounce of discomfort threatened Susenyos’s voice. “Go ahead, I’ll listen. Kill her for me.”

Samson stilled, then growled like a beast. “What?”

Kidan’s head pulsed in agony.

“Kill her for me, wendem. You don’t know what a headache it is to inherit houses with so many heiresses popping up. She’s in your hands, isn’t she? Kill her.”

Samson’s eyes bled into fury.

Then, in her softest, most wounded part, Kidan called to him. “Yos.”

Susenyos stopped talking.

She knew what she asked of him when she called his name and hated herself for it. But he already knew, didn’t he? That she was crooked and selfish and would always choose wrong. He saw her. He understood her more than she liked him to. But she also knew him, and this ask—to risk the thing he valued most—would go unanswered. Leaving Uxlay would make the law punish him.

“How lovely.” Samson’s voice twisted with new light. “None of us here have witnessed your grand protection. Redeem yourself, zoher.” He barked. “Let us see if the selfish emperor will sacrifice himself for a girl in distress.”

Every soul in the hall waited for the response.

“It’s not my job to sacrifice. It is yours.” Susenyos’s tone remained bored. “And you’ve done it so brilliantly. I thank you all, truly. I wouldn’t have made it to Uxlay without your blood and death. You have served your emperor well.”

Anger rippled through the space like a desert heat wave. Arin tightened her fist and brought it down on the floor, making the floor implode and shake through the row of benches, down to the last one. Kidan’s jaw chattered from the force.

“I see Arin is there,” Susenyos continued once the dust settled. “Always such a temper.”

“Come out and face us, Yos.” Arin’s tone was absolutely lethal. “Or I will tear apart that campus brick by brick.”

He really was going to get them all killed, Kidan thought.

“I will finish The Mad Lovers for you, little bird,” Susenyos said, voice unchanged. “You missed a beautiful chapter. Matir gives Roana her wish. He lets her have Aesdros, and they share a delightful ending.”

“What—”

The line went dead.

“No,” she said with a moan.

Susenyos had hung up.

Her mind reeled. Kidan had finished the damned book. There was no delightful end. Roana and Matir were ruined when Roana became infatuated with another soul. A human, Aesdros, who didn’t play games of rules but only gave pure love. She begged Matir to let the human live with them, and Matir refused before allowing it. The three lived together, finding a balance to their burning hate, until the invited human rose between the two one night and slit their throats. She couldn’t unravel the meaning of the story then, and certainly not now.

Samson crushed the phone into pieces. He faced the crowding vampires on the upper level of the hall.

“Do you all see now?” he roared. “Do you hear his words? He would abandon us again and again!”

They were silent as the moon. Arin kept her fists in balls, blood running down her palms from how tightly she clenched them.

Samson’s deathly eyes fell on Kidan. Her pulse jackhammered into a frenzy.

Kidan’s world became void of sound as she studied Samson’s mouth move in furious waves, veins darkening along his forehead. There was only one way to quell a wounded monster.

An invitation. Just like Roana had summoned the stranger Aesdros to her home.

Kidan’s eyes widened. Susenyos had told her what to do.

Her voice was as uncertain as a baby bird finding its wings. “I can take you into Uxlay.”

The Nefrasi leader had run out of patience. She had a second before he tore out her throat. Her heart fluttered but she met his piercing eyes.

“I can be your companion.”

He stilled. “Say that again, heiress.”

Her voice found its strength slowly. “You will no longer be rogue. You can infiltrate Adane House not only as a spy but as my equal. I can choose you as my companion. You want access to the artifact and my house, right? I’m it. I can get you past the universal law.”

Samson was the silence found at the end of the world. Slowly, he spoke. “If I do consider this, you aren’t enough. I’ll need my people to enter as well.”

He tilted his head toward Kidan’s friends. Yusef and Slen were no longer being fed on.

“No.” Slen, throat bleeding, remained by GK, her hands around his heart. “No way.”

Arin, quick as lightning, slapped Slen, making her spit out blood.

“Stop!” Yusef tried to shield Slen with his uninjured arm. “We’ll do it. We’ll choose you as our companions.”

Samson crossed his arms. One dark, one silver. “What of that disgusting philosophy you all study? You cannot take on companions without passing it, can you?”

Kidan’s determination was a sharp, vicious thing. “We’ll pass. We only have one test left.”

He gave her a slight rise of the brows. “So much bravery. And for this generous gift, what will you require of us?”

Kidan’s attention drifted to GK.

“Of course.” He fixed each of his people with a level look. “We abolish everything that bastard of a Sage teaches. It’s why we seek to break the Three Binds. Yet here you are, asking me to sacrifice one of my men for the life of yours.”

Kidan willed her fading energy to gather.

“I cannot ask my people to give up their lives,” Samson said with surprising hatred. “I won’t take their lives like he did.”

Kidan hung her head. That was it, then. She hoped they killed her first.

Footsteps sounded in the quiet.

“Leul,” Arin called out. “Step back.”

Leul was a young man with one steel eye. All the Nefrasi embedded silver throughout their bodies.

“We need to free our people.” His voice was softer than anyone else’s here. “We’re finally close.”

“I will take your silver eye if you don’t step back,” Arin snarled.

He smiled, studying GK’s limp form. “You’ve heard the rumors. I won’t entirely disappear. Some part of me will live inside this boy. He’s so very young.”

He took out his silver eye and placed it in her hand. Arin seized his collar, but he didn’t stiffen. His eye healed slowly, settling into a black pupil. He spoke in Amharic, a gentle sound coming from his lips, before removing her from him. He took a silver knife from Arin’s hip and nicked his wrist, letting it bleed.

Samson nodded. “Go on. Save your friend.”

Kidan crawled at first and then, when the earth solidified under her feet, ran unsteadily to GK. She slid to her knees by his head. Slen was focused on her task, wrist deep in muscle and tissue. Kidan had never seen a human heart before. The flesh was taut as a wrung rose, veins of pale green and blue crisscrossing.

“Slen.”

“You asked me to save his life. I don’t fail my assignments.”

“Slen,” she said again, because nothing else expressed the gratitude pouring through her. Ending GK’s life permanently would be as easy as leaning back. Slen had to stay very still.

“When he wakes up to kill me, remind him I held his heart in my hands.”

Leul poured his blood into the open body. Silence drowned them all. With Yusef anchoring Leul’s hand in place, the three of them circled GK to resurrect him.

As Leul’s brown complexion faded, the muscle and tissue inside GK knitted and healed. Slen removed her bloodied hands slowly as the skin closed. Leul fell into Arin’s arms. Grief and fury were etched onto her brows. Her gaze flicked up to Iniko’s, who held it with a quiet sorrow.

Kidan brushed GK’s icy cheek, urging him to wake. She needed to see his eyes one more time. All of this would be worth it once he opened his eyes.

His lashes fluttered like fragile wings. She gasped a sigh of relief. He was coming awake. Any moment now.

“Take him.”

They were all pushed aside by dranaics. Yusef howled, his hand finally ripping free. GK was collected.

“No!” Kidan yelled. “What are you doing?”

“Ensuring you keep your word. If you fail on your promise to make us your companions, you won’t see your friend.”

“Wait, please. Let us see him first!”

Samson held her gaze and called, “Warde.”

The giant vampire stopped. GK was draped over his broad shoulders. Time tightened her chest as he lifted his head. The brown of his pupils sharpened to golden mahogany, nails extending to blackened claws. His eyes no longer reflected light but pierced like a blinding sun. The anger and power of them stunned Kidan. Both directed at her. She could feel his soul unravel, tearing and molding into something new. Otherworldly.

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. He looked so furious at her, betrayed beyond belief. Yusef found the words first, weak yet reaching.

“We’ll come for you, GK. We’ll find you again.”

The vampire exited with him. GK was falling asleep again and wouldn’t wake for a few days.

Kidan gathered herself and glared at the Nefrasi leader. “I want my sister as well.”

Samson laughed close to his chest. “I doubt she will want you. After all, it’s been so long.”