Chapter 5 Kidan
KIDAN
Kidan and June Adane, the sole surviving heirs of their house, stared at each other long enough for the room to become water itself.
Kidan’s lungs drowned—she wished for time to speed up and was eager for her sister to speak and pull her ashore. Kidan could almost see it. How they’d survive this.
It wouldn’t take much. A simple apology. A long hug.
They’d had fights before. Never as bad as this but they could recover, if they wanted to. Kidan would rather try to forgive her sister than feel hatred.
June only had to apologize. Admit she made a mistake. Tell Kidan she loved her still.
It would be so easy to return to themselves. All she needed was a true explanation.
Instead, June’s first true words to her were, “Do you have the mask artifact?”
It was said softly, with June’s usual timidness, yet it was sharper than any knife, severing the last thread between them.
Barbed wire choked her heart, pain bleeding into Kidan’s chest with each inhale.
An artifact.
The cause of all this plotting and betrayal, between Susenyos and Samson and now Kidan and June.
The hunt for the Last Sage’s artifacts—a mask, a ring, and twin blades.
Once each was located, the binds on vampires would be broken.
Finally, they’d be free to drink from any human, access their suppressed strengths, populate without killing themselves.
Samson Sagad was in possession of the Water artifact—twin blades. Adane House held the Sun artifact—a mask within its walls.
The Death artifact, the ruby ring, was still lost to time itself.
And here they were, facing off like children fighting over toys. Kidan wanted to scream.
Anger spilled into her voice. “You left me for an artifact?”
June’s small frame shrank even more. “Samson needs it.”
Kidan’s vision was nearly swimming, her nostrils flaring. “So that’s it, then? You and him are together?”
She felt a small sense of pleasure when her sister flinched in shame.
“I’m not with him like that.” A rare touch of anger tightened her voice. “I’m helping him.”
“You left me!” Kidan roared, and the room’s walls ignited with energy, feeding on her very marrow. Everything Kidan had bottled up came out in that powerful roar.
June didn’t realize how close she was to being strangled.
“Do you know what I went through searching for you? I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sleep. I thought you were being tortured, fed on, and—and—God knows what else.” Kidan’s voice splintered into pieces. “How could you leave me?”
June’s face pinched, as if it hurt to hear this.
June had never been able to handle people’s pain, even tearing up at heartbreak songs.
Good, this was what Kidan wanted. For her sister to understand the hell she went through.
Because, God, how could she not know what this had done to Kidan?
Once, they could understand each other with a single look, but now a veil hovered between them.
Kidan grabbed her sister’s soft hands, staring deep into those familiar honeyed eyes. She was desperate to bridge the gap between them. “The things you said in that video… they’re not true. You wouldn’t leave me without a reason.”
The walls became streaked with blue wisps, the sadness of their memories cracking the rage like glass.
“I told you the reason,” June said, voice soft as petals, staring at their joined hands. “I needed to feel safe, and the Nefrasi helped me. Now I have to help them.”
Cold sapphire wind spun around them, leaving Kidan hollow. These poisonous words again. “Safe,” she repeated flatly. “You left because I didn’t keep you safe?”
The answer was in June’s silence, the crease of her brows, and her unwillingness to meet Kidan’s eyes.
“Is this because I didn’t believe you when you said someone was following you?” Kidan had deleted that particular video, but it played clearly in the house some nights, reminding her of her mistake. And it haunted her now.
June did not answer, her eyes looking anywhere but at Kidan.
“I tried to make it right, June. I looked for you.”
“I didn’t want you to look for me,” she finally said.
No, none of this made sense. June was forgiving. June was kind. She wouldn’t leave without a reason.
“Tell me what I did wrong,” Kidan pleaded, knowing she should stop. “Tell me what to do to fix this. To go back to how it was. I’ll do anything.”
The desperation in her voice was genuinely pathetic. But this was her sister. The only other soul in this world who’d grieved the loss of their parents and survived Mama Anoet’s upbringing.
She had to try. Fight at least once.
As if June sensed her thoughts, she broke their contact.
Stepped back. An ache built in her throat.
The gesture spoke more clearly than a thousand words could.
The bracelet Kidan had made her—a butterfly with a three-pointed charm—still shone on June’s wrist. Kidan wished she’d take it off.
It was a reminder of their closest memories.
Kidan whispering stories about the Three Binds to help ease June’s nightmares night after night, like a lullaby.
First Bind: Vampires could feed only on the eighty acti families.
Second Bind: Vampires have lost their strength and powers.
Third Bind: Vampires could turn you only if they gave up their life.
We’re safe, June. So safe. The Last Sage made sure. Go back to bed.
Clearly, it hadn’t been enough.
After a stretch of silence, June righted her chin. Hard determination filled her eyes. “Do you have the mask artifact?”
Kidan felt herself shatter. An object. The past nineteen years they had spent together, going to school, hiding from Mama Anoet, celebrating their birthdays early, reduced to a fucking object. It did not make sense. Couldn’t make sense.
“Is that what you want?” Kidan whispered. “Will the mask make you happy?”
June hesitated, fidgeting. “Yes.”
Kidan swallowed pure bile, her voice scratching. “And after you have it?”
A slight hesitation, then, “We’ll leave.”
Kidan’s hands fisted, repressed tears irritating her eyes. She was breathless with June’s cruelty. Expecting it and yet being wounded anew each time.
“You will leave again?”
Stop begging, a part of her whispered. You sound pitiful.
When June spoke, her tone was resigned, defeated. As if the bond between them was irreversibly broken. “You have your life, Kidan. And I have mine.”
June moved past her, launching Kidan’s heart into a panicked gallop. She latched on to her sister’s wrist painfully.
“If that’s all you want, you’re not getting it.” Kidan’s voice whittled down to pure spite. “I’ll make sure you never get it, June. I swear that to you.”
Her sister froze. Kidan hoped this would wake her up. Fear would make her apologize. Come back.
But her delicate features weren’t afraid. Her words even less so. “Then I’ll get it myself.”
Kidan blinked, truly shocked before she hissed, “I’m heiress. The only way you will inherit this house and get the mask is if I die.”
Loud drums echoed with each second her sister said nothing. It made Kidan release her, the implications of that silence. June, who abhorred death, who cried at the idea of an insect being crushed, didn’t so much as blink at the mention of Kidan’s death.
How could she say nothing?
June turned away, drowning the room in waves of unrelenting current. “The dean asked me if I knew what the Adane House law was. You know it, don’t you?”
Kidan said nothing.
“I see. I’ll have to find that out myself too.”
With that, June left.
Kidan stumbled against her bed and sank onto it, reaching for her phone, scrambling for the videos June recorded when she was fourteen.
Hi guys. Another incident happened that was pretty embarrassing. We were at this party and I sort of collapsed. Kidan was there, though, she always looks after me.
Kidan’s breathing was strained as she tried to identify any hidden emotion, pinpoint the moment her sister had decided she was worth discarding.
It wasn’t in her videos. This cold, unbridgeable distance didn’t exist then.
June loved her. Kidan could hear it in her memories.
The only thing that overpowered June’s love for Kidan was her fear of persistent nightmares.
With each video, June became more and more withdrawn, her eyes vacant.
Then there was the video of Kidan forcing June to take her medication, not believing that someone was following her.
That must be it. The moment June decided she was done.
Because Kidan couldn’t help her anymore. Even she didn’t have the power to break into someone’s consciousness and rid them of their demons.
The one time Kidan had failed, June… abandoned her.
A viselike grip squeezed her heart. She tried to calm her panic, will the room to shift, but it refused.
Once anxiety and terror set in, it took leaving the room to make her breathe again.
But the door was so far away, and she was gasping too much.
Her knees shook as she forced herself up and bent over, braids grazing the floor.
Breathe, a voice not her own clinked in her mind, startling her. Get up and walk.
On shaky legs, she gripped the blankets of her bed and stood. Wincing with each step, she moved.
The hallway, now a forest floor, was clean with dizzying air. The strangely familiar voice disappeared the moment she was safe.
Kidan leaned against the wall, eyes drifting to Susenyos’s room. Bitter pain stabbed at her again. After he got the blade and mask artifacts, he’d leave as well, hunt onward for the third.
She was sick of everyone leaving her. Family should always stay. Her companion should promise to stay.
Kidan hardened her jaw, wiped at the prickle of tears threatening to leak out. Loyalty was dead and only what she offered others mattered. She understood now there was only one way to ensure she was never discarded.
Bind them to you. This time it was her own voice, brimming with malice that unnerved her soul. Make them need you. Always.
Susenyos had told her true power was the ability to set any law in your own home, and only now did she understand its true allure.
Kidan would master this house. She would set her own laws. Her fingers scratched her shapes on the floor: triangle, square.
Three laws. All she needed was three laws.
1. Make Samson take out his own fucking heart.
2. Make GK human again.
This was a secret hope she was clinging on to.
And whenever she dreamed of it nervous energy thrummed through her.
The house made Susenyos human, so why not GK?
If she offered this to GK, he would forgive her.
Understand why she’d made him transform into a vampire: to save his life, not because she was the hand of death.
The wall in front of her shifted into GK’s betrayed and terrified eyes as she locked him in Uxlay’s crypt.
She shook her head, clinging to this plan.
Yes, she had to master the house before bringing GK here.
He would be a vampire again once he left the house…
but at least he’d have moments where he’d have his old self back.
Time to get used to his vampirism. And if he wanted to stay inside all the time, they’d make it work.
Kidan wouldn’t mind living in this house with all her friends. In fact, it’d be quite comforting. Filling the quiet with Yusef’s bouncing laugh or Slen’s violin in the evenings.
Then there would be her final law. The one that left her itching with urgency, desperate to visit Professor Andreyas right now and beg him to tell her all the secrets of mastering a house because she couldn’t fucking wait.
3. Make June feel the pain of last year.