Chapter 6 Kidan #2
“I can’t remember who I was before I learned about the artifacts,” he continued in a low tone, his black pupils carrying a burning desire.
“I dream about them, I worship them, and I’ve wasted countless years in pursuit of them.
That is what knowledge does. It doesn’t bring anything closer to you, it separates you. Drowns you in loneliness.”
Kidan wanted to chase away his severe expression. “But if you tell me, I can keep you company. Isn’t that what we vowed to do?”
She remembered the companionship ceremony clearly. Her words before his fangs were buried in her throat.
I pledge to treat you as my equal, ask no more of you than I would my own blood.
When Susenyos said nothing, Kidan dared a step closer, enough to count his lashes. He watched her carefully but didn’t move away.
The mist around them thickened. And in it, a ruinous truth she could no longer deny bloomed to life.
This house had been unbearable without him.
Cold as a husk, lifeless like her old apartment.
Without the sound of his cursive writing or the simple pleasure of looking up and finding him by the study fireplace, face concentrated over a book or artifact, it’d all been robbed of sunlight.
It was something she could only discover in his absence—how annoyingly comforting his presence was.
Being left behind was her first language, how she measured her connection to others.
Why June and GK carved a larger space inside her at the moment.
And Kidan had prayed she wouldn’t feel anything when Susenyos left—not this quickly, not for him.
But there was a flicker, a taste of something addictive.
It wasn’t as complicated as love or as simple as attraction, but a disturbing need to keep him close.
Whatever the word for that was.
She’d only discover the extent of it if he left her behind again. And she refused to feel everything for him at the very moment he abandoned her.
So he had to stay.
In this house.
With her.
Kidan studied the curve of his mouth, full, soft, and deceptive.
No one could imagine he hid such monstrous canines beneath.
But her skin remembered the sharpened tips of his fangs, like a pair of poisonous thorns—swift, painful, then delirious.
She wondered what those lips would feel like against her own.
If his mouth was capable of gentleness, careful like his fingers had been in her coarse hair.
Don’t let me kiss you. It will be the last thing you ever do.
The back of her neck heated, muscles spasming low in her belly. Maybe that was why he’d stopped her at Cossia Day—afraid his fangs would cut her tongue into pieces. It was growing difficult to not ask him to do it anyway.
Prove that he still wanted her, when no one else did.
And in this hallway, right now, he was human. His kiss shouldn’t hurt.
She reached out to touch his cheek, unable to help herself. He froze like granite. Emboldened, her fingers traced lower, across his jaw. She wanted to see his triumphant smile at the fact she’d initiated something.
Instead, he flinched. As if she were made of thorns rather than flesh.
Her finger snapped to her chest at once.
Discomfort carved over his features as though her touching him like this was a sinful thing when he’d done so much more countless times. She didn’t understand the rules of their relationship.
Kidan steeled herself, trying to hide the burning in her cheeks. The silence swallowing them was unbearable, thicker than smoke.
Susenyos worked his jaw and turned. “Dean Faris wants to talk to us. Get dressed.”
He was already moving toward the stairs.
Kidan blinked. It wasn’t like him to avoid confrontation. Why wasn’t he mentioning her advance? She searched her mind on how to keep him here a little longer and found it.
“What about Lusidio?” Kidan said angrily. “Are you going to tell me about that?”
Susenyos froze and turned slowly like she knew he would. What was it about this name?
The sweet-smelling cloud fled from the hallway. Instead, the floor shifted, streaked with twisting black vines. Susenyos glanced at it and looked frustrated. This buckling terror was visceral, solid instead of drowning water. It unsettled her.
“Who is Lusidio?” she repeated.
The unnerving stillness of Susenyos’s eyes wavered. Then he did something Kidan had never seen him do.
He blinked twice. In rapid succession.
She’d seen him shut his eyes, yes. To clear an emotion, his long lashes resting in peaceful moments. But never something so involuntary, so human. A traitorous sign of fear.
“He’s a rogue vampire.” His answer was clipped, a conversation ended before it began. “A soul you pray to never meet.”
“And?”
“That’s all.”
No, there was more lingering in his eyes. Too much of his past he still concealed.
“Was he the one who did something to your court?” She searched his face. “Was he the one you ran away from?”
Like the last time she’d asked him about the danger the Nefrasi had fallen into, he gave her nothing. Even held at gunpoint he’d refused to speak.
As if there was another law he was a servant to.
A look of cold indifference crossed over him. “Judging again, little bird?”
“If you tell me the truth, I won’t.”
“I doubt that. Judgment is in your bones. It turned you against me once, let’s not rush to do so again.” He gave her his back. “Get dressed. We will be late.”
As Kidan watched his tall frame walk away, she thought of one more law she would set.
4. Make Susenyos tell her the truth—about everything.