Chapter 14 Susenyos
SUSENYOS
Susenyos stood in the dense forest that surrounded Uxlay University.
Arin’s note had led him here. To a series of stone houses that once served as an outpost, deep in the forest. There was a painted symbol of a silver monster—the Nefari—on one of the broken-down shelters.
Susenyos had named his people after the monster—the Nefrasi.
The symbol was intended to strike terror in anyone, a whisper that a reckoning was coming, and they’d used it well in their adventures, marking their territory. If it was painted red, it meant death.
Right now, the symbol was freshly coated with blood.
Susenyos smiled despite knowing he was the marked one. On his guard, he entered one of the stone shelters, testing the uneven boards beneath his feet.
It was silent.
Arin’s skill was the ability to melt into any environment. Even with his enhanced hearing, Susenyos could not sense her.
“Well?” he shouted.
A mistake.
The floorboards beneath him exploded, a fist tearing up and nearly taking out his chin.
His eyes flashed as Arin’s feline gaze locked with his mid-flight.
It lasted only half a second, but it was enough for them to understand each other.
She twisted and seized his shoulders, claws digging deep enough to make him grunt, and threw him with God strength into the very hole she came out of.
It was deeper than he thought and he scrambled for purchase on the walls only to find them slick. He fell for some time before the earth slid under his feet.
Some sort of well built right under the small shelter.
He looked up to see Arin’s form outlined, her eyes a burning red. His chest rose and fell rapidly.
“Can we be civilized?” he called, clearing water from his eyes.
That earned him a smile with all the warmth of an icicle.
Arin’s leather ensemble melted into her obsidian skin, and it was difficult to tell them apart except for the multiple knots on her booted heels and the faux-silver jewelry piercing her nose and collarbone. She’d given up her real silver when she joined Uxlay. An act that no doubt boiled her blood.
Susenyos touched the silver nail piercing the roof of his mouth. He didn’t doubt Arin also carried silver, hidden.
“How is our army?” he asked with a degree of nonchalance.
“We had an army. One you abandoned.” She spoke in Amharic, her accent clear and sharp as cleaved black stones.
“Help me lead them again,” Susenyos said, thinking of how to jump back out. “It’s always been me and you. Samson is rash, driven by pettiness. He can’t lead them. Help me take the blade artifact from him. You know where he keeps the twin blades.”
She betrayed nothing about the artifact. Yet something told Susenyos she knew. Arin would not be left in the dark.
Instead, Arin smiled, fangs visible. He found it still terrifying, as vicious as the day he saw it as a human boy.
Upon their first meeting outside his father’s castle, she’d told him, “You have the muscles of a mouse.”
In his arrogance, Susenyos had challenged her to a fight, and within a blink, the sky had become his only view.
He knew what angels looked like—he’d been saved by one before.
But when Arin hovered above him back then, the mouth of a lion parting her luscious lips, charcoal eyes burning with a single ember, he’d glimpsed true and undeniable hell.
It had taken him several minutes of lying there defeated, fisting his fingers in shame, before he chased after her and asked her to make him strong.
Make him worthy of protecting his people from the army of dranaics that were going to descend upon his country.
And she had.
“Samson never surrendered.” Arin spoke with an edge. “He fought until the end. The Nefrasi will choose whoever is strong. I will choose whoever is strong. Now, why did you run like a cat with its tail cut off ?”
Susenyos tried to take a step back, away from the knifelike words digging into his flesh, but she met him at each step.
“Why did you run like a weak human?”
His fangs lengthened at the tone, punishing like his father’s.
“Most of all, why take Iniko and Taj with you? What purpose did they serve?”
He hardened his face. “They made a decent shield during my escape.”
Arin’s painted lips stretched, though her eyes remained steely. “Samson’s cell was next to yours. As was your cousin’s. You chose those two and I’ll find out why. Right before I kill them.”
There was a slight shift in Susenyos’s breathing, an involuntary inhale masked in the breeze, but her eyes lit up. Damn her hearing.
“Should I start with Taj?” she asked, voice sultry. “You know he has a running mouth. Iniko may be more of a challenge, but I think I can loosen her tongue.”
When the Lusidio vampires ambushed them, it had taken a hundred of them and their blood-licked silvers to land a scratch on Arin’s jaw.
Under any other circumstances, Susenyos would have paused to study her lethal movements, how her black-tipped claws pierced an artery with perfect precision and the unforgiving blows that were released from the flats of her palms. His court could have spent a fortnight in that horrendous rain, cutting down one vampire after the other, but the Lusidios, like rabid dogs, were endless.
It pained him to say the next sentence, but there was no other choice. “I will prove myself. Show you my loyalty rests with the Nefrasi.” Then I will make you tell me the location of the blade artifact.
Arin’s form circled him, like a moon orbiting the earth. “You swore an emperor was above such things. That you did not prove yourself to anyone but the angels.”
Susenyos stared at the wall, trying to block out memories of his father’s cruelty. Susenyos had been tested nearly all his life, forced to justify himself again and again only to fall short.
Offering himself up to judgment like this burned his very soul.
But it was Kidan’s words that had struck him, lingering like a persistent scent and sinking into him unbidden.
It’s all over this house, she’d said, those damning eyes large and all-consuming. You miss them, Yos, and it’s killing you.
He could not afford to lose his people again.
“Fine, prove yourself, then,” Arin said, feline-like eyes bright. “But first, punishment.”
Before his spine could flinch from the sweet violence leaking from the words, Arin brought her iron fist down.
A terrible crack went through.
The hole was demolished, shaking Susenyos’s bones.
He tried to jump, but the height was too great, and several boulders came straight at him.
He swore and landed back down, shielding his face as a mountain of stone buried him.
His limbs were pinned by the weight of the world, the individual cracks of his bones singing a melody of agony.
The roar of the mountain collapsing filled his ears—then silence.
He panted as darkness swallowed him.
His limbs were stiff and immobile, and a surge of dread overwhelmed him.
It wasn’t the first time Susenyos had been buried alive by Arin. She was an expert in correcting flaws in her vampires, and it would have been embarrassing to have the Nefrasi leader, emperor of Gojam Province, cowering in tight, dark places.
The dampness of the wet stone brought back memories he’d stifled. Rot creeping along the skin, traveling along his veins in searing heat. And her scream, his betrothed, Talaa.
Susenyos tried to fight against the image. He thought of the sun, divine light washing over him in gentle waves. He thought of Adane House, the portrait of the Sage that saved him. And a girl, with eyes like the desert at night who wanted to destroy him. Then kiss him.
Kidan.
His companion.
A smile touched his lips. That was where he stayed, recounting their memories, meeting by the garden fireplace, a small bird in her hands, death lingering close to her, like an ever-present shadow.
Time lost its meaning and he settled onto the floor, carving space for himself. He saw her then—the Sage from his dreams, felt her right behind his eyes.
“You’re safe,” she whispered. Her voice was one and many at once—healing. “I won’t let you die.”
Susenyos believed her. Allowed her to distract him from the choking hold the stones had on his body, the bloodthirst that made him desperate enough to tear out his fangs.
“They’ll be here soon.”
When his body began the painful process of eating at itself, Susenyos heard the creak of the stones shifting. Thank God. He could move a finger.
A moment later, a shaft of light hit him square in the eye and he shut his eyes. It was more than overstimulating, every dust particle and ray piercing his corneas.
“You look quite dead.” Taj grinned down at him. “But alive.”
Susenyos barely had the energy to reprimand him for taking so long. He only freed his hand and held it up.
Taj threw down a blood bag.
He caught it, his fangs expanding at the sight, though his stomach winced. Ignoring it, Susenyos brought the liquid to his mouth.
And immediately spat it out.
It was supposed to taste like elation. A divine awareness of every atom inside his body and outside, transcending to the heavens. Heal him.
Iniko appeared at the top. She always looked out of place with her high-collared Victorian-era clothing. It was Arin’s doing, a lost bet. Two centuries later, Iniko still kept true to her word and dressed in the very clothing she once despised.
“What’s wrong?” Iniko asked him.
“It tastes foul. Like mud. I told you to get me fresh blood, Taj.”
“What are you talking about? This was drawn today. Don’t tell me you prefer warm blood only. Ever since the companionship ceremony, you’ve been in a mood.”
Susenyos scowled, peeling himself from the stones and grabbing the rope Iniko threw.
Once on the ground, he shook his twists free of rubble and dust and threw the bag at Taj. “It’s gone bad.”
Taj caught it easily and tasted it, chestnut eyes catching red. “It’s fresh.”
Iniko drank from it too, raising a brow. “It’s fine, Yos.”