Chapter 22 Kidan
KIDAN
Samson’s voice was rough, like shards of sand. “Petty slights might give you satisfaction in the short term, but they’ll fade too soon.” He moved before her, a tall shadow made of metal and fury.
“I heard you,” he continued, tone curling. “During your little tale to June. How much pain you carry.”
So he had been watching.
Kidan regarded him carefully, from the tip of his scarred face to his polished shoes, and said, “Fuck off.”
His smile formed slowly, curving at the tips like a snake. “Why do you think I brought June here? Knowing what she did to you.”
“Because you’re desperate for attention. According to Susenyos.”
His smile slipped off into a dark growl and his arm flexed. She retreated in caution, glancing at the students chatting at the end of the corridor. He wouldn’t try anything in public, would he?
Samson turned his face away, speaking to the building. She preferred it that way. It made her skin itch looking into his spoiled eyes.
“After your foster mother told us your location, I wanted the twins next in line to inherit Adane House,” he said, making her ears perk.
“But June insisted we take her alone. Begged, really. There was this look in her eyes, almost desperation to escape. I didn’t want to separate you, but she wanted her freedom. She wanted to run away.”
Kidan’s fingers tightened and unfurled, the fight leaving her. How many times could she hear this without feeling broken?
“You took it out on your foster mother instead and burned her alive.”
Kidan flinched, guilt creeping up on her.
“Oh yes, I know,” he continued, smiling now. “But lovely June doesn’t. Because her sole request was I never mention you or, what was her name? Mama Anoet. She wanted to forget it all.”
Kidan’s teeth ground against one another. He was truly enjoying himself. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much she wanted to scream.
His gaze flicked to her fisted hand. “I will help you punish June.”
She stiffened, unsure she had heard him right. “I thought she was with you,” she said with forced calm.
“She is. She is my favorite, actually.” He turned in the direction of the grass court.
Students lined the edges of the square, hunched over books, while others lay on the grass with their heads propped up.
“But anyone who abandons their family must be punished. That is the only rule I live by and even June isn’t exempt from that. ”
From the flash in his starless eyes, he seemed to be telling the truth. Still, it made Kidan ill hearing him talk about her sister whether with anger or affection. She didn’t want him to mention June at all.
“Losing a sister,” he said with a piercing look, “is a different kind of pain.”
Kidan remembered what Susenyos had told her. How on their fifteenth birthday, his friend’s sister had been killed by raiders and they’d both gone to hunt for revenge. She was now sure he’d been talking about Samson.
Samson’s gaze drifted over her head, to Susenyos and Iniko, walking across the cobblestone path and slipping through the black iron gates of the Southern Sost Buildings. Kidan straightened, stepping forward before pausing.
Did he get her text message? Why wasn’t he responding?
At once, Samson’s features bled into a crimson rage.
“It is maddening to see them so carefree.”
This wasn’t about her or June.
“Abandoned”—he was a victim of that word as much as she was.
A gnawing sensation built in Kidan’s gut. She didn’t want to understand Samson’s hatred, though in this second, it spoke the same language as hers, swam in the same hateful swill.
His eyes flicked back to hers, near bloodthirsty. “Tell me what will hurt him the most and I will give you the key to hurting June.”
Something wicked extended between them, sudden and vile.
What are you doing? Kidan shook herself out of Samson’s spell.
She was preparing to walk away when a sound, sweet and low, pulled her to a stop.
It was her sister, along with Qara Umil, their laughter carving through the space like a bouncing song at the end of the corridor.
Her attempt to humiliate her had failed.
Hidden by shadow, Kidan watched.
Samson’s voice hovered by her shoulder. “It burns, doesn’t it?” he whispered. “To see them smiling? It’s a delicate line. You don’t want them dead, because a part of you needs them to exist, but you also need them to understand the pain. Because until they do, there can’t be peace.”
She hoped her face didn’t betray how accurately he’d described her thoughts. Her fingers moved to draw a square on her thigh, and she was afraid not of him, but herself. If Kidan listened to this, to him, she would cross a line.
Biting the inside of her cheek, she shoved him and kept walking.
“Fine. I’ll tell you mine first, heiress,” he shouted after her, spinning on the spot with too much delight.
Kidan willed herself to keep going but her sister’s laughter was close, grating, surrounding her. Mocking her. Instead, she slowed her steps.
A satisfied sound came from behind, like a wolf content with his meal. It agitated her to give in.
“Warde.”
She turned, brows raised, face hot with hatred.
“I’ve seen June cry many times over the past year.
She cries for the sick, the injured, the dead.
But I have never seen her so broken as the time Warde was kidnapped by rogue vampires.
She would not eat, would not speak. Her eyes were truly haunted.
We could not find him. And yet, somehow, she went into the rogue camp to rescue him herself.
She came out unharmed.” His brows were drawn as if he didn’t believe it still.
“Warde gives her strength, and I may not understand it, but their bond is powerful. I only brought him into Uxlay for her because she wouldn’t come without him. ”
Kidan turned, finding the giant vampire by a tree a short distance away, keeping an eye on June.
He was always there, watching. At times, he reminded her of GK, other times, of herself. Alert to a whisper of danger, ready to save June.
Samson flashed before her, standing too close. She flinched but still met his coal eyes.
“I can give you Warde.”
Her heart beat slowly at first, then gained another beat.
Their shadows lengthened, one tall, one shorter, yet melding into each other, like spilled ink on paper.
Kidan tried to picture what he said. Her sister suffering for a stranger…
refusing to eat or speak. That had been Kidan for more than a year.
What had Warde done to earn June’s love?
Was he Kidan’s replacement?
Her voice became unrecognizable. “Are you going to kill him?”
“No, true pain only comes from hope. The hope of being reunited.” He seemed to be talking to himself. “Like you and the devout boy. It’s the hope of seeing him again that hurts you.”
Her teeth rang with fury. “You’re vile.”
“I’ve been called worse things. I can remove Warde. You’ll see what it does to your sister.” His voice promised danger. “And I’ll expect your answer about Susenyos soon.”
A chill spread down her back. “What makes you think I know anything about hurting him? You’ve known him longer.”
He gave her a close-lipped smile, making his neck scar ripple. “Yes, but I don’t know him now. What he values, what he hates, what he fears. I need to know so I can plan carefully.”
With that, he melted into speed, a blur of shadow. Kidan’s eyes slid back to June, she harnessed her rage at her sister to temper her nerves about Susenyos.
Quickly, she fished out her phone. Still no response from Susenyos. A hollowness spread through her.
Why the hell was he ignoring her?
Kidan was torn between marching into the Southern Sost Buildings and demanding Susenyos answer her, or saving her pride.
It might be in her head, but she had the sense that whoever sought the other first would lose this game of power they’d entered ever since he signed over the house.
But Kidan also didn’t know how long she could stand feeling like this.
You don’t need him. He needs you.
Kidan said the words again and again, yet with each repetition they rang falser and falser.