Chapter 29 Kidan
KIDAN
Kidan trembled, staring at the alert on her phone.
Qaros House—no, Slen—had voted against her.
Yusef, who’d been sitting across from her on the grass and sketching, had frozen too. Every nerve in Kidan’s body turned inside out. Blood rushed to her ears, drowning everything out. She must be in her house still, lost in her visions because Slen wouldn’t betray her like this.
She couldn’t.
Not like June.
It was Yusef’s slow exhale that helped Kidan understand this was no nightmare.
“Did you know?” She could barely speak.
Yusef lifted his chin in surprise. His eyes were dark and hurt. “No, of course not.”
Slen emerged from the direction of the Mot Zebeya Courts a few minutes later.
Her braids curled at her jaw, thick and neat.
Her jacket, ever a shield of black around her frame, now pinned with a startling silver pin.
Her dress always the same, down to the combat boots, all chosen deliberately.
A perfect image of control. The only thing uneven about her was the glove missing from her right hand because she’d given it to Yusef.
Kidan shot to her feet, her eyes burning.
“Gently,” Yusef said in warning, his voice carrying on the wind.
Slen approached them. She shoved her hands into her pockets and angled her chin up. Kidan had to admire Slen’s courage. Not an ounce of shame clung to her.
“It’s not personal. I’m just testing my influence,” Slen said as if they were meant to know what that meant.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Kidan snapped, trying to keep her voice low and failing.
“I didn’t write my father’s name.” Slen’s eyes remained dark and straight. “For the power exercise yesterday. I wrote you two. I’m influenced by you two the most.”
Yusef looked up in surprise.
“And?” Kidan snapped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you two are the most dangerous people to me.”
Kidan’s blood pumped so loud she could barely hear her own breathing. She lunged forward, itching to knock some sense into Slen when her path was blocked by Yusef.
“Get out of my way—”
“I’m angry too,” he said, holding up a hand. His breathing had changed, become more erratic as his nostrils flared. “But this will solve nothing.”
“I disagree. I can slap some sense into her.”
“This is what she wants,” he stressed, finally reaching her. “Listen to her words. She’s testing how much influence she has over you.”
Slen watched them silently, her face purposefully blank. But it was clear she was observing, taking note. Kidan was about to explode. She couldn’t help but be surprised by Yusef’s calmness.
His gaze lingered, patient until Kidan was calm, before he spun and grinned.
“You really wrote my name down?” he asked, a spike of delight in his voice.
Slen stiffened when he approached, following his movements with all the cautiousness one offered a snake. He draped an arm around her shoulder and said in a low voice, “I wrote your name too.”
It was barely a second, but there was a flicker, rare shock interrupting Slen’s flat gaze and turning it into a blink.
He let her go and offered both his palms, warm brown eyes shining. “You want the power? Take it.”
“That’s not how it works.” Slen tightened her tone. “You giving it to me implies you have it.”
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “You give it to me, then.”
A lengthy pause settled between them. Charm. Professor Andreyas had mentioned it as one of the ways to exercise power. Slen broke from the pause finally, shook him off, and adjusted her jacket.
“Don’t make this any harder,” Slen said. “Both of you should vote for this proposal. It’s a compromise on both sides. Smart.”
Smart.
How very Slen.
Something horrid clicked in Kidan’s mind. But it was all wrong. Had to be. “Did you help them suggest this proposal?”
Slen didn’t have to answer her. The prolonged quiet was damning enough.
Yusef’s head whipped toward Slen. “That’s not true, is it?”
For a moment, Slen touched her right hand, the one without a glove, before continuing. “If I didn’t propose the Founding Houses be stripped of power, the Border Houses would have left Uxlay defenseless by leaving Uxlay.”
Kidan’s blood pumped. “Oh, you’re a real fucking hero.”
Slen’s eyes slitted. “I told you last semester. There’s no leaving the 13th. More than half of Uxlay is part of it.”
“I can’t believe you.”
They’d gotten close to each other’s faces, to the dangerous point where words weren’t enough and only fists could resolve their fight.
It struck Kidan Slen must have been planning this for a long time.
While she taught Kidan Amharic? While they shared coffees and studies?
While Slen’s hands were in GK’s chest, keeping his heart still so he would wake as a vampire?
Slen’s pillar of need was always to rule.
Only Kidan had been foolish enough to think she’d changed.
Yusef stepped between them, a hand on each shoulder. “Let’s just take a minute. Talk it through.”
Slen slid out of his touch as if it hurt. Her stoic gaze danced back and forth. “You know it’s the right thing to do.”
Yusef exhaled as Slen walked away, a harsh shape of black among green leaves and old stone. If Yusef’s goal was to show Slen how ridiculous she sounded, it had worked. Kidan had to curl her fingers so she wouldn’t attack her.
Yusef leaned back against the tree, his face growing dark. None of the charm from seconds ago existed now.
“You can’t let her see you get worked up. She wants us to hate her.”
“I do hate her,” Kidan growled. “She wants the Border Houses to have a shot at being dean so she can be one herself. That way she can move Qaros House to the middle. Everything else is bullshit. How are you so calm?”
“She’s working for the same people that arrested my father, Kidan. Which means she chose this on purpose. She thinks we weaken her and it’s true, she has made decisions that risked her position in Uxlay for us.”
“I thought she’d changed!”
Yusef’s shoulders hunched forward. “It’s her family. They’re not like ours. They wouldn’t support her as next in line if she didn’t elevate Qaros House’s position.”
Inherit.
Kidan paused. Slen had told her she would follow Koril’s footsteps.
Wool makers. Music makers. What will you make us now? I have more in common with my father than differences.
“Come on,” Yusef said. “Let’s go visit my dad. He may help.”
Kidan needed something to do so she followed him numbly, thinking over Slen’s words. She should have been more cautious around her. But the three of them were supposed to be past all this rivalry.
Aseracti ensnared her mind, repeatedly saying: fool, fool, fool.
Once they arrived in Drastfort, Yusef told Omar about the House Council votes and what the 13th proposed. Kidan winced. The 13th. Slen. They were one and the same now.
Omar’s face grew more furious with each word, making her own blood cool.
“They dare remove Adane House from the middle?” he gritted out.
Nails dug into her own palms. “How do I convince the rest of the houses to vote my way?”
Omar leaned back, his shifting eyes unusually focused for once. When he finally spoke, his tone was bitter. “There has always been one true way alliances are struck in Uxlay. The quickest way to sway houses is marrying into their order.”
Kidan’s head inclined sharply. Orders. She faintly recalled the letter she had received at the start of the semester.
Whether you sway to the Abyss, or favor the soaring Eagle, prefer the Panther over the mighty Oryx, or simply marvel at the Blue Stone, the tower opens its doors to you.
Courting begins on the seventh of each month.
We await your response.
Omar appeared grim, then turned to Yusef. “You must attend as well.”
Yusef scratched at his loose curls, laughing nervously. “I’m not really looking to settle down—”
“It’s not a matter of love,” Omar cut in. “Your great-aunt is growing weak. And if you want Umil House to back you as inheritor, you must secure your position by marrying into our order—the Abyss.”
Yusef swallowed roughly, ducking his head slightly. He didn’t want to argue or say yes. Kidan herself was feeling a little sick.
Omar’s hardened face didn’t waver. “The true power of any house is children. Heirs and heiresses. Acti blood must always keep flowing to feed dranaics. They dare discuss removing Adane House because your bloodline is near at an end. Marry early, birth children, secure your positions. That is the language of our society.”
They were only nineteen. Was this how her mother felt? Her grandmother? The weight of Uxlay’s responsibilities seem to grow each day, crushing them under laws and expectations. Kidan wanted to be free, not tied to ancient traditions and forced to marry. But she was too powerless, too afraid.
If Kidan was going to survive the next month, she needed a clear mind. She could no longer afford distractions. Once she returned home, she stood still in the hallway until the sharp pain inside her heart transformed into something solid and unforgiving.
She retrieved her copy of Aseracti and flipped to “House Locking.”
Different parts of the body carry emotions. If you lock your body, you will seize control of all rooms, all emotions.
Similarly, different rooms of a house represented the eight primary emotions—fear, anger, joy, sadness, love, pain, trust, and anticipation.
From her readings, Goro, the Food House, found success in consuming a variety of foods to bridge their connection to their emotions more quickly.
Sweet sugarcane created joy, lemon created disgust, and the act of being fed by another magnified trust. Delarus, the Fashion House, often used specific fabrics to trigger emotions.
The touch of silk magnified the feeling of joy, the draping of black clothes brought forth sadness, the binding of ropes on wrists stirred anger.
Quickly, Kidan made a list of her own emotions. The illusions she’d glimpsed so far—red flames for anger, blue water for sadness, the sound of drums for fear, the crinkling of papers for trust, the scents of rose oil and eucalyptus for…
She stared at the list for a long moment, unable to write the word, and moved on to the next. Visions of June and Mama Anoet in the observatory for pain. She assigned a symbol for each emotion, finishing with a square next to fear, a circle next to joy, a triangle next to anger.
All her life, no three symbols could conjure emotions in her better. She started with the broom closet, drew a circle in blood under a bucket. Then she traced another circle at the point of her neck to seal away the emotion.
Don’t, a voice said, followed by a clink.
Kidan whirled, and for a second, she saw GK’s soft brown eyes.
This will hurt. Your mother wouldn’t choose this.
“How are you doing that?” she asked aloud.
He slipped out of reach too quickly. A trick of her mind.
Ice pressed to the base of her spine.
Her mother’s ghost appeared to be over her shoulder, watching in disappointment.
Kidan was tired of wading through her mother’s worn notebooks, trying to understand what to do.
They were nothing but a collection of messy, incomplete thoughts with the number twenty-one written so many times in one book, they’d created a disturbing tessellation art.
Then there were the sketches of lions—six of them—that climbed over the corners of the pages like eerie figures.
Depictions of Demasus the Fanged Lion, Kidan assumed.
But on a relatively clean page, with neat handwriting, House Locking was mentioned once by her mother.
If a house can repress emotions through House Locking, can it then repress visitors’ emotions too? A horrifying prospect.
But what if magnifying can have the same effects? What if I can enhance not only my own emotions but also those of others?
I’ve done it once—manipulated the emotions of a visitor. I infused a room with my own sadness, flooded my body with so much grief that tears appeared in their own eyes. As long as a fragment of an emotion lingers in a visitor’s mind, I believe I can magnify it to epic proportions.
This is the purpose of a house—to enlighten and expand, not shrink.
Professor Andreyas says we can name a technique we discover ourselves.
I think I’ll call it Obsculion.
The process of seeing into one’s soul.
Maybe this was why her mother was exceptional. She’d allowed herself to feel everything to the brim, then extended her fingers into another’s soul and forced them to do the same. Kidan was tired of feeling.
With a sobering breath, Kidan completed drawing the wet circle on her neck. She didn’t want to magnify her emotions, she wanted clarity.
Her mother’s ghost vanished like a lit match in a howling lighthouse.
It was quiet at first.
Then a horrible wrench in her gut made her stumble.
She half wanted to vomit. Her very soul was being cleaved in two.
Tears in her eyes, she sensed the broom closet dim, the fireflies burn out of existence.
Joy withered away, running to another place, shrinking even smaller, perhaps a box this time, before… nothing.
Kidan touched her neck and the soft flesh, the weak elasticity of her skin had hardened. Crystallized.
Grabbing an old broom, she took off a splintered piece and brought the sharp end to her neck. There was resistance but no pain. In fact, she could not feel the edge at all.
Kidan stared at the stick in wonder. This was the same burst of strength she had accessed when June showed up on her doorstep. Back then, she had dented a doorknob, her hand becoming as strong as concrete. The house could armor her body.
Tightening her jaw, she continued with her symbols—a square in the hallway, a cross in the observatory, each hardening a part of her body, sealing off emotions until she was nothing but armor. Solid and unbreakable.
A blissful calm had taken over her mind. She could think clearly, see the necessary steps she needed to take to acquire her votes. There was only logic. No wavering, no hesitation.
And she loved it.
Kidan stood without feeling the floorboards and went to the study.
She grabbed the Amharic textbooks Slen had loaned her and threw them in the trash.
Attempting to inherit this house’s culture would be impossible.
She’d always known that. It was time to sever and ensure all Four Points of Culture differed.
All that was left to do was make sure Kidan’s faith, political view, and language went nowhere near Mahlet Adane’s.