Chapter 35 Susenyos
SUSENYOS
Kill your companion.
It was nearly impossible to deter Arin once her mind was set. Iniko had gone still in the corner.
Susenyos made sure his voice didn’t fail him. “Kidan’s useful.”
“I saw the way you caught the pin at the ceremony. Such display of loyalty.” Arin spoke with dancing venom. “The Nefrasi bowed to you. The only thing you should wear is our silver.”
In a flash, she appeared before him, a lithe figure deceptive in the power she wielded.
“My crowning achievement.” The dangerous lull to her voice made his spine straighten. “I can see the veins along your temple, hear the pounding of your heart, and your urge to flee.”
Her hand was on him in seconds, locking his jaw with her claws emerged, strong enough to dig through skin. The darkest of orbs bore into his soul.
“You left us to be tortured, mutilated, and used by Lusidio. I made you strong, not a coward.” Her gaze raked down his face with disgust. “Not for you to become a slave to an acti house.”
He made sure not to move or shift to adjust the House Adane pin. The mountains were upside down and it bothered him. But Arin’s eyes, cold and violent, could pick out any imperfection, just like his father.
She tore his house pin out so violently a chunk of his sleeve went with it.
Susenyos’s vision pulsed with red, but he kept his fists by his side.
“Who would bow to you like this?” she continued in cutting Amharic. “Who would want you like this?”
The deep marks in the lower half of his back ignited with shame, a curse branded into his soul.
Almost as cruel as the claws around his jaw.
He seized her arm and pulled it away from his face with great effort, though he didn’t show it.
Arin’s strength might have surpassed his because she was older, but Susenyos was quickly losing his temper.
He bent her hand so far back any human being would be howling.
She merely looked bored, her arm about to pop out of its socket.
“Lusidio will die. No one on this earth loathes him as much as I do. He’s taken more from me than anyone else.”
Arin’s pupils shone, losing their tar-like hatred. “At least you haven’t lost your ambition. It should be easy to kill her, then.”
It was an effort to control the beat of his heart. To pump slowly, steadily.
“She is the only one who can master the house and retrieve the mask,” he said coolly.
Arin leaned back and he let her go, folding his fingers inward. “June will be ready. She is ours.”
Once again, Susenyos’s hatred for the girl returned. If Kidan simply killed the girl—
“Kill Kidan. Show me your strength and I will speak to the Nefrasi. You will lead them again. No more of this back-and-forth.”
Then she walked away, done with the conversation.
“Arin,” he called after a moment. “My pin.”
Her clicking boots stopped, and she looked back, her cut cheekbone glinting. She pursed her mouth and flicked his house pin back at him. He caught it swiftly, making sure it didn’t touch the ground.
“Your loyalty is scattered, and so long as it is, you’ll never be able to lead us.”
He tightened his grip, watching her go, knowing the truth of her words.
Iniko caught his eye and gave a brief incline of her head.
She quickly followed Arin out to distract her long enough for him to speak to Biruk and Henok.
They had both stretched themselves out on their seats, lost in the blood they’d consumed, the ends of their twists burning still.
Outside, Iniko would return something Arin lost sixty years ago—an armband forged with ancient silver.
Susenyos hoped it’d ease some of her resentment.
Freshly satiated, Biruk’s and Henok’s faces were still glowing when they got up to leave.
“Wait,” Susenyos said.
He searched his pocket, fished out a golden ring, and offered it to Biruk. His old friend’s breath hitched, pupils expanding.
“Sorry it’s chipped.” Susenyos thumbed the crack at one edge, courtesy of Kidan Adane’s axe. The piece had been too small to locate. “I share a house with a violent girl.”
Biruk reached out carefully, eyes watery. It had belonged to his mother, who died in childbirth.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Susenyos nodded, smiling a little. It was a relief to finally return his people’s belongings. All those decades he’d spent polishing and taking care of their artifacts, thinking they were dead—he’d never thought he would stand in front of them again.
“This violent girl,” Biruk said after a moment. “Did she destroy anything else?”
Susenyos thought about it. “She turned my crown into a necklace.”
He gasped. “So she’s dead, then?”
A line marred Susenyos’s forehead. “She should be, shouldn’t she?”
“Why isn’t she?”
Susenyos paused, recalling the car ride here. His crown around Kidan’s lovely neck. “She wears it well.”
Biruk grinned, shaking his head.
“You can’t bribe us with blood and treasures.” Henok’s muscled arms crossed over his chest.
Susenyos reached into his other pocket, retrieving a wooden comb carved in the shape of a seahorse.
Henok took it in wonder, swearing softly. He frowned at the crack along the creature’s neck. “The same girl?”
Susenyos nodded apologetically.
Henok fixed him with a slow gaze, and Susenyos tensed, waiting. “Here we thought you were living in paradise. My condolences.”
Susenyos exhaled. This was what he wanted. Familiar conversations and shared jokes. He wished he could sit down all night and catch up on the last six decades but time was getting away from him.
“The blade artifact,” Susenyos said slowly, making his voice dip. “Our protocol has always been to have three people know its location. Do you know who Samson told?”
Biruk averted his eyes. “No.”
“No as in you won’t tell me?”
“Samson is the only one who knows where it is.” Henok sighed, placing the comb into his thick head of coils. He looked the same as on the day he’d won it from an Axumite trader.
“How can you all allow that?” Susenyos’s jaw tightened. “After all we went through to find it? What if he dies?”
“He saved us.”
Susenyos turned his face away, trying not to say something he’d regret. Iniko’s grunt echoed from outside. Arin must have rejected her gift.
“Tell me where you’re hiding,” Susenyos said quickly, grabbing their shoulders.
Their faces became pained, torn, but not enough to betray their location.
He shook them with urgency, eyes burning into them.
Neither opened his mouth. Susenyos released them slowly.
This was his doing. He should have suffered in that Lusidio cell along with his people.
But there were so many things they couldn’t understand.
What was coming for them. The marks on his back woke again.
When Arin called for them, Henok and Biruk gave him a defeated look and left.
Iniko came limping inside. Susenyos cursed, rushing to throw her arm around his neck.
“I’m fine.”
Iniko had once crushed her leg in a lion’s trap and said the same words. It was always a struggle to find her wounds because she hid pain so well.
Susenyos helped her sit on the stage and swayed backward, bracing against the wall, a sudden wave of exhaustion gusting over him.
Iniko righted him, her dark eyes worried. “You’re starving.”
Slowly. But yes.
From her brocade vest, Iniko retrieved her own bronze flask and drank deeply. Her smooth dark skin glowed, the ends of her sleek hair catching red.
Susenyos shook his head, wincing through the sudden pain in his gums. “I refuse to be bound to her blood. I can’t have anyone else command me.”
Iniko regarded him in silence.
Only she and Taj could truly understand why he needed to kill Lusidio. Free them from his command.
Iniko touched her large collar, where beneath the expensive clothing, three claws had marked her skin. Taj hid his branding behind his headband.
Iniko’s voice was deathly when she finally spoke. “What companion lets her vampire suffer.”
“Leave it alone.”
“It will only grow worse. Your reactions will slow, and your senses dull. Put aside your pride and ask her.” Her dark eyes became cold. “Or listen to Arin and kill her. Get your people back.”
He shut his eyes. A headache was building behind his eyes. He couldn’t think clearly without blood.
A rustling came from the shrubbery down below.
Instantly, they flashed to the window. Well, Iniko did. Even after a beating, she was healing faster than him. Susenyos stumbled halfway.
Iniko’s brows furrowed.
He waved it off, peering through the glass.
There was a very drunk individual, propped up by another. Yusef Umil had clearly indulged, and Slen Qaros was taking care of him. The scene was quite similar to the day they burst into his house, reeling from Dranacti murder.
Only now, Susenyos wanted to murder the girl.
It was her eyes, the granite nature of them, that always bothered him.
That seemed to say that if given the chance not only would Slen Qaros lead Uxlay, but she would also kill him without hesitation.
She had her grandfather’s ambition and her father’s ruthlessness and both would only harden with time.
Yusef gave Slen an easy smile, though shadows clung to his face. “You know I won’t stop asking you, right?”
“Shut up.” The Qaros girl forced water down his throat. “Someone could hear us.”
“You came,” Yusef said.
“I only came to get you home.”
He gulped a few drops and wiped at his mouth. “I want to explore the world. Learn to sketch again. You could play at all the great conservatories. Why not?”
It never failed to amuse Susenyos—the dreams of mortals. How worried they were, racing against their death to make life meaningful.
Slen spoke with determination dipped in fire. “We are this close to securing our positions as masters. After all we’ve done, you want to throw it away?”
Drunk Yusef was quite brave. “Do you think inheriting Umil House would give me what I want? I will inherit burden after burden.”
Slen’s voice could slice through ice. “You’re afraid of being challenged.”
“We were challenged!” he shouted suddenly. “All of us! And where did it lead us? Killing our own friend.”
Susenyos’s lips arched. Dranacti didn’t allow humans to hide behind their false goodness. It brought dark desires to the surface and married them closer to his kind.
It’d brought Kidan closer to him, hadn’t it? The poor devout, GK, had paid the price. Susenyos doubted he was still alive.
Slen clamped a hand over Yusef’s mouth. “Not here.”
Yusef pushed her away. “As long as we stay here, we will either kill or be killed. Or we will be imprisoned. Don’t you want peace?”
Yusef searched her eyes deeply, lingering long enough to slip into intimacy. Iniko and Susenyos exchanged a glance.
Interesting.
Slen spoke with a clenched tone. “I don’t want peace if it means surrendering my legacy.”
Susenyos had always suspected Slen Qaros had a keen mind and an even steelier heart. A thing great warriors were made out of. If she had been on Kidan’s side, the two would have been unstoppable.
Yusef sprawled backward on the curb, pressing his fists to his eyes.
Iniko climbed onto the window. Silent as a shadow. “It’s our lucky day. That makes one more acti for the Nefrasi.”
“Not him.”
She frowned. “He would be an easy recruit.”
“Yes,” Susenyos said, watching the pathetic boy. “But she needs him. Needs them both.”
Iniko’s gaze pierced his side. “Kidan?”
The question was full of disapproval.
“I should have let you pull out her heart at the Acti Gala,” Iniko said, not entirely joking.
“What a tragedy that would have been.” His lip twitched. “Thank you for tempering me.”
Iniko blew out a breath. “Taj tempers you. I encourage you.”
“And what would your encouragement have me do?”
Her sharp cheekbones flexed. “Find out if you can truly trust her.”
“And what if I can’t?” he said truthfully, leaning heavily on the wall.
He smiled when Iniko repeated something she once said to him across a battlefield, facing a creature with white hair.
“Then let’s dance with the blades and hope we don’t bleed.”
There is no such thing as companionship. No equal footing when one’s fate is to be the lamb, and the other’s, the lion.
The only true power actis have is their house. Inside their walls, they are no lamb, but a dragon. And a dragon doesn’t give away its blood without a price.
There is a hierarchy, older than time itself—the human serves the vampire and the vampire serves the master. Any deviation from this results in catastrophe.
The true test of a master is how many laws they can take on. How easily they can force vampires to their knees. How their will commands all wills.
Are you the master or the vampire? If you’re the human, you’re already dead.
—“On the Hierarchy of Vampires, Houses, and Humans,” Aseracti