Chapter 42 Kidan
KIDAN
Familiar laughter and the smell of warm bread drifted from the kitchen. Etete was cleaning up her workstation. Susenyos was eating a grapefruit, his book The Mad Lovers open. From the way they both stopped talking, it was clear their topic of conversation had been Kidan.
Perhaps if she hadn’t locked away her emotions, she’d feel jealous at their familiarity. But she felt absolutely nothing.
Kidan and Susenyos had not spoken since she’d given him her blood in his quarters but it was good he was here.
“I heard you’re declaring for the Panther Order.” Susenyos tilted his head, his face half in shadow.
“They’ll vote my way.” Kidan’s eyes roved over the kitchen, taking it all in. How quiet it was without visions. Clear.
“Piran House murdered your parents.” An edge lined his voice, but it didn’t cut at her. How could it? She was nothing but steel.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Adjoa wants to support me. We’ll work well together.”
Clouds gathered in his features. “You don’t work with people that hurt someone you love. You kill them. Hell, you tried to kill me a hundred times because you thought I took June. Yet you’re working with someone who murdered your parents?”
His voice was rising, and a nervous look danced in Etete’s eyes.
But Kidan wasn’t worried.
“I’ll work with anyone if I can secure my position,” Kidan told him. There was no pounding in her heart, no nerves.
Something like surprise carved his brow. He turned to Etete as if he didn’t believe what he was hearing, then back toward Kidan. “When will you see Adjoa Piran again? I’ll come with you.”
“I’m afraid she doesn’t like you very much.”
From inside her pocket, Kidan retrieved a rolled-up red band. “Professor Andreyas says I have to spend half a day with my companion. Accept any order given to me.”
Susenyos glanced at the rope, then a spark lit in his gaze. “Obey every command I give you? The Red String task?”
She sensed he was trying to rile her up, but Kidan’s response was neutral. “Yes. For half a day.”
He took the band from her, running a hand over the contraption before putting it in his pocket. “Not in this house.”
She didn’t care where it happened. It was just an assignment.
After a moment, he lifted his head, his eyes searching.
“Why can’t I feel your fire?” he asked. “This isn’t how house armor is supposed to work. How did you separate our psyches?”
Etete gave her a pointed look, as if urging her to tell him about Aseracti. Like she understood this had to do with the book.
But Kidan ignored them both, walking into the lounge room. The fireplace was lit. Susenyos must have done it. Kidan sat before it, unable to feel the warmth. Her fingers drew close, and closer still, testing the limits of house armor.
Until her hand was completely in the fire.
And still, she felt nothing.
She smiled.
The Adane law skittered onto the brick by the fireplace. Golden and shimmering. In her mind, Kidan revised her own culture questions, made sure each was different from her mother’s with the help of the Dirt Diggers and all she’d discovered.
Dream in the language of: English.
Faith in the Last Sage or Demasus the Fanged Lion: Demasus.
Political view: Power should rest in individuals.
Values: Revenge.
She had erased all traces of her mother’s influence from this house, shattered any connection. Had severed herself well from her ancestors like a rotten limb.
It was time.
Kidan touched a fingertip to the law, remembering the professor’s words about Absorption—the house law will be written onto your palms. The letters began to crawl up her fingers, reaching the center of her palm. Her heart thudded, reading the law inching along her skin:
If Susenyos Sagad endangers Adane House, the house shall in turn steal something of equal value to him.
Once the law became a part of her, she could change it. Finally, bring GK home and make him human, punish June, and make Susenyos tell her the truth about the artifacts.
Her hand shook as a searing pain leaked from the letters. Her eyes flicked up to the picture above the fireplace. The defiant, determined look of her mother. A lump swelled in Kidan’s throat, but she swallowed it, held her ground.
She would sever and take this house.
The tail end of the law still clung to the brick wall, refusing to transfer onto her skin. It was no different from a rope, only between two souls, two versions of Kidan, and she pulled, recited the answers again and again.
English. Demasus. Power should rest in individuals. Revenge.
I’m not my mother. I’m not her daughter. I’m not my mother. I’m not her daughter.
The law snapped back like an elastic and clung to the wall.
“No,” she whispered, leaning forward into the fireplace. Something awful was burning. Like the rubber on tires.
But she didn’t care. She was looking for the one thread between herself and her mother. They must still have some common ground, something she had to find and destroy or the house wouldn’t bend to her.
A hand wrenched her back from the flames. Susenyos’s pupils were blown, tracing over her in shock.
“God, your hair.”
His palms quickly tapped the ends of her braids, hard enough to jostle her back onto the carpet.
So that’s what was burning.
Susenyos righted her, a firmness to his jaw as he waited for her to speak. Perhaps explain. When Kidan said nothing, he reached for the book he’d brought to the carpet.
The book clutched in his hand was her copy of—Aseracti.
Kidan’s attention flicked to Etete, who’d rushed out from the kitchen and now watched them with large eyes.
“You told him?”
“I’m sorry.” The woman spoke with true regret. “But you have not been yourself since you brought that book into this house.”
Kidan’s stomach remembered the physical sensation of a betrayal—a solid knot, and deep nausea. Yet there was no knot, no twist or pull.
Her face turned to the fire. She was sure if she just reached into it, she could break whatever remained of her mother.
Mama Anoet burned in fire, cursing Kidan to all hells. Maybe she had to put Mahlet in there too. Her eyes went to the portrait above. It didn’t look too heavy.
Yes, she’d burn it.
“Etete,” Susenyos said tightly. “Give us a moment.”
Etete shuffled away quietly.
“What the hell is this, Kidan?” he demanded.
“Aseracti. It’s a book about—”
“I know what it is. Why the fuck are you reading it?”
She frowned at his clipped tone but answered, “It helps me master the house.”
Among other things.
“Come outside with me. Now.”
Kidan stood but she didn’t go with him. She simply reached to take down the portrait, sear away her mother’s judging eyes but her wrist was wrenched back.
Susenyos dragged her toward the garden door, twisting in the hallways and outside to where the sun beat down on the overgrown grass and the weeping willow tree.
The moment Kidan crossed the threshold, pain unfolded in her mind. Her flesh and soul coming together at once. Her whole body tremored, and she bolted to the white door but Susenyos blocked her path.
“Do you even know who wrote this?” he asked in a deathly low voice.
“Get out of my way!”
Her stomach was already knotting, her flesh becoming soft, her very heart vulnerable. Kidan was immortal inside Adane House and too human outside of it.
The pure disgust flickering in Susenyos’s eyes rooted her to the spot. In a furious bout of strength, Susenyos ripped the seven-hundred-page book in half.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she hurled at him, her vision filled with rippling pages.
He could barely get his words out. “This philosophy is forbidden at Uxlay. How did you get it?”
She was too infuriated to answer. Good, anger was familiar. It kept the needles scratching at her heart at bay.
Her face grew hot from staring at the savaged book. “I found it in the library.”
If anything, this made Susenyos’s irises catch golden red.
“I never took you for a fool.” He approached like a lion, driving her farther onto the grass.
“This book was written as an antithesis to Dranacti. To shatter all bonds of companionship and instead enslave your counterparts as house master. To kill your own family and use their bones—Resurption.” He paused, realization trickling in.
“This is where you read about it. You don’t even know who wrote it, do you?
It’s Lusidio’s words, Kidan. You have been reading Lusidio’s words! ”
Her throat dried up, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. “Wh-what?”
“How could you be so easily manipulated?” he continued, nostrils flaring. “The actis under Lusidio’s command use Aseracti to master their houses.”
She didn’t understand how Lusidio’s writing had reached her but more than that she couldn’t stand the way Susenyos was reprimanding her.
“If you knew Aseracti would help you master the house, why didn’t you use it?” she shouted back. “You tried for years!”
He let out a disbelieving breath. “Because I would rather die than acquire power through his methods. I would rather watch my soul splinter into a thousand pieces than lose who I am. I cannot become the very thing I seek to destroy.”
The words became a lashing on her very skin. Laced with the poison of her own thoughts about who was truly evil—thoughts she’d buried. She was right to hide this from Susenyos. He would always unravel her.
“How is Aseracti any different than The Mad Lovers?” She tilted her chin up in challenge. “The Mad Lovers is an instruction in madness and darkness as well. But you read it daily.”
He studied her with something resembling disappointment, stoking her blood. “If you can’t tell the difference, then you truly are lost.”
Her molars ground together, itching to carve out his grim expression.
He pulled out his favorite book, with the bleeding grapefruit, and placed it in her stiff hands.
He flipped the pages before stopping on one.
The annotations, messy writings in the margins, were in Amharic, but only one word was circled on the page, in red bright ink.
Kidan struggled to read it, joining the letters and their sounds in her mind.
“Teyik,” he said in a low voice.
“‘Ask’?” She recognized the word now.
His eyes burned into hers. “That is the difference. Aseracti doesn’t allow you to ask, it commands, compels you—” Something changed in his voice at the word.
“An ask is the difference between war and love. Between submission and loyalty. The abyss and the dark. It is the only bridge that matters, the only line we cannot cross. Our law, our vow.”
Kidan’s fingers trembled on his book, the garden fading around his intense face. A new emotion unfolded in his eyes, in his held breath—fear. As if whatever response she gave him held all the weight of the world, and it mattered more than the souls who occupied it.
Her eyes fell to the torn pieces of the book. It didn’t matter if he destroyed it, she remembered every word.
Needed it still to stay in control.
“I think you should go.”
He let out a stunned breath. “What?”
She met his eyes without flinching. “I want you to leave.”
A nasty laugh tore from his throat and he gave a deep fake bow. “As you command.”
The moment he stormed away, Kidan rushed inside, wincing as the house peeled her emotions from her.
Breathe, she told herself. You will only use Aseracti until you master the house.
The wind whipped the garden door back and forth and a figure appeared from the distance, parting the leaves of a tall tree. Her chest tightened. Susenyos would stay by her side as he’d vowed to do.
But the way this shadow walked was different—not as fluid, and entirely too straight, the glint of metal on his arm.
Kidan took a step back, into the safety of the house, reaching for cold strength. Her fight with Susenyos faded from her mind and her heart encased itself in iron.
Two menacing eyes latched on to her. Disheveled like he’d clawed his way out of the grave, with a mad gleam to his eyes.
Samson, free from prison, was here.
“Heiress, tell me you have the mask before I rip out your throat.”