Chapter 43 Kidan
KIDAN
Kidan. GK was close to her mind, shouting. Leave. Now!
But there was nowhere to go. Kidan retreated deeper into the protection of the house.
The twisted words from Aseracti embraced her with the arms of a statue, made her see reason.
“How did you get out?” she asked without blinking.
Samson crossed into the hallway, revealing the rigidness of his frame, the claws from his left hand tearing out of his fingers. Dimly, she recognized he was violent, but if she said the right words, she could survive his wrath.
He was beyond reckoning, words pushed through gritted teeth. “The mask.”
“I don’t have it yet.”
Samson began to lunge but she quickly said, “I can give you something else.”
His pupils flared. “The only thing I want is the mask and Susenyos on his knees. Tell me how to hurt him.”
One of his claws, black-tipped and deadly, lifted her chin so she stared into his starless eyes. They were entirely devoid of light. Something tragic must have happened to destroy his soul like this.
“I want an answer or I will bring the devout boy’s head back to you today.”
GK’s voice had disappeared again, and without his guidance, Kidan fell further into nothingness.
A swishing sound, like dresses around ankles, sounded from behind. The scent of warm bread reminded her of weathered hands and kind words.
Etete was in the corridor.
“Let her go.” Etete’s words came out firm, yet her breath trembled. She was afraid, yet wanted to protect Kidan. It reached a hidden part of Kidan. Mama Anoet was gone, as was Mahlet, the only one left was this woman who cooked for her, and gave her advice she ignored.
What was a mother but this?
No. GK returned, shattering through the House Locking, Aseracti, shouting this time. Don’t do this.
This had to be the final connection to her mother she had to sever.
Kidan surrendered herself to the wall inside herself, raised it high, fortifying her heart.
She turned away from Etete.
“Etete,” Kidan told Samson, her voice not her own, staring into darkness itself. “Susenyos cares about her.”
Samson’s head tilted to the side, studying Etete over Kidan’s shoulder. His lips twisted. “You expect me to believe this is how I’ll hurt him?”
“She’s been here for years. Ask her.”
Kidan heard a soft gasp behind her but didn’t turn to look. Couldn’t.
“If you’re lying to me, heiress, I will not hesitate to kill you.” Samson’s claw disappeared from under her chin and he marched to Etete.
There was still a narrow path leading to the garden, to the light. It seemed to shrink with each second as Samson disappeared from her vision. Kidan didn’t peel away her gaze from the grass as Etete’s cry shot like an arrow through her back.
It made no true impact, but it stayed ringing in her ears for a long time.
She touched the wall, feeling the expanse of power waiting inside it. Kidan didn’t need to burn her mother’s portrait. This was the sacrifice required of her.
Even as a part of her writhed inside, Kidan gave in to the path of no attachments.
They waited for Susenyos in the lounge room, the fireplace crackling. He came an hour later, quick strides across the carpet, calling out Kidan’s name.
“We need to talk. I can’t let you use Aser—”
He froze when he turned the corner. Kidan noticed the expansion of his pupils as he spotted Samson on the couch. A flash of alarm crossed over his face. And in this moment, Susenyos was the vulnerable one, human, while she was the very core of the earth. Unbreakable.
How often their roles reversed.
Etete, bruised from a blow to the head, knelt on the carpet between them.
Susenyos’s eyes flicked to Kidan, searching for something, though she didn’t know what. To his credit, he recovered fast enough, his tone cool.
“Uxlay’s law enforcement is quite weak.” Susenyos directed his gaze to Samson. “How did you get out?”
Samson simply stood and approached Etete, pulling her by the arm roughly. Susenyos followed the movements, still by the corridor wall.
Etete’s flour-stained hands gripped Samson’s shirt with a startled sound. “Let go of me.”
Samson’s eyes only brightened when they caught on Susenyos, like pieces of ocean rocks illuminated by the moon. “Who is this woman to you?”
“A house cook. I have a particular taste for fine dishes.” Susenyos crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “Why? Are you hungry?”
Samson must have grabbed her harder because Etete cried out, frail in his grip. Kidan watched it all from a great distance, a spectator who analyzed pieces on a chessboard.
Susenyos’s fingers tightened but all he did was pull out The Mad Lovers and a pen. Kidan’s heart didn’t race. It didn’t beat at all. A fraction of her mind told her to stand, to help Etete, but her body remained still. Safe.
“We had a chance to talk while you were away. Ruth. From the Eagle Order,” Samson announced. “A cook for Adane House for decades. That is delicious. Yos over there must truly like you to keep you around this long.”
Etete’s gaze flicked to Kidan, wide and frightened but also heartbroken. It wasn’t a look of betrayal but of sadness. For her. Kidan searched her memories of Aseracti for an explanation. Why, at the point of her impending death, would Etete be grieving for her?
A thousand words and quotes flicked across her mind, too many, but none that could solve this problem.
Samson forced Etete to her knees. She yelped, her long patterned dress nearly tripping her. His hands—one metal, one flesh, rested atop her gray head.
A slow, faint drum pounded in the panic-choked house, beating to the rhythm of war. It wasn’t her emotion. It was Susenyos’s brushing up against Kidan’s steel armor, trying to find a way in. He was afraid.
“I will snap her neck like you did mine.”
Such violent words.
Still, Kidan’s heart beat a normal rhythm. She was recalling a memory—the day Etete taught her how to make injera, telling her how food was a language she needed to learn, to feel closer to home.
Susenyos was still marking something in his book. “Threats don’t work on me, wendem.”
Etete shrieked when Samson grabbed both sides of her face, jerking her neck so she could only look at Susenyos.
“You have been scheming with Arin, haven’t you?
She hasn’t visited me once in Drastfort.
What poison did you tell her?” The wrath of Samson’s words made the room weaken and Kidan along with it.
Another memory rose to the surface. After a fight with Susenyos, Kidan had yelled at Etete to do something.
To help her get rid of him. Instead, Etete had approached her slowly and enveloped her in a soft hug. Kidan had gone rigid like a pole. It was the first time in nearly two years someone had touched her like that.
Her armor cracked a fraction.
Etete’s neck started to turn like a screw. Once her neck got to its natural stopping point, Samson continued applying pressure, making her scream and her eyes bulge.
Stop, came a whisper from a corner of Kidan’s mind. Tell him to stop. Fight him.
But she couldn’t move her limbs.
How had she imprisoned herself in her own body?
Move. Move.
But Aseracti deemed her safe where she was, and it refused to let her do anything risky.
Samson’s eyes were ablaze. “Admit you care for this woman.”
Susenyos rested his book against his thigh, like a weary reader who kept getting interrupted. “It hardly matters what I say. You will kill her because you believe she means something to me.”
Kidan’s eyes darted between the two.
Save her. Save her. Save her—
The instruction drummed into her bones.
Samson’s smile was foul. “We know each other too well.”
Etete reached out gently to Susenyos. A small fracture started on the wall, a blue light splintering into a million pieces, just a tiny window into the harrowing pain engulfing him.
She blinked and it was gone.
“Remember, her pain before yours.” Etete’s voice was fragile, signaling the end of something but her lips were arching. She shut her lids.
Susenyos started to speak, as if to change his mind—
Etete’s neck swung unnaturally to one side.
The crack splintered the room’s walls. Her body wavered and fell sideways.
Kidan shot to her feet. No scream left her but a crevice deep inside her soul widened.
Susenyos stared, unblinking, mouth still parted in the movement of speaking.
A menacing smile slithered over Samson’s face. “Do you feel it now? Do you feel the pain I promised you? Let yourself show me that bored look. I know your soul, wendem, and it is screaming.”
But nothing was screaming inside Kidan.
Death, especially the death of those she loved, should have burned like it was her own.
Samson grabbed Kidan’s arm and led her out of the lounge. Susenyos didn’t lift his haunted eyes from Etete’s limp body.
After hauling Kidan out of the study lounge, Samson locked the door.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her own voice unrecognizable.
“He will not leave that room.” Samson stared at her. “Tell June to come to my room once she gets here.”
He rubbed his metal arm with a wince and stormed upstairs.
Again, the words stirred no disgust in her. No hatred.
Kidan stumbled, faced the mirror above the kitchen stove. Her features—there was a horrible blankness to her expression, the fire in her eyes extinguished, the brown of her face faded, the movements of her mouth downcast.
She tried to smile, to frown, but she couldn’t. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
Of all the things she could become, this couldn’t be it.
Alive yet no different than a corpse. She’d gone wrong somewhere.
Of course she had. Without her bracelet, her little blue pill, there was no divine end.
Nothing to rescue her from her fragility or the depravity of her heart, both of which kept her awake at night.
Endless possibilities stretched and stretched, and she was a coward, avoiding each version of herself.
Maybe she wanted them all, selfish and impossible, or she wanted things she’d never have, her sister, her friends, and that’d hurt more than a knife through her lungs—it was too overwhelming, too loud.
Except now there was nothing at all. Her heart might as well as have stopped.
You did it, a horrible voice said inside her. You’ve finally killed yourself.
After all, there was more than one way to die.
Kidan went to the kitchen, opened the last drawer where extra keys were kept. She needed to see Etete’s body, understand what had happened so she could feel something.
The brass key turned the lock of the lounge. Inside, firewood crackled, embers taking flight in gentle cycles. No one was here. For a moment, something like relief traveled through her.
It had been a vision, a manifestation of the house.
Kidan walked inside until something wet smacked beneath her.
Blood drenched the carpet, right where Etete’s neck had been broken. Adjacent to her, the artifact room was slightly ajar, the red tapestry of the lion hanging lopsided.
Tremors danced up Kidan’s spine. She didn’t know there was another way out of the lounge house through the artifact room. But the droplets of blood led there, disappearing behind a sliding shelf.
Susenyos must have carried Etete through here.
Kidan shut her eyes, another tear ripping into her armor. She was coming undone and there were only two options: tighten her command on the house or loosen the knot and face the repercussions.
Weightless, Kidan traveled down the line of shelves to the portrait of the goddess, the one Susenyos had commissioned. The Sage was masked, her blades strapped to her back, and a ring on her third finger.
Power emanated from her and Kidan couldn’t help but wonder how she did it. How did she acquire power that wasn’t corrosive to the soul? Where was the balance?
A humming sound came from the portrait, like a woman singing. Kidan frowned, trying to figure out where it was coming from. The canvas was ripped, yet the Sage’s piercing gaze didn’t lose its edge.
Soft careful footsteps sounded, echoing wildly in the metal room. Wildflowers, that was her sister’s scent. As if she spent all her days in a field. Kidan inhaled deeply, going far away from this house to a time when she knew who she was.
An older sister.
A protector.
June’s skirts swished as she came to stand next to her, staring up at the mighty figure.
Aseracti whispered inside Kidan like a hissing snake. Kill her. She is the last thing you have to kill.