Chapter 44 Kidan
KIDAN
There was a flush to June’s cheeks from the wind outside, light dancing in her brown eyes.
A delicate red ribbon tied her long curling braids away from her face.
At times, Kidan wondered how they could have shared their mother’s womb yet come into this world so drastically different.
Maybe if they were identical, their insides would match too.
June had no idea what had transpired a few minutes ago.
That she likely stood on drops of Etete’s blood.
“What happened to it?” June’s finger touched the cut in the canvas.
“I came in here with an axe,” Kidan said. “Looking for you.”
A flash of surprise darted across June’s soft face. Her features smoothed out quickly, resetting to pretty and avoidant.
The silence returned between them. Professor Andreyas had once said silence was death, and Kidan understood why now. It was the quickest way to kill something—a friendship, a sisterhood, any sort of love. They withered in unspoken words for weeks and here they were now, almost strangers.
“All this for a mask,” Kidan said dully. “Will it be worth it?”
June’s profile was difficult to read. Her tone was familiar, innocent, just like in her videos. “Isn’t that why you want to master the house?”
“I couldn’t care less about the mask,” Kidan said. “I want to save GK.”
A frown met June’s lips. “Save him from Samson?”
That was part of it.
“I made him into a vampire,” Kidan said without emotion. “I have to make him human again. As a Mot Zebeya, he hates—”
“I didn’t know you’d met a Mot Zebeya.” June’s head snapped to her. This, above all else, seemed to hold her attention.
“That’s because you don’t know anything about my life,” Kidan said tightly.
“I guess I don’t.” June turned to face the portrait. “But you should care about the mask.”
“Why?”
In a low, haunted voice, she said, “Break the artifacts and break the Three Binds.”
Kidan cocked her head. “I know that. But why does that concern you? Why do you want to free vampires?”
Her sister scanned her face for something. “He hasn’t told you.”
A prickling itch started at Kidan’s scalp. “Who?”
“Your companion.” June said the word with a tightness and turned back to the portrait. “Samson and Susenyos didn’t spend all these years hunting for the artifacts just to break the binds. There’s a grander myth they are after, from Ye Abyssi Tarik.”
That book.
Kidan had asked Adjoa Piran about it and received a nonanswer. And she definitely didn’t want to give June the pleasure of asking, but her interest was piqued. After a few more seconds, Kidan’s impatience won. “What’s the myth?”
June’s honeyed eyes grew haunted. “The person who breaks the artifacts will break the Three Binds. But most of all, acquire the powers of a Sage. They want that power.”
Kidan took a small step back. She’d suspected there was more to it, but this… Her gaze flicked to the portrait. The slitted eyes seemed to mock her for not having known that all this time. They didn’t need to collect the artifacts, they had to break them?
Susenyos’s thirst for power shouldn’t surprise her. Of course he wanted to be invincible, but she’d always thought the Sages were untouchable, divine beings. Could anyone become a Sage, then? Could she?
“If I have to inherit this house to get the mask, I will.” June’s voice reached her through the buzzing in her ears, distant and too sharp. “Unless you stop me.”
It was then she noticed the knife in her sister’s hand, slipping out of her long sleeve.
Kidan’s House Locking cracked, a sudden splinter that spilled cold inside her gut, icing her from the inside out.
“You came here to kill me?” The question hovered between two ancient mountains, a reckoning.
June whispered the word, staring at the floor. “Yes.”
There was a brutal kick to the middle of Kidan’s chest, swift and unexpected, and it released the wrong sound from her—laughter. It was a low, staggering laugh, in every bit of her body except her eyes.
Because her sister had done this to her.
Kept choosing power over family, over blood. And now Kidan had to do the same.
June’s pupils widened with each sound, her gaze flicking away and back again.
Her sister shook but she lifted her chin after a few seconds, a terrifying new resolve in her gaze. It was a look that mirrored Mama Anoet’s: There’s evil in you, Kidan.
June took a step forward.
It was a step too far.
The crack in Kidan’s emotions burst into a chasm.
Kidan lunged for her sister. A yell erupted from June as they knocked each other to the ground, the knife following them. They’d been on the edge of ruin for so long, and now they were off its cliff, hurtling into darkness. Pottery rained down from the shelves, meeting the floor in violent pieces.
After weeks of suppressing her emotions, Kidan was a slave to the smallest taste of her anger. It made sense it would be June who would finally unleash her.
This house had tried to warn her. Prepare her. Months before, June had killed her in so many rooms—pouring poisonous words in the hallways, feeding her the blue pill in the observatory, and Kidan had refused to accept it.
Her sister was good. She’d been the only good thing in this world. Until she betrayed her.
Kidan overpowered her easily, climbing on top, snarling like a beast.
Where the fuck did they go wrong?
June was struggling for something on the floor, a flash of silver, the knife.
Ice spread in Kidan’s blood. This was no vision. No one would come to rescue her. And there was no good here. Only evil.
Kill all evil.
Kidan seized June’s wrists and slammed them against the floor, hearing her groan.
The knife fell from June’s grasp, her curled braids fanning around her.
“You want to kill me?” Kidan shouted, all fire, no reason. “After everything I’ve done for you!”
The same cold, unfeeling eyes gazed back at her. Kidan would shatter this mask. This unknowable creature. Kidan saw the knife, imagined it in her hands.
“Kill all evil,” June whispered.
Kidan froze.
“What did you say?”
June said nothing else. Kidan reared back to hit her, fingers folded into a fist with all the power of the house.
Her sister flinched, cheek turned to the side, eyes shut.
The image stripped free a memory and the girl below Kidan disappeared, looking younger, terrified wide eyes with thin thrashing limbs.
Kidan used to restrain her like this until her nightmares broke, until June returned from whatever place she drowned in.
Sometimes it took a few minutes, sometimes longer, but Kidan waited.
Her sister must be trapped again, lost in a nightmare. Away from the real world.
She could come back.
A weak voice from her past spoke.
She always comes back.
“No,” June whispered, slowly opening her eyes as Kidan’s fist hovered. “Do it.”
Kidan’s whole arm shook. Tears pricked at her eyes. And when Kidan cried, June was never far away, her pupils misting.
“Do it, Kidan.” June’s voice trembled, face contorted. “Or I will kill you.”
Blood spilled into Kidan’s mouth from how hard she bit her bottom lip. She loosened her fist.
And she reached for the knife.
June’s eyes grew bright, a trickle of relief in them. She appeared to smile. The first sign of the sister she knew creeping back.
Kidan held the knife between them.
Her dark eyes, filled again with monstrous fire, reflected back on the cold steel.
If Kidan did this, she would destroy a part of herself.
She would stain this house with a horrific act and live in it.
Past her braids, she caught a glimpse of the Sage’s portrait, her eyes were concealed by the mask so her regal, commanding stance spoke for her.
Do it, she seemed to say.
But at what cost?
June’s bracelet slid down to her elbow, a glinting charm and butterfly. Butterflies remind us we’re in constant transformation. And Kidan has to transform again, break her cocoon and emerge.
Kidan’s fire faded into water. She released a jagged breath. “I can’t… not against you.”
Grabbing June’s right hand, Kidan placed the hilt into it and guided the blade to her own heart. June jerked, trying to pull back, but Kidan held tight.
And in that moment, the house loaned her true, unbridled strength. Strength that wasn’t wrenched or controlled, but gifted. She could feel her fingers harden, sense the unbreakability of her body.
“It’s no use.” A short sound left Kidan. But this time, it felt warm. “Whatever you do, however deeply you hurt me, I can’t hurt you. I won’t let you make me into a monster.”
The more she spoke, the more the house cloaked her in steel.
“So you want the mask, this house? Take it. Kill me and take it, June.”
June’s eyes darted between the knife and Kidan’s face. Emotion swirled in her sister’s face, a hurricane of it, before anger won. June lunged forward, holding the knife an inch from Kidan’s chest. Kidan remained on her knees, not fighting, choosing what to focus on in her final moments.
June’s tears continued to flow, her voice anguished. “Fight back.”
“I am,” Kidan whispered, shutting her eyes. “More than you know. I’m fighting back.”
Kidan hated Dranacti with a new wave of feeling in that moment. It had taken root inside her sister, turning whatever hatred she held into unspeakable darkness.
Her mother had wanted to change this. She created the Dirt Diggers so no sister would kill her own, no brother die. She wanted to spare souls. To break this cycle of pain.
I understand, Kidan thought dimly. I get it now.
The knife sliced, vicious, soundless, and as always, blood sprayed. It missed her chest on purpose and found her palm, a searing pain cracking the skin.
June scrambled back, her eyes expanding into huge pools.
“It’s okay.” Kidan gritted her teeth through the pain. “June—”
Her sister ran out of the room, twisting into the shelves, her skirts whipping at her ankles. Kidan stood to follow, swearing. By the time she made it into the lounge room, there was no trace of her sister.
She shut her eyes, fisting her stinging palm.
Kidan staggered down the hallway to the broom closet.
She did not know what she was doing until she was kneeling, pushing aside the bucket to find the symbol—a delicate circle drawn in her own blood.
Her fingers scrambled for a rag and detergent, before scrubbing at it.
It smeared and in the next swipe, it was gone.
She wiped at her neck too. The point of desire and joy.
Pure, unfiltered light bathed down on her, warming her skin. Finally, chasing away the numbness. Tears leaked out of her as she breathed heavily.
Stumbling out of the broom closet, Kidan found the worn carpet of the hallway, peeled it back to see the bloodied square. She erased it as well. The lights flickered and the carpet turned to water, bone-chilling, beautiful fear making her alive.
She dragged herself to the observatory, her tears falling as she moved the corner vase aside. Her knees crashed to the marble, and inhaling deeply, she cleaned away the pentagon, surrendering herself to pain.
But she wasn’t alone.
A plume of black smoke was waiting for her, and inside it, Susenyos’s grief. It lingered in the house long after he left. War drums exploded louder and louder, signaling the presence of something soul crushing. The house—echoing the truth. How his heart had been broken.
Susenyos’s pain spread in the house, with a perpetual haunting sound, the humming of a mournful song. Kidan curled up where she was, a single tear gliding down her cheek.
Thirty years. He’d known Etete for that long.
Always the woman who rescued him from the observatory room, and Kidan sobbed for her.
The only woman who cared for Kidan. She didn’t stifle herself or repress a single sound.
Kidan screamed her grief, letting it pulse through every inch of the house, magnified to the point of no return.
All the light bulbs of the house sparked out of life, the curtains slammed shut one by one, and the domed glass shook, threatening to shatter.
This must be Obsculion—the process of feeling each and every emotion and letting them flood the body.
The opposite of House Locking, as written in her mother’s journal.
For a second, her mother’s ghost appeared, more vivid than ever, gentle.
She seemed to guide her to her feet, down the hallway, and outside.
Kidan staggered forward, wiping her running nose.
She had to see him. Apologize. In a trance, she floated out of the house, not feeling the ground beneath her. There were people staring at her as she crossed campus, whispering something about her hand, but Kidan had only one goal.
Vampires hissed at her as she entered the gilded corridors of the Southern Sost Buildings, past the spine-curling spikes, and turned twice.
Kidan knocked on the door to Susenyos’s quarters, and Taj opened the door, looking pained. “Now is not the time.”
“Please.” Her voice broke.
Taj’s chestnut eyes ran over her figure and he stepped aside.
Susenyos was sitting on the edge of his bed, head bent. Iniko, a formidable look on her face, stood by the window.
“I’m sorry,” Kidan gasped out. “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I told him. I told him to hurt Etete.”
Susenyos’s head lifted slowly, face etched with sorrow.
His eyes trailed down to her hand. It was still bleeding from June’s cut, but the burn was nothing compared to her regret.
His jaw hardened when he focused on her face.
Her heart broke further. Susenyos came to stand over her, every feature carved into a merciless angle.
An old panic swam to the surface, drying her throat.
This was it—the moment he would discard her fully. She’d been most afraid of this and here it was. Her eyes scanned his desperately, but there was no forgiveness to be found.
Susenyos reached into the shelf beside her and lifted the long red rope sitting on the wood.
No, not a rope. A band from the Red String task.
His face was a stone wall, entirely unreadable as he took her wrist and latched the band. He secured his own hand as well, binding them together. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed needles.
“Yos?” she tried.
“Don’t.”
Revenge—that was the only thing she could read in the silence that followed.