Chapter 46 Susenyos
SUSENYOS
Arin was buried.
Alive, suffering, but buried.
Susenyos panted, unable to free his hold from around Kidan. She was breathing heavily into him too, her face hidden against his chest.
He’d almost cost Kidan her life.
When she disappeared over the edge, a part of him had been filled with such acute terror, he’d never known he could feel fear on such a level.
Arin could have killed her. To spite him, to teach him a lesson, which was her favorite, she could have severed Kidan’s hand or torn out her throat. It would have been horrifyingly easy.
All because he’d wanted to punish Kidan, scare her a little. Etete’s death had settled like a knife beneath his lungs, hurting every time he breathed. It shouldn’t have happened. Not like this. His eyes burned even now, thinking of returning to Adane House without her kind smile and crinkling eyes.
She was the last good thing, a mother to everyone, and she was dead.
“I’m sorry.” The word was whispered into him, his shirt damp with tears. Susenyos paused, surprised Kidan allowed him to see her like this. The sound of her cries had the horrible effect of making him want to forgive her for any crime.
Susenyos held her tighter for a couple more seconds until the comfort he’d stolen turned into hunger.
Kidan was bleeding onto him, scrapes and cuts all over, and his fangs stirred.
He sat up, taking her with him. Her dark desert eyes were wide and red.
It was difficult not to draw her back into his arms.
“Iniko,” he called instead, turning his face away. “Get her cleaned up.”
He couldn’t heal her without touching her skin, and Susenyos was certain if he did that, he would drink from her desperately.
Iniko flashed to their side. After a moment, Kidan stood, her sweater and pants dirtied.
The red band connecting them had been cut by Arin’s claws. Which was good. Professor Andreyas couldn’t fail Kidan if an outside force interrupted the assignment.
“There’s a creek a few steps down,” Iniko said, her voice hard.
With each step Kidan took away from him, Susenyos breathed easier, breaking the haze of his hunger. He joined Taj at the edge of the rock-filled hole.
“Is it weird I feel sad?” Taj asked him.
Susenyos rested a hand on his shoulder. “No. This isn’t what I wanted either. She belongs with the Nefrasi.”
Taj sighed. “Not to mention finding the Nefrasi hideout without her will be near impossible.”
That wasn’t lost on him. Without Arin’s support, his people wouldn’t be eager to hear him out.
They also needed Arin if they ever hoped to defeat Lusidio. And find the blade artifact.
“How’s June?” Susenyos asked, dragging branches to drape over the rocks.
“Uh, interesting.” There was a turn to Taj’s voice that made him pause. His friends’ eyes slid to the side whenever he was keeping secrets.
“What did you find?”
“I think June has read Ye Abyssi Tarik.”
Susenyos froze mid-throw and shook his head. “Read it? No, not possible.”
A serious look possessed Taj, rare enough to make Susenyos pay attention.
“I thought so too, Yos. It’s written in so many languages even I haven’t been able to read huge chapters of it. But I swear, Yos, the girl is smart. Can name any plant under the sun and mix rare remedies.” Quietly, he added, “I think she knows about compulsion marks.”
Susenyos dropped the leaves. When Taj didn’t smile, everything around them darkened slightly. The clouds swelled, and the few birds chirping fell silent.
“I showed her my scars, Yos, and she looked at me with… fear. Like she knew what’s been done to me. To us.”
Susenyos’s molars ground together as the three scars on his lower back seared with new heat.
Compelled to follow a single order and cursed to die the moment they spoke of it.
That was the decades-old secret that bound the three. A knowledge no other soul should have. Let alone June, a human girl.
“Then there’s Warde,” Taj continued. “Always following her close by.”
Susenyos had noticed that too. Warde Wesfin hadn’t spoken a word since Lusidio’s torture. But even before that, as a Mot Zebeya, he was a docile soul always prejudged for his giant size. Besides bowing in Susenyos’s direction every time he passed by, Warde’s loyalty was unknown.
“Keep watching her,” Susenyos said, a prickling starting at his neck. “Find out for sure.”
Taj nodded, throwing a branch on the patch.
Once they were nearly done, Susenyos went to find Kidan.
She’d crouched by the creek, washing her face and wetting the back of her neck.
The afternoon sun armored her, drenching her brown skin and blurring the edges of her determined eyes. She was no longer crying.
Iniko appeared behind him, soundless save for the swishing of leaves. “I’ll go help Taj.”
It took him a moment to smell the air, free of Kidan’s intoxicating blood, before walking. When he stepped on a twig, her head snapped up in attention.
They stared in the quiet stillness.
“I know,” she said softly, a new resolve shinning in her slightly red eyes. “I know why you want the mask artifact. I get it now.”
“What do you know?”
The brook next to them trickled slowly, the only sound in the dense forest.
Kidan hesitated for a moment then stood. “The artifacts will break the Three Binds but that’s not all, is it? The person who breaks the artifacts will acquire the powers of a Sage.”
A hum began in Susenyos’s ears. He’d heard those words centuries ago and became a slave to them. Yes, this was why Susenyos risked everything and everyone in pursuit of the artifacts.
This was a truth he never shared because it was not only dangerous, but also a curse.
Once Kidan knew this nothing would ever be the same.
His voice came out hard. “Who told you?”
Her brows rose a little. “So she was right? You really want to be a Sage?”
“Who was right?”
Kidan shook her head, pressing a hand to her head. “June. She knows. She told me.”
A twist formed on his lips. “Have I mentioned I don’t like your sister? I can’t help but wonder how easy our lives would be if she wasn’t here.”
Usually, Kidan would reprimand him for this. But instead her finger touched her palm, a faraway look to her eyes. It made him remember.
“Why were you bleeding?” he asked, crossing onto the water. “When you came to my quarters earlier?”
Her hands closed into a fist. “June tried to kill me. For Dranacti.”
Susenyos’s brows rose. He had wondered if the two would ever collide and they finally had. “And?”
“And what?”
“She’s dead, correct?”
“Yos.” Kidan said his name on an exhale, like a smile without moving her lips. It chased away the tension in his muscles.
Her face climbed on the water, rippling in and out.
“Things are finally starting to make sense,” she said.
“My mother kept drawing things I didn’t understand all over her journal.
Like the number twenty-one. Six lions. But I understand why my mother wanted to change Dranacti.
And how she planned to do it. She wanted to break the artifacts, break the binds and become a Sage. ”
Susenyos couldn’t begin to guess at what Mahlet Adane had wanted. She kept her secrets close and her shields up so much so he could never inherit or sever the culture of her mind.
But he could see it in Kidan now, pieces of it, aligning in ways that were difficult for him to understand.
“Is that what you want too?” he asked carefully. “To change the need for actis to kill?”
Her gaze drifted over the trees in the general direction of Uxlay. She took a long while to answer.
“If we could spare everyone else the pain we went through, shouldn’t we? Ramyn, GK, and now my sister. They’re all victims of Dranacti.” Her dark eyes found him. “But why do you want the powers of a Sage?”
Susenyos inhaled deeply and told her the truth he could manage. “To kill Lusidio.”
She nodded slowly. “We can do both, can’t we? Free actis from killing one another and get rid of a monster.”
He couldn’t help but tilt his head. “That’s ambitious. And which of us will have the honor of breaking the artifacts?”
Footsteps splashed in the thin water as she bridged the gap between them. Susenyos held his breath, trying not to drown in her tempting scent.
“You will,” she said simply.
Susenyos was so surprised, he exhaled, letting the scent of night oak and crushed Abyssinian rose invade him.
He’d always loved the smell of roses. It reminded him of the flower he found in the forest outside his castle.
Of hard-won life and divine beauty. It was why he picked rose oils in the Bath of Arowa and let himself soak for hours.
But on Kidan the scent was purer, everlasting, the exact notes he’d been trying to capture all these years.
“Just like that?” His voice was suspicious yet growing rough. “You’ll give me the most powerful object known to mankind?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The rapid blinking of her lashes, like a raven’s feathers guarding the sun, used to drive him mad.
As if a speck of dirt in her dark eyes would render her sick.
And she did it now, blinked again and again.
He’d wondered how a human girl who couldn’t see through a dust storm could rival him.
What poison would get her sick, what blade would cut her open, what careless car could shatter her lovely bones.
And when he particularly wanted to torture himself, he thought about that silver bracelet.
The one he kept in his box of Kidan’s things, next to her ties.
Her decision to surrender her life. As if it wasn’t the most precious thing on this wretched earth.
“Because I’ve seen what power can do,” she said truthfully, a haunted glaze to her eyes. “I let it consume me. I can lose myself in it. But not you, you know how to keep your humanity.”
“Little bird,” he whispered, fighting the urge to get closer. “What did I say about that word?”
A smile danced across her lips. Her top lip was distinct from her blushed bottom one, darker, a storm descending on a rose. That was his companion, he thought. A soft flower at times, a force to be reckoned with at others.
“You’re more human than me sometimes,” she said.
He couldn’t help it then—Susenyos pressed a finger to her mouth. At first, it was to stop her from calling him human, but he didn’t pull back. She stuttered a breath. He studied her soft features, trying to unravel his thoughts.
“When you nearly went over that hole, I thought that was the last time I’d see you alive,” he confessed, his body stiffening again with the memory of Arin’s claws. “Not many things terrify me, but your death does, yené Kidan. It has power over me in a way nothing else does.”
Susenyos rarely felt his vampire heart pound, but it did now. Slowly and out of rhythm, like it was remembering how terrifying it was to care for a human being constantly under death’s scythe.
Kidan’s eyes creased. At first, he thought it was tears, but it was relief. Like she’d wanted to hear this for a very long time.
“I thought saving my life was a cost you couldn’t afford,” Kidan said, voice serious, but her eyes were dancing, reflecting the sun.
“No,” Susenyos said seriously. “Your life isn’t a cost or a burden. You’re my companion. That means it’s not only my duty but an honor to live by your side and protect you. And I’m sorry it took me so long to realize it.”
This time, her pupils expanded, filling with light. Susenyos brushed her braids away with his free hand, cupping her face. Her cheeks were blazing against his palm.
Kidan’s eyes dropped to his chest and slid to the side, a sign of her mind ticking away. A dangerous mind he wanted to glimpse into.
“What are you thinking?” he whispered, sounding already lost in her presence.
Her pupils focused on him again, a dark fire replacing the previous sparkle. “I’ll get you everything you want. The artifact. The location of the Nefrasi. Just trust me one more time, please.”
The determination to her voice made him… believe her for some reason. He knew how deadly she was when she wanted something, though. Yet he wasn’t thinking clearly.
He was fighting himself from asking And you? What do I have to do to get you?
Her chest rose and fell against his own, and he tried not to think about how soft she felt even through the layers of clothes. Her pupils dilated, expanding larger than he’d ever seen them, letting more light in to see all of him. She stared at his mouth and lifted her eyes in question.
“If I kiss you, I won’t be able to stop,” he confessed. “But I don’t think I have the strength to resist anymore.”
She smiled slowly, the curve of her mouth as attractive as any holy blade. He wanted to be cut by it and lick every drop of blood she offered him.
He was fighting his last restraint.
She breathed roughly, sharing the same air as him. “Then don’t.”
It was no use. She had no idea what was about to happen, and Susenyos tried to explain. Pressing his forehead against hers.
“Biting the tongue… releases memories of pleasure. If I bite your tongue, I won’t be able to stop.”
Her eyes widened.
The brook swam around their ankles, the stillness of the scenery lit by a small ray of sun.
This was why he wouldn’t kiss her during Cossia Day. Not because he didn’t wish to feel her lips on his but because he couldn’t.
But all she said was, “Kiss me still.”
With his last wavering will, he removed the silver nail in his mouth with his tongue, spat it out like a bullet. The licked silver rushed to find its targets—Taj and Iniko, guided by his blood, his will.
“Why did you—” she began.
“So I can feel you properly.” Susenyos brushed his lips against hers and his body whimpered. “But also so they can stop us if I can’t. God, I hope they stop us.”
Then he kissed her.