Chapter 53 Susenyos
SUSENYOS
Susenyos smiled in the dark, touching his stinging cheek.
There was a strange sort of relief in surrendering to Kidan’s blade even if this house left him more vulnerable than Lusidio’s torture.
At the thought, the marks on his lower back screamed.
His vision couldn’t see through the shadows, nor could his human ears hear what was going on above the basement.
Was Samson revealing his secrets or losing his temper?
His breathing picked up and died down. The drag of the stone floor on the soles of his feet was dull.
He could no longer feel each splinter or dust particle.
No different from being submerged underwater.
At least there was no mirror. Nothing to show him how low he’d sunk.
He wouldn’t be able to bear this for long. The longest he used to manage was seven hours, on his knees in the observatory.
When the basement door opened again, Samson’s eyes were devoid of any light.
Where that boyish radiance that had always cloaked him disappeared to, Susenyos didn’t know.
Sometimes, his memories would play tricks on him, turning the friend he’d known from age seven to the castle ghost, a tale he must have imagined.
They’d played too many roles over the years.
The servant and the prince, once. The guard and the emperor. Now vampire and human.
“You finally won.” Susenyos’s voice never failed him, even if his heartbeat did. “You finally get to see the disgraced emperor. I’m truly impressed by your commitment to ruin my life. Is it everything you imagined it to be?”
Samson’s scar tightened whenever Susenyos smiled, which was why he did it often. It was as if his happiness—even a surface-level smile—truly disturbed Samson’s soul. Susenyos’s grin widened, darkening Samson’s expression further.
“You still do it,” Samson barked. “Speak as if the world should bow to you.”
“Don’t forget the angels.”
His words were a snarl. “A spoiled, traitorous prince. Your father was a beast but at least he kept to his word.”
Susenyos’s smile wavered, and Samson latched on to it like a hound, breathing in the petty slight he dealt.
This was the trouble with old friendships.
They never forgot what they healed in you, and with a single clawed scratch, they could cut the wound again.
It was why he had to be rid of Samson quickly.
Susenyos would never fight him as he was now—worthy, forged new with incredible strength.
To Samson, he would always be a human boy afraid of his father.
And that boy could never win.
“My father always advised me to flay you open with a whip,” Susenyos said, voice cold as a tomb. “I’m not like him.”
Samson’s eyes roamed his face in wonder. “You think you spared me.”
“I did spare you.”
His metal hand clanged as the fingers flexed.
“Which time? Did you not find it odd when I stopped racing in the courtyards? I knew you watched me, envied my speed ever since I embarrassed you during Gena celebration. And what of those entire months I could barely carry food on your picnics, did you not wonder?”
Susenyos’s eyes narrowed. “There was no scar on you.”
“My feet,” he snarled, flashing before the bars so the red of his pupils was incredibly vivid, “were torn to pieces. Your father’s guards said it was because I wouldn’t stop running and disturbed the castle.
But we all knew why. You won the next time we raced, gloated and beamed at your father as if you’d scaled a mountain.
You knew what he’d done but you did nothing.
Because you have always been a coward. Always. ”
Susenyos saw no point in masking his rage now—the room lost its unbearable coldness, walls melting like lava.
“She noticed, though.” Samson’s pupil dimmed slightly.
Susenyos knew who he was talking about by the way his voice became soft soil, a seed of Samson’s old self buried deep.
“Talaa came to heal my burning feet as you paraded around.”
Those memories slipped in and out, but all Susenyos recalled were the cheers of his people, the flush of adrenaline.
He hadn’t turned to see where Samson had gone.
Nor his betrothed. Hadn’t cared truly. His father was finally acknowledging him after months of silence, after blaming him for his mother’s death, and he wanted to bask in the light for as long as he could.
Samson kissed his teeth, voice stone again. “You knew you couldn’t protect her. Not from your father. Not from that forest.”
“I was human then.”
In a flash, Samson kicked apart the cellar and fisted Susenyos’s collar, the other vampire’s face close. “Cling to that excuse for the rest of your miserable life. But no immortality, no power will have erased what you did in that forest.”
His old friend had not smiled or laughed genuinely since the day Talaa died. Besides blaming Susenyos for her death, Samson would never forgive him for finding joy after Talaa.
He would never be satisfied until he made sure Susenyos could never laugh again.
Samson was his creation, a friend he needed to kill once and for all.
But even now, he kept seeing what was not there, a glimmer of his old friend that slayed raiders and drank so much they thought the sky was falling.
There was this hope that came with an immortal life, that the seasons would return his old friend back, thaw his hatred and make Samson forgive him.
It was foolish.
Samson believed only in shared pain, shared misery, shared torture.
Even as younger boys, Susenyos had seen Samson’s calculated savagery.
When a village boy begged for forgiveness after spraying sewage water on him, Samson had buried his head in piss water until the boy swallowed most of it.
When a lord seduced and left his sister ruined, Samson had plotted for two years, courted, and left the lord’s three sisters in disarray.
He became cruel and consumed with doling out perfect, accurate punishment.
Always obsessed with righting the scales.
And no one in this world had hurt Samson more, taken more from him, than Susenyos had.
Susenyos’s punishment would only grow, and it would be as unforgiving as a horsewhip.
It was why he was prepared for what came next.
Had prepared for it for decades. The pounding of fists against flesh, a sharp awareness of his weakness drilled into him again and again and again.
Samson would beat him until his bones broke, but he’d never give him the satisfaction of crying out.
Susenyos had always been able to remove himself from physical pain, go to a space deep in his mind where it was safe.
The first time he’d done it, he’d been thirteen, clinging to his mother’s dead body.
Assassins had bypassed their guards and snuck into the main castle.
His mother had grabbed his hand and hidden him in the tunnels, but the attackers knew about the hidden paths too.
His mother took the blade meant for him, right through the chest. He’d never forget the sound, like butter being squelched with a fist. He had held her in that cobwebbed tunnel, brushing away the spiders from her body. A few had gotten stuck in the blood.
His father never forgave him for surviving that attack.
The next time, he was nineteen, lost in a forest with Talaa. There was rot, black and gnarly like twisted roots, the type of rot that bled from nostrils and traveled through veins until death captured the soul.
And there she was again—his Sage. A dream of salvation crafted for him.
Run, she’d told him, voice mighty and cracking, face blinding around the edges of her mask. Run and live.
Susenyos had clung to life after that, and as he took on fist after fist and pain screamed through him, he felt her again, coming to him at the edge of death.
He won’t kill you, she’d reassured him, her voice light, the scent of roses lingering in the wind. You will not die.”
Like always, he believed her.