Chapter 66 Kidan
KIDAN
The Nefrasi had chosen a beautiful mansion with decor and furniture in a style Kidan suspected was of Farah custom, a city Susenyos mentioned as his favorite. The curtains were rich and dark, and candles were used more than light bulbs. It felt like a fever dream from another world.
Kidan’s neck prickled with the sensation of being watched. A small huddle of Nefrasi vampires directed menacing glares at her. She walked away quickly, following Arin and Iniko into a secluded pillared garden.
Spring rain was in the air, and she inhaled deeply, letting it kiss her face. The jingle of finger bones sounded lightly, and her heart rate picked up. GK was close. She could feel it. In the garden, a set of stone stairs led down to a door, just off the shrubbery.
Iniko’s piercing gaze never left Arin.
“You can relax.” Arin’s curved smile was less menacing. “I won’t kill you.”
“No, you probably have something worse planned.”
Arin didn’t deny it, her painted lips arched.
Kidan’s guard rose higher. “Why are you helping me?”
Once they reached ground level, Arin lifted a lever to unlock a stone door. The room was dark and damp. Ominous.
Iniko blocked Kidan with an extended hand, stopping her.
“Answer the question,” Iniko demanded.
Arin raised a perfect brow, sprinkles of rain on her dark skin. “Why am I bringing her to a vampire that hasn’t fed in months? Come now, Iniko. I taught you better than that.”
A wicked smile spread along Arin’s face.
They both moved into a fighting stance at the same time, to the same tune, like skilled dancers.
Iniko and Arin grabbed her. Kidan gasped as claws dug into her flesh.
She was pulled apart, but her left arm, the one Arin held on to, gave in to the wrench.
A shove to Kidan’s chest robbed her breath, blurring her vision.
Gravity slipped out from under her and she fell inside the room.
Before she even hit the concrete, the door was slamming shut, the lever locking.
Disoriented, Kidan slowly rose to her feet, trying not to panic. There was a window or an opening that allowed in some light and continuous rain to wet the floor but most of the space was dark.
“GK?” Kidan called into the shadows, squinting. Her voice echoed, telling her the room was quite large. She blinked away the water collected in her lashes, noticing a figure under the window.
She jerked to a sudden stop.
A damp boy sat in black clothes, a finger bone chain dangling from his fingers. Dark eclipsed eyes stared right at her.
Kidan nearly swayed, trying to parse reality from dream. He sat still as the spitting rain hit him at an angle, not moving an inch.
GK.
She took a sudden step toward him, ears drumming and curled her fingers to stop herself from hugging him.
“Are you real?” His voice was a rasp, dry as bone. “Or are you still haunting me?”
Tears pricked her eyes. Kidan sank to her knees, taking in the shadows above his hollow cheeks.
“I’m real,” she whispered. “I’m here.”
His transformed, otherworldly eyes shifted, and she saw it all—the raw power streaking along his pupils, the hatred that’d extinguished the reflective nature of his humanity.
“Kidan.” There were anger and betrayal in his stripped voice. “How could you, Kidan?”
Her fingers drew a square against her thigh. But nothing could save her from this. Kidan’s mouth clamped up at the loathing in those eyes. Similar to when he’d accused her of killing her foster mother.
She hung her head. “I’m so sorry.”
His chains clicked as they moved.
That sound. She’d missed it so much.
GK stood slowly, supporting himself on the wall, and staggered to her. Kidan didn’t move as he towered above her. An angel statue with the face of the devil.
Kidan shook her head, desperate to return his face to the kindness she knew well.
Small tears slid down her cheeks. “I’m sorry for all of it.
Slen and Yusef made a mistake. None of us were thinking clearly.
The 13th, Dranacti, it twisted us up. When I found out, I—I nearly killed them.
You were so good to us, GK. To me. They shouldn’t have—”
“It’s not them that destroyed me,” he said, slicing at her, gaining strength by the second. “We sat together in the Mot Zebeya Courts and I told you. I told you how evil death transformation was. How cursed we would be, more bloodthirsty, more violent. You knew this… and yet you made me into this.”
Kidan bunched her fists and let her tears drop. They mingled with the rain splattering on the floor.
“Look at me.”
Slowly, she did.
His brown face was even more striking now, clearer than ever with immortality. Beauty came easily with vampire transformation but so did the all-consuming wrath clouding him.
“You ordered me to sit still.” GK’s voice had morphed, evened out to a hard pitch instead of the quiet, uncertain way he used to speak. “You ordered me to sit still in that crypt, and I did. Even when they drove a knife into my stomach, I remained still.”
Kidan blinked, her breath hitching with the words. “I—I don’t understand.”
GK cocked his head, eyes hard. “Are you lying? Is this some trick?”
“What? No.”
“Then tell me why I couldn’t move.” He didn’t raise his voice, but she flinched at the bite in it. “Tell me why I could feel you clawing inside my mind for months in this room.”
She gasped. “You felt me?”
Had she been right, then? Could GK speak into her mind?
His brow furrowed and a muscle ticked in his jaw. “I can’t tell if you’re lying.”
“I’m not!” she burst out. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.
All I know is I could dream of your cell, feel your hunger whenever I was in Adane House.
And your voice warning me away from death.
I thought it was an illusion but…” She shook her head, biting her lip. “This makes no sense. Why you?”
He stared at her without blinking. “My question exactly. Why you, Kidan? Why do I feel this inexplicable connection to you?”
The accusation in his words made it sound like she’d chained him to her on purpose.
“This hunger I feel, this hatred, it’s worse than death,” he continued after a moment. “You need to end it.”
“I’ll fix it.” Kidan rubbed the heel of her palm into her cheek. “I’ll fix all of this, GK.”
“Yes.” A resigned look settled across his face. “You must kill me before I take a life. I can’t do it myself. The Last Sage prohibits us, but you can do it.”
Air left her lungs at once. Kidan scrambled to her feet, tilting her head up to meet his crimson eyes.
“What? No. Come back to Uxlay with me. To Adane House—”
“I can never return to my monastery!” His roar scared her, the flash of spinning red in his eyes.
“A death transformation is a desecration. I’m not just hungry, Kidan.
I’m ravenous. Every second of every day.
You’ve cursed me with a fate worse than death.
I can never have a companion because I cannot feed without killing them.
I’m an abomination to everything I believe. ”
Silence swept over them, his hollow words washing Kidan in hopelessness. God, how could she fix this?
“You should have let me die back then,” he said with true pain. “All you’ve done is prolong my death.”
Impossible. She wouldn’t lose anyone she cared about.
“You’ll be my companion,” Kidan said, heart thundering. She repeated it and grabbed his hand, over the bone chains.
Her eyes widened at how hot his skin was. Burning as if he was running a fever. Her own hands were cold against his and she pressed her palm into his, hoping to cool him, make him see the path ahead.
He stared at their joined hands with nothing but fear.
Then his fangs emerged, black as pure coal. Kidan gasped as his dark eyes appeared and disappeared, struggling to form before they became ringed with red, glowing like an ember.
Black fangs… just like the Lusidios’. A sign of vampires who’d been turned after death.
“GK?” Kidan moved to step back, but he tightened his grip. Vise tight. He was metal hardened around her hand.
Kidan’s pathetic heart seized. She tugged. “Let go, GK.”
When he didn’t, she struggled harder. The black fangs drew close to her cheek. Her heart ran away from her, and she was preparing to call for help when he yanked hard enough to jolt her.
“Quiet.” His order surprised her so much her jaw snapped shut.
The chains looped around their fingers were buzzing.
His face was focused on hers, head tilted a little in utter concentration. Then his pupils expanded fully into their scarlet red. Her spine weakened.
“Three… no, four,” he said under his breath.
“What?” she squeaked.
“Four Nefrasi. They plan to kill you.”
“No one is… here.”
GK lifted his bone chain, which was jittering like a boiled snake. “It’s so clear now. Focused.”
Kidan could hardly breathe. “What’s focused?”
“Death,” he said, voice haunted and timeless. “I can tell when it’s coming for you.”
Her panic broke a little. Though he’d changed, that instinct to protect others still remained. Hardened into a fossil and crystalized.
When she’d first challenged his need to help everyone, he’d simply said: If you’re in danger, it’s my duty to protect you. It was that sort of selflessness that drew her to him still, why she conspired with the devil to resurrect him.
Her heart rate calmed slowly. “Please, come with me to Uxlay. I can help you.”
She waited with bated breath, trying to catalogue his new features and what they translated to.
“I cannot kill anyone,” he told her, true ruin shining in his eyes. “I can’t harm anyone. I will not leave this cell. Ever.”
Her heart broke all over. It was clear, at his core, GK still wanted to help others. And any death, even an enemy’s, would pain him.
The loss of one finger should cut as deeply as the loss of a hand.
“You won’t have to,” Kidan said honestly, holding his gaze. “I’ll help you.”
GK’s eyes caught the shaft of light from the window, and for a moment, they were as reflective as they were when he was human.
“Kidan Adane must live,” he said in a tone she couldn’t read.
“What?”
“These bones. That’s what they say. What they’ve always said.”
Their gazes fell to their joined hands, the singing bones. It wasn’t just friendship between them, something ancient and powerful tied their fates together.
Slowly, GK crouched on the wet floor, breaking apart the bones and arranging them. Kidan swallowed, remembering the first time she saw him lay out these bones, in Ahnd Cemetery.
This was a… reading.
GK put the bones into three shapes. A square. A circle. A triangle. Just like in his journals.
“Those symbols. What do they mean?”
“They represent the Sage’s artifacts. The triangle for the blades. The square for the ring. The circle for the mask.”
Kidan stared at him, not believing what she was hearing. She thought about her fingers tapping out these symbols again and again since she was a child.
How had she known those symbols? Had she seen them somewhere? All she knew was, they were important, vital in showing her mind the right things to focus on when it was lost.
GK continued his reading, unaware of her distress.
“So you’re going to predict my death?” she asked in a small voice.
He didn’t answer but it was clear that was what he was doing.
Though a part of her still wanted to refuse, she could no longer avoid this. Kidan had survived so many things, and she’d survive whatever they found out. Maybe this was what they always had to do to figure out their connection.
A shadow took to his expression, a different hunger for the truth, plain in his swift movements.
“Do you know how Mot Zebeyas receive their bone chain? From every soul that dies in Uxlay, a collection of their bones is taken to the monastery. They are tied on the edge of the cliffs, crinkling against rocks, almost singing. Some days, they speak louder. Since they’ve died, the bones know death, and they can warn us of when it’ll come.
That is what the Last Sage teaches.” He moved the circle inside the square, then into the triangle.
Kidan held her breath, mesmerized by these shapes again.
The secrets they held. “When we turn five, we’re taken to the edge of that cliff to select our chain.
I was so afraid, I cried all the way. But there was a single sound, a woman’s voice that spoke to me, leading me to these bones.
The moment I touched them, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I knew my purpose, and my faith.”
His eyes swept upward to meet hers. Red and black swirling into a new color.
The Mot Zebeyas held a deep and at times beautiful faith, but she could never forgive them for taking infants away from their families.
The Last Sage claimed it was to teach them objectivity, free them from selfish bonds.
But Kidan only saw it as cruel. She had been the same age as GK, barely five, when she lost both her parents, and it only left her with an unending want for family.
GK extended his hands, claws flicking in and out, waiting. Kidan inhaled sharply, and placed her shaking hands in his. He was still burning hot, but his hunger was kept at bay.
He spoke in Aarac, a prayer she’d heard him mutter during their study sessions before. Looking at him with his eyes closed, she could almost imagine they were back in the Philosophy Tower, Slen and Yusef around them, laughing about nothing.
One day, she promised herself. We’ll go back to how it was.
A whisper traveled in the dark room, and Kidan waited for GK to open his eyes, but he kept praying, his brows meeting. When he stopped, the teetering bones did as well.
His hand fell from hers.
GK’s brown face was grim, haunted.
Nerves danced along her spine. “So?”
“Twenty-one,” he said, sounding confused. “The bones predict you will die when you’re twenty-one. So… specific.”
Kidan’s mouth parted, then shut. A numbing sensation was making its way through her. She wanted to laugh, to break the tension but her throat was tight.
“It’s just a prediction, right?”
GK picked up the bones and weaved them through the chain.
His expression was severe, rain caught in his lashes. “I heard her name this time. I heard whose bones these are.”
Kidan held her breath, afraid of the answer.
GK thumbed the chains again. “They belonged to your mother, Kidan. Mahlet… Adane.”