Chapter 70 Kidan
KIDAN
Kidan watched Susenyos in the throne room, talking with members of the Nefrasi. At least three dozen of them huddled around him, smiling broadly and punching his shoulder.
He laughed, the sound carrying over in joyful waves to the high ceiling. It made his features beautiful, the new ease to his movements, almost unburdened. Kidan didn’t know when it had happened, but his happiness stirred hers. By simply watching him, she was smiling at a joke she couldn’t hear.
It was extremely worrying and… nice. How her emotions shifted and heightened at the quirk of his lips or under his heated gaze, almost like at Adane House.
Susenyos paused mid-conversation, turning his back to find her by the door.
His pupils shone, and a thrilling rush went through her.
He said a few words to his people and they nodded, eyeing her curiously as they left.
Unlike earlier, this group didn’t seem to want her dead.
It took a while to empty the room, and when the final footsteps faded, it was just Kidan and Susenyos.
Being alone with him felt dangerous. There was a switch in her body that flicked on whenever she realized nothing could stop her from touching him now. Even kissing him, very carefully, so she wouldn’t die. Access to him in such a way was exhilarating. A secret of their own.
Susenyos took off his bloodstained shirt, coming to her. He wiped her cheek. Kidan blinked in surprise, all thoughts leaving her mind.
It took her a second to realize he was cleaning the sprayed blood from earlier. Samson’s blood.
“You’re still here.” His voice was rough, low, and earthy.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
When he took in her face, a gold streak bloomed in his pupils. But beneath it, there was marvel.
As if he couldn’t believe she was alive.
No, that wasn’t it. He hadn’t thought he’d be alive. Not because of the fight with Samson, but the compulsion.
Kidan grabbed his wrist, a spasm of panic taking root. “Would you really have died?”
His hand rested at her waist, burning into her skin as his other hand dragged his shirt down her neck. “I’m done running.”
“But this—I don’t understand any of this.”
“I know. I thought this secret would keep costing me everything. I don’t understand how June knew all this. Your sister saved us today.”
Relief and confusion spun inside Kidan. Her sister seemed entirely clueless until she didn’t. Kidan still didn’t believe she’d learned everything from a vampire—Rasi. But what other explanation was there?
“Is Varos truly that powerful?”
It was the first time Kidan said the name aloud, and it felt wrong, a curse more than a name.
Susenyos stiffened and made no move to answer her. A cage around the tongue. He didn’t hide the worry that crowded him, the dread of what this could mean for them all.
Something he said floated to her mind from last semester, when she had a gun aimed at him. I physically cannot speak of it.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood.
She gave him a question he could answer. “Is Lusidio powerful?”
Slowly, he nodded.
When her fingers began to draw a square on his arm, he inhaled deeply, almost shuddering.
Hunger slowly darkened in his expression. The fight with Samson must have made his thirst worse.
“You can drink from me,” she whispered.
Susenyos shut his eyes, his breath moving into the width of his shoulders. After a moment, he pressed his forehead against hers. The contact sent a spasm through her.
“Just a taste, love.” His voice was strained, full of need.
She shrugged her sleeve up, lifting her wrist to him. “I want it here. To know more about her… if you’re ready.”
Susenyos swallowed, understanding whom she meant. “Samson showed you what happened?”
Kidan nodded. “After she died, he buried Talaa. That’s how he got the infection on his hand.”
“Talaa Asefa was a princess from our neighboring province.” The name caught in Susenyos’s throat, but he continued, taking Kidan’s hand slowly.
“We were promised to each other when we were eleven. She visited my court every summer after that, and we were forced to play together. Although she was a notorious cheater.”
Kidan cracked a smile.
“Her company marked most of my childhood,” he said sadly.
He traced her veins and elongated his fangs, white enough to darken everything else. When he pricked the skin, Kidan didn’t hiss, she rested her fingers in his twists and held him as the memory wrapped around them.
“What are you doing?” Susenyos’s voice was breathy, standing in front of a wild-faced Talaa before the forest. Their faces were both flushed because they’d raced from the castle to the woods.
The dappled trees washed them in brilliant strokes of the sun.
“We can’t be out here without our guards. Samson—”
Talaa spun around at once. “Is on an errand. This can’t wait.” She leaned in to whisper, eyes twinkling. “Sava told me she saw a demon out here.”
Susenyos gave a disbelieving laugh, then grabbed her wrist, heading back to the castle. “You need to stop believing everything those servants tell you.”
Talaa tugged on his hand and dug her heels in, jerking them to a stop. “You either come with me or I’ll go alone.”
She pouted, making her lip stick out as she did when they were younger. Then she ran into the woods. Susenyos, as always, chased after her.
They’d played in these woods before, and he knew every tree and shrub here. It was why he stopped to examine the oddly burned land around a collection of flowers. He poked the black substance with a stick and found no ash.
Black yeast? Or was it some sort of plague? He stood up.
“Talaa, come look at this.”
He was alone in the woods. Susenyos called again, walking to where she’d been standing.
“Talaa, I’m in no mood for games. There’s something here I must examine.”
Only the sounds of the forest—creaking frogs, native birds, and whooshing wind—remained.
“Susenyos!”
The scream came from the sky itself, crashing on him with earth-shattering fear.
He was running before he knew which direction he was taking. A canopy obscured his path, and he slashed across it with his short sword.
When he burst through, his weapon nearly slid from his grasp.
A large cloaked figure had Talaa hovering above the ground, a hand around her throat. Her slippers had fallen off and her feet were swiping furiously at the ground, eyes bulging.
With a cry, Susenyos tightened his hold on the hilt and slashed at the assailant’s back. He put every measure of strength into it and expected to cleave the flesh in half. Pure, unbending stone met his blade, the momentum and force of the hit made the blade rebound and cut into Susenyos’s collar.
He screamed, clutching his bleeding shoulder.
What in God’s name—
The cloaked figure turned to him slowly, two red eyes piercing like needles of venom. Susenyos’s body turned to water. The devil was truly here.
The creature dropped Talaa, who sputtered and writhed on the ground. Only then did Susenyos notice the black yeast on Talaa’s throat, the plague growing along her veins, crawling along her beautiful face. She began to scream for help.
“Talaa.” Susenyos gasped.
The plague spread faster than he’d ever seen any illness, coloring her eyes pure black and filling her tongue.
Susenyos scrambled back from her reaching hand, heart roaring in his ears. Tears filled his vision, and he shouted for his guards, knowing he was deep in the forest with only the birds to hear him.
The figure moved toward him. Beneath the long cloak, the ground was cracking, the short grass wilting, poisoned by this creature. It reached out a dark hand from its cloak, and there were claws, as thick and wide as a lion’s, aimed for Susenyos.
In his scramble, Susenyos found his sword again.
The touch of metal under his palm breathed fire into him.
He rose to his feet unsteadily and attacked with a roar.
The creature did not move from the direct hit.
The blade should have punctured its heart from the current angle, but it didn’t.
It was no different than trying to plow through a wall.
With each blow, his resolve withered. The creature retrieved the blade like one snatched a doll from a child and snapped it in two. Susenyos’s eyes became as wide as the moon. His knees buckled but he couldn’t fall here.
He would die if he did.
With one last heartbreaking glance at Talaa’s writhing form on the ground, Susenyos ran.
Talaa’s screams crowded him from all directions, thick leaves and prickly branches clawing at him to go back, but nothing could make him turn.
He knew he’d die here, today, and he wasn’t ready.
He wasn’t strong enough to save her but if he ran, fought past the painful protest of his lungs, he could survive. Reach his guards and survive.
Forgive me. Forgive me.
Susenyos made it twenty strides before the cloaked figure appeared before him. Susenyos’s body slammed into pure steel. His nose gushed out blood, taking the bone-shattering impact and his forehead rang like metal against a statue. He swayed and fell backward.
Horror stretched his eyes as the creature closed in again. Susenyos scrambled in dirt, unable to find anything to throw or wield.
The red eyes glowed under the hood, flints of hellfire.
Torrents of black vines wrapped around its arms. A single touch of that rope and every living thing rotted, scorched, spreading and catching like wildfire. Birds fell from trees, their swollen bodies hollowed out, drained of blood.
Susenyos choked out a relieved breath when the rot stopped an inch from his feet.
“Wh-what are you?” His very core trembled, his voice truly pathetic.
“They call me many names.” The creature had… a man’s voice. Accented, and ancient. He spoke with the power of a thousand voices, form as still as a gravestone.
“You are the new boy emperor, and you will serve me.”