Chapter 79 Kidan
KIDAN
It happened too quickly.
Susenyos was pinned to the ground with the Sicions’ crescent swords, even as he shouted at them to obey protocol but they’d come to brutally restrain them both, not listen.
Before they shoved Susenyos out of Kidan’s sight, he caught her eye, a blooming red in his pupils.
“Don’t give her anything,” he ordered mid-struggle. “She won’t harm you. She needs you—”
He almost reached her, before their hands were wrenched apart, his roar ringing in her ears.
Then Kidan was in Drastfort Prison.
She had not been locked inside a cell since the night she killed Mama Anoet.
The concrete walls made her breathing shallow, frizzed her braids, and dotted her forehead with sweat.
Back then, when she’d thought she’d die in prison, a miracle had arrived to rescue her. An angel had paid her bail in full.
Dean Faris of Uxlay University had pulled Kidan from that wretched life, and how ironic, it was the same woman who caged her like an animal now.
When was Kidan going to learn kindness always had a price?
Only a mother could care without demanding something back and Kidan didn’t have one of those.
No, that wasn’t true. She’d had one, briefly.
There had been Etete. A sharp ache struck her chest. How many times had Etete dragged her out of the hallways when her visions were punishing her?
Kidan pressed her fists into her eyes. She missed Etete with a painful, new, unrelenting wave.
The one soul she felt safe with and she’d lost her too.
Professor Andreyas and the dean thought they could break her in this darkness, scare her into compliance. But Kidan had stayed and studied in Uxlay long enough to know changing the Adane House law would be the only thing that could break her further.
And she wasn’t ready.
If Kidan Adane endangers Adane House, the house shall in turn steal something of equal value to her.
She knew deep inside her soul what would be taken from her. An unthinkable, disturbing thought.
June would die.
So Kidan let the dean lock her up, and drowned in the complete darkness.
It wasn’t entirely unfamiliar, and she was thankful to GK for it.
She’d felt this with him, in her dreams, in her body.
If she concentrated on a specific sound to count time, like the jingle of the keys held by the officer outside, her panic would fan out instead of remaining trapped in her chest.
Where is June?
Where is Yos?
The ominous quiet following that question made her lose count of the jingles.
Dean Faris changed tactics after a week. She stormed in, the same beseeching speech about the world’s safety pouring from her lips. Kidan leaned back against the wall, not saying a word.
“Very well.” The dean’s voice seldom shook from its calm rhythm, but it almost did now. “Bring it.”
A guard brought a tablet with a live feed. Kidan forced herself to her feet, swaying a little, and approached. She winced against the bright light, trying to focus on the images. Unbridled horror made her stumble forward.
“The Sicions excel in interrogational torture. I’m afraid you’ve left me no choice,” Dean Faris said.
Kidan barely heard. A girl was blindfolded, with Professor Andreyas circling her. Only her ribbon gave her away.
Kidan’s vision went red. “I swear I’ll kill you.”
Dean Faris ignored it as if she received death threats daily. “I will continue to bring pain to your sister if you do not cooperate. We are talking about the very gravity of our world. You will surrender the mask artifact to me.”
Rage made Kidan’s words grow teeth. “No. I will lose my sister if I do this—”
“I have lost my entire family for Uxlay.” The dean’s bronze eyes cut in sharply, then remembering herself, she straightened. “It is your responsibility as well to put Uxlay first.”
Kidan staggered away from the woman, truly seeing her now. To keep her idea of peace alive, there was no line she wouldn’t cross.
A horrible taste flooded her mouth.
“They must have heard us scream for help. The Sicions… they must have. Why didn’t they help us? Why didn’t they save Yusef ?”
Dean Faris remained cool, not a flicker of emotion.
A soft breath left her mouth. Kidan had pieced things together slowly.
“You saw the protests and got worried. The 13th wanted to break the universal law, that was always their purpose, and you couldn’t have it.
” Kidan went back to the first house meeting, the dean standing up, declaring a new proposal.
“So you had their attention diverted. Distract them, a false promise of democracy. In the end, you never planned on surrendering your middle position.”
The dean’s lips remained pressed together, the raven eye of her pin stark. She was too smart to confirm such accusations even in the privacy of a cell. When she did speak, her words were carefully curated.
“Your ancestor and mine created Uxlay to end senseless slaughter, so actis were not hunted like animals, so we never became slaves under those like Lusidio. Do you not know what a gift Uxlay is?” A trace of ice cut her tone. “You must be able to put Uxlay first. Above family. Above friends.”
“He was a good person!” Kidan screamed, banging the bars with her palm. “You let him die! And my parents? What did they do that was so wrong? They wanted to help change Dranacti. They wanted to create a better system!”
The dean regarded her with clear disappointment and stepped back. “I’d hoped you’d be different. Under my training, I’d hoped to groom you to be dean of Uxlay.”
“You already have your student, don’t you? Where is she?” Kidan snarled, unable to even say her name. “I know she told you everything.”
“Slen Qaros showed exceptional loyalty to Uxlay. You should aspire to be more like her.”
Dean Faris motioned with her hand and a guard left the tablet on the floor.
Kidan sank to the ground, eyes filled with tears, watching her sister cower from the professor’s interrogations.
But… something was missing.
“Wait.” Kidan glanced up, staring at the dean’s retreating back. “Where… is he?”
“Susenyos Sagad?” The dean’s tone tightened with bitterness.
Kidan could barely manage a nod, a sinking feeling growing inside her.
“He conspired with your parents to conceal a powerful object, plotted to possess it and break the binds that threaten our coexistence. What do you believe the punishment would be for such a crime?”
Kidan’s very cells whimpered at the thought. “Please, I’ll do anything besides what you’re asking—just let them both go. Please.”
Dean Faris gave her a backward glance, the turquoise-bead hair clip in her sleek bun like a third blue eye. “Just this rumor of Adane House harboring the artifact has fractured Uxlay in ways you cannot imagine. There are protests and violence brewing again. Balance must be restored.”
“You want to keep the artifact safe, right?” Kidan moved forward. “I’ll never let anyone change the current law. It’s safe now.”
The plea in her voice made the woman’s face shift slightly.
When the dean spoke again, Kidan could almost hear sorrow.
“You should have come to me in the beginning. Now it is too late. Neither I nor Uxlay trusts you to protect the artifact. You’re dangerously unpredictable.
The fate of our world cannot fall to your hands. ”
The dean’s low-heeled shoes clicked away, the door shut, and Kidan was alone again. The square screen highlighted her chin, making her eyes burn, but she didn’t dare look away as June’s face became tearstained, tortured.
Kidan felt useless. It ate away at her, this weakness of hers, always at the mercy of those more powerful. She missed the armor that cloaked her in Adane House. If she had it now, she would pry these bars apart and squeeze Dean Faris’s throat until she released her sister.
June jerked on the screen, eyes shut in pain. Kidan couldn’t see what Professor Andreyas had done but she’d kill him too, if she could.
She must have dozed off like that, skull uncomfortably pressed against metal, because she flinched awake when the door opened.
The Sicions marched inside, and she crawled backward. They opened her gate and, without a word, threw in a limp body.
“We have something for you,” the red-haired Sicion vampire said.
It took all the strength in Kidan to move toward the body. With a shaking hand, she reached for the shadow, tracing for a shoulder, and flipped them to their back.
Susenyos. Bloodied beyond belief—from his mouth to his dark wet shirt.
Kidan let out a cry.
Urgently, she traced his neck and found it broken, tilting to an unnatural angle.
The entirety of his chest was covered with careful blade slices.
If any of the Sicions’ blood-licked silver had hit a vital artery…
he would die. Kidan had the sensation of falling, a loud thumping noise drummed in her ears, and she was shaking him, shouting his name.
His heart wasn’t beating under her fingers.
“Yos,” she demanded louder, and louder. Her vision had changed, bleeding, a furious red. She didn’t hear the Sicions at first, her eyes focused on Yos’s unmoving chest.
Move, move. Please, God, move.
Someone touched him, trying to take him away and she lashed out, attacking them with her nails and clawing half their face off. They hissed and retreated. It was the red-haired Sicion that was snarling at her, flashing his fangs.
“Leave him here,” the other Sicion said outside the cell, arms crossed, watching her with gray eyes. “We’ll return in an hour. The smell from his rotting corpse should loosen her lips.”
Rotting corpse.
Rotting corpse.
The two words disassembled in her mind, she was unable to form them wholly, refusing to allude to what they meant.
The Sicion stood with a menacing gaze and exited with his partner. Kidan was already by Yos’s side, cradling his head in her lap. There was so much blood gushing from his mouth, and she parted his mouth to see they’d defanged him.
Tears came to her eyes now, and she pressed her forehead to his sticky one.
She couldn’t feel the warmth of his breath. His nose and mouth were cold. She pressed her ear to his mouth, waiting for the familiar trickle of life. There was nothing.
Nothing at all.
Rotting corpse.
Quickly, she cut her palm with a piece of rock, hissing. She pressed it to his parted lips. Her blood dripped slowly into him.
“Please.” A jagged sob wrenched free from her throat. “Yos, open your eyes.”
She waited a minute that stretched for eons, but there was no movement. Her fists bunched and before she knew it, she was hitting at his still chest, again and again.
Once, he’d used violence to bring her back from the gates of death, and she would do it now, pounding at him until his own heart would beat.
“Yos! Wake! Up!”
She beat him until there was no more energy in her arms. She fell forward, pooling braids curtaining his face, her shoulders rising and falling roughly.
“Please, don’t take him from me,” she begged, whispering to him, to the gods, to anyone who listened to broken souls. “I can’t lose anyone else, please.”