Chapter 82 Kidan
KIDAN
June. June. June.
The hallway seemed to stretch forever as Kidan bolted to the door, preparing to see her sister on the ground, face drained of blood. She skidded to a stop by the porch when a pair of light arms and a wildflower-smelling body slammed into her.
The impact rang her forehead painfully, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
June was… in her arms.
Alive.
Hugging her.
Kidan clutched her sister tight, tears bubbling in the corners of her eyes. She pulled back and checked her body urgently, making June giggle at the ticklish manner.
Human. Alive.
“You’re okay,” Kidan whispered in wonder.
June beamed at her. Kidan hugged her again, checking everyone else past her shoulder.
They were all alive.
Taj. Iniko. Yos.
Unharmed. Kidan could have wept with relief.
Dean Faris emerged, poised as ever, and addressed the crowd.
“Kidan Adane has relinquished the mask artifact. She will be expelled from our society within the hour. Please, all of you return to your classes and homes.”
The crowd cleared slowly, but several still lingered, shooting disapproving glares toward the sisters. Kidan held the middle finger up to them, making their pupils flare.
“Kidan,” June chided her, and restrained her arm, taking her inside the house.
Susenyos and the others followed them inside, standing around the study.
“Why… what happened?” Kidan asked after a beat.
Taj spoke first, his previous worried look replaced with a shining face. “Perhaps the law thinks you giving up the artifact is enough punishment.”
“No, the law is specific,” Iniko said, leaning by the wall, a troubled expression on her face. “It says of equal value to the person. Kidan values the artifact less than June, so the value isn’t equal.”
Kidan melted onto the couch. A sinking feeling weighed them all down. It was the horrible sensation of knowing they’d missed something, something important, but Kidan didn’t know what it was.
While the others moved to the living room, Kidan crushed her sister in another hug, ignoring her protests. How cruel it would have been to lose June because of the house law.
June laughed and gave in, going limp. “I’m fine.”
“I thought I’d lost you,” Kidan whispered into her shoulder. “You know I can’t live without you.”
Her sister tensed in her hold, pulling away. This time, Kidan let her. There was a seriousness to June’s eyes that made her pay attention.
“You can live without me,” June said with a soft smile. “You’ve done it before. When I ran away.”
Kidan’s face contorted. Why would her sister bring that up now? Before she could protest, June moved toward Taj, speaking in a low, intimate voice. Kidan shook her head, refusing to let the lightness in her chest fade.
Speaking of light…
“Where’s Yos?” she asked Taj.
“Upstairs, regaining his strength.”
Kidan climbed up slowly, trying to put thoughts of the law aside.
Susenyos’s room helped with her uneasiness, vanquishing the rest of her worry. She inhaled deeply, letting the sound of rain and the crinkle of scrolls chase away any remaining tension in her muscles.
Susenyos was shirtless, facing his mirror. The damage the Sicions had done was stark against his back. The silver spikes and wires had torn his skin, forcing it open and it was healing incredibly slowly. Every movement must still be excruciating. Her lip trembled, then fury tightened her vision.
One day, Dean Faris would pay for this.
Kidan approached him and gently traced the beautiful ruined skin. His back muscles flinched.
“It’s me,” she whispered against his dark skin, reaching around to wrap her arms along his hard stomach. He went rigid, bracing forward on the mirror. “Does it hurt still?”
His fingers were smeared with ink, leaving smudges on the frame. Kidan had only seen that happen when he responded to his “Letter to the Immortal” messages. He would write hundreds of letters in a few minutes, utterly focused, ink exploding on his hands.
“Were you writing?” she asked, tracing his bruised fingers.
“Why are you touching me?” His words came out wrong, caught between a hiss and a snarl.
Kidan froze.
Her heart pounded at the violence in his tone. “What… are you angry at me?”
He shook in her hold as if he was being slowly electrocuted, she turned him to her, grabbing his face. “I’m sorry for what she did to you. I hate all of this, Yos. But it’s over now.”
Half of his face was hidden by the shadows, the other half illuminated by the glass wall. Kidan glimpsed one pitch-black eye, felt a part of his twitching jaw and scalding breath slipping from his mouth like a beast’s.
“Get your hands off me,” he rasped.
The calm inside the room fractured into white, spine-buckling fear. But she didn’t let go of his face, even as his hatred burned her palm. Her whisper was caught between a plea and terror.
“Yos.” She said his name like a lifeline, a command. “Yos.”
There was no light in the eyes that gazed back at her.
Susenyos seized Kidan by the throat, making her gasp. The wet ink on his fingers imprinted onto her neck. Her hands crashed to her sides, and he walked her back out until the banister of the stairs dug painfully into her waist.
Below was a long way down to a bone-shattering fall.
Light from the hallway bulb revealed all of him. His fangs were free, and his night eyes carried a ball of red in the middle, a raw vibrant hatred that stole her breath.
“Yos?” Kidan could only say his name, softer than a prayer.
He closed his eyes, bringing her to him by the neck. “Stop saying my name like that.”
Hope lodged like a blade in her throat. “Like what?”
“Like I’m yours.”
Her mouth parted, inhaling his scalding breath, a sharp contrast to the ice spreading inside her.
Without his striking eyes open, his face was peaceful, soft as sunlight on the surface of water.
She inclined her head without control and brushed his bottom lip with hers.
The lightest of touches. Whispers of a dizzying current shot to her core.
He jerked awake. All fury. “I’m not yours.”
Then he shoved her.
Kidan tipped backward as gravity pulled her center, mouth soundlessly wide. Her fingers brushed his chest, but he stepped out of reach, expression cruel, and she fell.
She fell like she had done so many times before, off a tower. And waited for him to catch her. Susenyos only stared down with hatred.
Kidan’s scream didn’t come.
Perhaps if it had, someone would have saved her. She used her split second, perhaps her last moment on earth, to whisper his name again. To bring him back to her. To watch his blazing eyes and know something had long been taken from her.
Kidan didn’t hear the crack of her spine, but it must have been loud. Loud enough to bring her friends to her side. She couldn’t move, hair spilling around, looking up to him as pain roared around her.
“Oh my God, Kidan!” June screamed.
“Christ!” Taj shouted.
It was Taj who appeared out of nowhere and pressed warm liquid to her mouth.
Blood.
His blood trickled down her throat, healing, his face dark with concern.
“No, don’t move your neck. Drink, drink.”
Taj whipped his head up to find Susenyos staring down. “What the hell happened?”
With each swallow, pain broke in Kidan’s body, but it remained trapped in her chest. She felt her fingers move, all healed. Then her spine stopped stinging. Her toes wiggled. She could move. She jolted upright, startling Taj. “Wait. You’re still healing—”
Susenyos jumped over the rail, landing soundlessly, green veins splitting his arms.
Kidan’s voice shook along with the bulb overhead. Swaying but holding firm. “Not you. Not you.”
He tilted his face, smile wicked.
When she dared to touch him again, he grabbed her wrist and twisted it, making her cry out.
“Yos, it’s me!”
He shoved her away, this time to the sound of protests and screams all around.
Taj’s strong arms pulled her free.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Taj spat.
“Excuse me?” Susenyos’s tone was lethal, a dark edge slipping into his words.
Kidan moved forward. “Who am I?”
Her words shook so much, afraid of the answer.
Had the house made him forget her?
He cocked his head. “Kidan Adane.”
Her name on his lips… she shut her eyes. Thank God. He knew her.
“Daughter of Mahlet and Aman, the girl who ruined my rightful inheritance and stole my immortality for months, then surrendered the artifact away.”
Her eyes shot open. “What… no! Who am I to you?”
Kidan touched him, grabbing his arms and making him hiss again. She couldn’t help touching him, her words were failing her, and she hoped her hands would remind him.
All they seemed to do was set his teeth on edge.
June covered her mouth, eyes stretched in fear. “Kidan… he’s…”
Iniko was silent, studying Susenyos, noting his change.
Reach him. Reach him.
Taj shouted. “If you hurt her again, I swear to—”
“Finish that sentence and I will free you from your tongue.” Susenyos’s anger flickered like a whip.
Taj gaped, blinking.
“Iniko,” Susenyos barked. “If she touches me again, break her legs.”
Before Kidan could register his words, she was being shoved, flying into the air. Until she slammed into a chest, breaking her fall. Iniko.
Susenyos didn’t look back as he vanished into a blurring speed, the slamming of the door echoing throughout.
Kidan shot to her feet.
Iniko blocked her path to the doors.
“Get out of my fucking way—”
“Enough,” Iniko snarled, the first true emotion out of her. “Enough.”
Kidan staggered back. Taj’s face was crested with the same pain, same loss.
No. No.
Kidan turned away from them and reached for the house, staring at her hands with determination.
“If I clap my hands, Susenyos will be as he was.”
The words started to write themselves but faded before they could be set.
No.
“If I clap my hands, Susenyos will return to me,” she said louder.
Again, the law failed.
The master of the house cannot set a new law to rectify what he broke.
It was Taj’s face that finally undid her. The confusion slowly melting to stunned realization, his chestnut eyes filled with unbearable hopelessness.
“The house… took him from you.”
No, she wanted to tell him. I haven’t lost him.
Taj ripped his gaze away from hers, staring at the carpet with clenched fists.
Kidan punched the wall. Her scream was a wretched thing, splitting her in two. The house cracked in half as well, echoing her pain. She sank to the floor.
“Kidan… I’m so sorry.” June was kneeling before her, face twisted in anguish.
June’s arms were around her. Kidan’s chest squeezed until no air circulated in her lungs.
“I lost him,” she told her sister, staring at nothing. “I lost him.”