The Cruel Prince meets Ninth House in this dangerously romantic dark academia debut, where a lost heiress must infiltrate an arcane society and live with the vampire she suspects killed her family and kidnapped her sister.
Hidden in our world, a society of vampires originating in Africa, can only feed from select human bloodlines. Each bloodline represents a House more cutthroat than the next. To ensure peaceful co-existence and inherit their legacy, human children of these families must study at an elite university before choosing a vampire companion.
Lost Heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from Uxlay University. She is obsessively protective, mildly nihilistic, and willing to do anything to save her loved ones. When her sister, June, disappears, Kidan is convinced a vampire stole her—the same vampire bound to her own House, the cruel yet captivating Susenyos Sagad.
To stay in Uxlay, Kidan must study an arcane philosophy, work with four enigmatic students, and survive living with Susenyos--even as he does everything to drive her away. It doesn’t matter that Susenyos’ violence speaks to her own and tempts Kidan to surrender to a life of darkness. She must find her sister and kill him at all costs.
When a murder mirroring June’s disappearance shakes Uxlay, Kidan sinks further into the ruthless underworld of vampires, risking her very soul. Here, she discovers a centuries-old threat. And June could be at the center of it. To save her sister, Kidan must bring Uxlay to its knees and either break underneath the horrors of her own actions or embrace the dark entanglements of love—and the blood it requires.
Release date:
September 3, 2024
Publisher:
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Print pages:
384
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
The schedule was quite generous, if she was being honest. Two months would have sufficed for the violent act. The extension was a poor attempt at a dream. A dream she wouldn’t entertain if she wasn’t currently dehydrated and fading in and out of her room.
She wanted to live with her sister again inside that odd little house. Live in a time when innocence didn’t need to be proved at every turn. That last thought pulled her out of her haze, made her chuckle. She sounded wronged and, if she dared think it, a victim.
Her laughter rattled again, a clogged chimney inside her chest sounding painful and raw. How long had it been since she’d spoken? The curtains remained closed because of the cameras, so a bulb had become her only source of light. Like any artificial sun, it overheated and burned the air around it, forcing her to work half naked on the apartment floor.
Sweat gathered on her dark forehead now, wetting the file she was reading, her folded leg buried somewhere in the swarm of papers. She couldn’t afford to switch off the light. Not when there was so much to do. Not when she was this close. In Kidan’s mind, she was trapped in one never-ending night and hell was not dissimilar to this.
Movement—she needed movement. She stood too fast, stumbling, and blood rushed to her folded leg, paralyzing her. She shook off the numbness and walked to the small kitchen.
Murderer.
The word jumped from the newspaper article plastered on her fridge, branded above the image of a Black girl.
Kidan Adane was a murderer. She waited for the prickle of remorse she should have felt at those words. She even pinched her mouth and scrunched her nose, trying to force the emotion out of herself. But just like that fiery night, she failed to cry. She waited for a sliver of humanity to slip through. She was completely dry. A statue carved out of obsidian.
Kidan poured herself a drink. The shutter clicks of a camera snapped, accompanied by tiny flashes of light. She swung sharply to the window, drink nearly slipping from her grasp. The curtains remained drawn, but the reporters clawed at the gaps, like seagulls scratching for bread.
Be patient, she thought.
It would all be clear soon. In eight months, exactly. That was when her trial date was set. Kidan had no plan to attend. Long before any of it, her confession would be found taped to the underside of her bed and the violent workings of her mind unveiled for all.
The camera flashed again, making her wince. It was unlikely they could get her picture, but maybe she should put on clothes. It wasn’t her full chest or her wide hips that she wanted to hide. A racy picture of her might actually work in her favor: a gross violation of her privacy making the rounds. It didn’t sound bad at all. She shook her head. There she was again, thinking of ways she could manipulate sympathy.
She met her reflection, and a thin, frail voice slipped out of her. “You are not like them. You are not like them.”
Them.
Aunt Silia called them dranaics. Vampires.
Despite the heat of the apartment walls, Kidan shivered. Dranaics appeared no different from humans. It was the very source of all her disturbance. Evil shouldn’t go around in human skin. It was a desecration.
Kidan loathed her aunt. Loathed her inaction. She had waited too long to rescue them from that vile society. Maybe then evil wouldn’t have seeped into Kidan as a child. June had fared better, but Kidan had feasted on it. Her morbid curiosity with death, her sick fascination with and collection of films depicting its art, and now committing the final act itself—all this came from vampires. If she could dig into her chest and pull out her twisted heart right now, she would.
Eight months.
Relief punctured through with those two words. All she had to do was wait eight months to die. Make sure June was found. Bear this wretched existence a little longer.
A picture of June beamed at her from her open laptop. They looked nothing alike, despite being born within minutes of each other. June’s disappearance received no coverage, not even a whisper in the neighborhood. Where would Kidan be if these reporters had hunted for her lost sister the way they hunted her? No, Black girls had to commit horrifying acts to earn the spotlight.
The papers on her floor were the frenzied tracking of a place called Uxlay University. Kidan had searched for twelve months and twenty days. Her eyes darted to the recording taped under her bed, and the temperature of the room dropped. It held the last, tortured conversation between Kidan and her victim.
Better, she thought, almost smiling. She was assigning blame where it needed to go. Kidan’s victim.
The recording held the proof, the name of the person—no, animal—responsible for taking June. It was only a matter of finding the fucking place. And him.
Kidan squatted and studied the trail of her search. She reached for a pen, pulled off the cap with her teeth, and started another letter to Aunt Silia, who never wrote back.
If there was even the slimmest chance of finding June again, she’d spend the rest of her life writing.
Her fingers tensed, digging into her palms. Thin arcs of blood irritated her skin. With her forefinger, she traced a continuous square inside her palm. Nerves. She recognized the emotion. So she wasn’t completely lost yet. The jagged mirror across the room cut an ugly shape along her dark throat. A cool, unimpressed expression gazed back. If only she could master crying before her trial, the world might forgive her. She might live longer.
Cry, she ordered her image.
Why? it asked. You would do it again.
An hour later, once the reporters outside left, Kidan dressed in a large hoodie, grabbed her earbuds, and locked her small apartment. She’d moved here for precisely one reason.
Across the street, at the corner of Longway and St. Albans Streets, waited a single parcel locker. One key belonged to Kidan, the other to Aunt Silia, who resided in Uxlay. After Kidan deposited each of her letters, she’d hide and wait. Sometimes she’d wait for days, sleeping in the café nearby or the alley, but someone would always come and take her letters. Each time, the hooded figure escaped Kidan, either climbing over the park gates with frightening strength or disappearing into traffic.
Every week she played this cat and mouse game. Aunt Silia was reading her letters but, for some messed-up reason, kept ignoring her.
After she put the new letter into the empty locker, Kidan went to wait by the bus stop, a new spot, and hoped blending in with the passengers would give her enough time to identify the messenger.
As she waited, June’s sweet voice crackled through her earbuds. Kidan’s world jerked into balance.
“Hi,” her sister whispered. “I don’t really know how to start this, so I’m just going to say a generic intro.”
June made fifteen videos before she disappeared. This was the first, and she’d been fourteen. Kidan listened to the videos daily, except for the last one. That one she could only bear listening to once before deleting it so it wouldn’t hurt her.
Inside her pockets, her fingers traced the shape of a triangle, enjoying the scratching sound it made. The triangle changed to a square when June mentioned Kidan in the video.
Kidan’s attention never strayed from the parcel locker, but there was a shadow in the corner of her eye, unmoving.
A woman under the crooked branch of a tree. Her skin was an aged bronze in the streetlight, and she wore a dark green skirt paired with a slicked bun.
The woman stood remarkably still, no different from a tawny owl perched on a ledge, staring right at her.
The back of Kidan’s neck prickled. She had the oddest sensation that this woman, whoever she was, had been waiting for her.
RECORDED VIDEO
May 10, 2017
June, age fourteen, on Kidan’s phone
Location: Mama Anoet’s private bathroom
“Hi,” June whispered, blinking into the camera. Her short braids curled around a scarred, pimpled chin. “I don’t really know how to start this, so I’m just going to say a generic intro. My name is June. I go to Green Heights School. I guess I’m making this video because of what happened today. I got in trouble for falling asleep in class again.”
A pause.
“I have parasomnia. I know, big word. It means I don’t just sleepwalk but scream and kick. My sister takes care of me but… I know she gets tired. I’m tired of me.” A small laugh. “I try to stay awake as much as I can, but that backfires. Like today. I know what you’re thinking—get help. Believe me, I’m trying.”
The camera angle shook, capturing the overcrowded shampoos, four different kinds; a butterfly-patterned shower curtain; medicine for anxiety and depression.
“We can’t afford a psychologist, really, but our guidance counselor isn’t bad. It’s actually because of her I’m making this video. Miss Tris said… I’m scared of something. Something I don’t want to tell anyone about. She told me to write everything down.
“But I hate writing. So she told me to record myself instead—and if I feel brave enough, share it. Good, isn’t she?” A small smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “So, what am I afraid of?”
June took a hesitating breath, glancing nervously at the door.
“I’m scared of… vampires.”
The camera went dark, face down on the sink. Water ran, splashing sounds echoed, a minute ticked by. June’s brown face came into focus, now slightly damp as she settled in the tub’s corner.
“Vampires.” Her voice rang stronger. “The good news, if there is any, is that they’re no longer dangerous to everyone. So those of you watching this, if you even believe me, can go to bed knowing your blood tastes like poison to them. But they still need to feed, they need blood to survive.” The phone shook a little. “Something called the First Bind forces vampires to only feed from specific families. There are around eighty bloodlines trapped in this cycle for generations. Guess who’s in one of those families. Yup.”
June looked off camera, eyes glazing over.
“My sister and I take having a messed-up family to a whole new meaning. But we escaped. Our aunt took us away from that life, after our parents died, and brought us here, to Mama Anoet’s. We’re safe here, but I see them every night… in my dreams… even in the hallways at school sometimes. It’s like I know… one day they’ll come for us.”
She inhaled, exhaled. Played with the thin silver bracelet on her wrist.
“Kidan reminds me every night about the Three Binds placed on vampires. It helps a little. Makes me remember they can’t get to me so easily. The Second Bind restricts some of their strength, and the Third Bind requires a heavy sacrifice when they turn a human into one of them. Kidan keeps saying the powerful Last Sage didn’t know how to use his incredible gift—that he should have killed all vampires off instead of putting restrictions on them. I think she’s right. Our lives would have been so different if he had.”
Her fingers left her butterfly bracelet, eyes creased.
“So why am I making this video? I guess I do want Miss Tris to know. Maybe even my friends. Maybe everyone. I don’t want to be like this for the rest of my life. I don’t want to waste every minute of every day thinking about when they’ll come and get us. I want to feel safe. I want—”
A loud knocking made her drop the phone.
“June, it’s me.”
June sagged; the door handle turned.
Kidan scowled at her dripping phone. “Hurry.”
Quickly June added her password to make the videos private.
Her password had always been a set of five numbers that added up to thirty-five. That was their biological mother’s age when she died, and also the number of vampires, dranaics, assigned to their family. Thirty-five vampires that would have consumed June’s and Kidan’s blood if they hadn’t gotten away.
KIDAN REACHED FOR THE KNIFE SHE CARRIED INSIDE HER JACKET. IT had ridges that pressed into her palm uncomfortably and was curved toward the end. The feel of it triggered a shiver down her spine.
The night appeared stripped of all noise as Kidan approached the woman. Kidan wished she would move. Stillness was found in animals, and animalistic features were found in dranaics.
“Who are you?” Kidan’s voice sounded unusually loud in the quiet.
The woman was heavyset, with thickly shaped brows and dark, reflective eyes. A golden pin featuring a black bird with a silver eye was fixed to her chest.
“I’m Dean Faris of Uxlay University. I understand you’ve been looking for me.”
The sidewalk jerked, jostling Kidan’s grip on the knife. She was struck speechless by the idea that something she had searched for in blind hope and crushing disappointment could reveal itself by simply dropping from the sky.
“Ux… Uxlay?” she finally said, afraid the place would disappear again.
“Yes.”
The answer cleared the fog in Kidan’s mind. What was she doing? Her hand left her pocketed knife.
“So, you’ve come to take me,” she rushed. “To exchange me for June?”
Her chest swelled with hope. How many nights did she lie awake in bed imagining every possible variation of this scene? It was a mad manifestation, a goal that kept her heart beating after it should’ve died the night of the fire.
The dean folded her hands before herself. “Uxlay does not deal with kidnapped humans. Our very laws are against it.”
“Laws?” Kidan hurled the word back at her as she stepped closer. “Where were your laws when a dranaic assigned to our family took my sister?”
Her fingers strained with the effort not to strangle the woman. The dean’s dark eyes flickered with caution. Good.
“That is a heavy accusation. Do you have any proof?”
Kidan’s proof waited in her small apartment, taped under her bed. Her victim’s confession named the vampire responsible. But it also proved that Kidan had tortured and killed.
Kidan’s voice dipped so low it could wake the dead. “A vampire took my sister.”
Dean Faris tilted her head to one side. “I speak to you as a representative of Uxlay, Kidan. Perhaps because you didn’t grow up with our education, you don’t know what that means. But I am responsible for enforcing peace between humans and dranaics. It’s what I hold most important, and I do that through laws and punishment. You believe you have been wronged, yet there is no proof. I ask you to see reason despite your grief. I cannot accuse one of my dranaics without evidence.”
Dean Faris spoke like a dignified politician, as if her campus was the setting of all law and order. This clashed against every story Kidan had concocted for the vile place.
She was preparing to argue when a sudden thought struck her. “It was you, wasn’t it? You posted my bail.”
After Kidan had been detained, a miracle had happened. Her impossible bail was paid in full by a woman with high enough standing that she requested anonymity, and the court granted it.
“You deserve a chance to prove your innocence,” the dean said pointedly. “As do all others. You are innocent, yes?”
Kidan stepped back. This woman didn’t come here to talk about June. Kindness, especially such as this, always had a price. “Why are you here?”
Dean Faris assessed her for another second. “I’m afraid your aunt Silia has passed. She fell ill, and the disease took her quickly. I’m sorry.”
Kidan shot a surprised look at the parcel locker. Dead. Her eyes remained dry, yet the shock knocked her off-balance. Another member of their family gone. Was the same vampire behind this?
Aunt Silia existed mostly in her imagination, in stories, in the world of before, to make sense of the after. To prove that they hadn’t appeared out of nowhere on Mama Anoet’s doorstep. With this news, Kidan became weightless, another thread snapped from her. Then she thought of June’s honeyed eyes and kind smile and felt the ground beneath her feet again.
The dean pulled out a teeth-white envelope with a bloodred crest. “As of now, you are next in line to inherit Adane House. This is your admission letter.”
Kidan recoiled from the letter. “I have no interest in being a slave to vampires.”
The dean’s calm features slipped. “Do not use terms without knowing their consequence. It will be the last time you use that word before me.”
Kidan wanted to laugh but only managed a strained scoff. “I’m not interested. I just want June.”
“Very well. Believe it or not, convincing students who don’t wish to attend my university is not part of my job requirement. Most usually try incredibly hard to land a position at Uxlay.” She brought out another letter from her pocket. “Sign this, and I will take my leave.”
Kidan eyed it suspiciously. “What is it?”
“A will, signed first by your parents and then your aunt, leaving everything to your last remaining house dranaic.”
Her mouth gaped. She snatched the letter. Most of it was blackened over, some sections obviously highlighted. Kidan read, growing more horrified, and crumpled the edges of it.
“Curious, isn’t it?” Dean Faris’s eyes gleamed. “It’s a first in the history of Uxlay, a family choosing to leave their house to their dranaic. The very vampire you accuse of taking your sister is the person your family trusts enough to bestow its legacy upon.”
Bile lurched up to her throat. Were they all blind? This was even more proof. Motive. He’d tricked her family out of their inheritance or coerced them. Taken June in secrecy to keep himself hydrated—
“No,” the dean said.
“What?”
“You believe he forced them into signing this. That’s incorrect. They chose this of their own free will. There are many things you’re not aware of in our world. The power of our houses, the power of our laws. It is extraordinary. Knowledge that’ll only become available to you if you choose to join us. No soul can enter Uxlay without an invitation.”
Kidan eyed the blocked-out sections of the paper. What was the dean hiding?
Dean Faris checked her thin golden watch. From her seemingly endless pocket, she brought out a pen.
“I’m afraid I need to leave. Please sign, indicating you have no interest in contesting the will as potential heiress, and I’ll be on my way.”
Kidan stared at the pen like it was poison. After some time, Dean Faris withdrew it.
“Perhaps you need time to think. If you are interested, houses at Uxlay are inherited through education. You must attend the university and graduate from a course that studies human and vampire coexistence. I will wait three days for your response.”
The woman’s countenance disarmed Kidan. When the dean offered her the admission letter again, she took it slowly. The paper was hard and compact, with a seal of two lions with blades in their mouths, positioned at each other’s throats.
Why? Kidan stared at the seal, wanting to dissolve. Why had her family done this? When she lifted her head, the woman had vanished.
KIDAN THREW THE ADMISSION LETTER ONTO HER CLUTTERED FLOOR and kicked the pyramid of noodle cups she’d made in one corner. There wasn’t enough space for them to scatter, so they bounced off the wall and hit her shin. Gently, she sank to the floor and hung her head, braids curtaining her. The room pressed in until she grew uncomfortably aware of her body and its labored efforts to breathe. Paint peeled in the corner of the tight space, the toilet worked only when other renters didn’t overuse it, and there was a mysterious stain on the carpet that reeked even after being drowned in bleach. The heat in this place could fry a scorpion. She couldn’t take another day of this. Not without her sister. Absentmindedly, she ran her finger along the ridge of her butterfly bracelet. She wanted to go home. Even if it was that cardboard box of a home.
Houses reminded Kidan of a feral pet. They were unclean, often infested, and no matter what decoration was placed in them, they never liked to be owned. Not truly. She found the idea that they rushed to others to feed them when one slacked a horrible disloyalty. Their foster mother, Mama Anoet, had agreed, and so, even when they were young, June and Kidan had gone into the business of making money to pay the rent. By the time she was ten, Kidan was selling the weird bracelets she made, and June baked her addictive, bite-size doughnuts. The memory made her mouth water, then go dry.
With stiff fingers, she reached for her parents’ and aunt’s will. Fire shot through her veins with each traitorous word. Her family knew vampires were dangerous. Why tear June and Kidan away from everything they knew, erase their identities, and beggar them if that wasn’t the case? In her softest moments, Kidan used to wait for her parents to appear at Mama Anoet’s door, ready to run away together with them. She had to forgive them for this failure, because they’d died. This inheritance could have been the thing to protect Kidan and her sister, but instead they’d done the unthinkable.
They’d left everything to him.
The vampire’s name was signed, the s curling itself like a snake.
Susenyos Sagad.
Kidan heard her victim’s pleas echoing around the room and inside her chest.
“Susenyos Sagad! That’s his name. He… he took her.”
She scratched a shape against the carpet, the flesh of her finger burning against the rough fabric. Again, and again and again. A triangle imprinted itself on the carpet. Good. Her mind and body were in sync. There was only pure white fury in regard to Susenyos Sagad.
Sometimes, Kidan’s mind hid things from her, and only her fingers could translate them. Triangles for anger. Squares for when the fear became too much, and circles for moments of joy.
Ever since she was a child, she’d used these symbols to unravel her thoughts.
She could barely understand the entirety of the will with the blocked-out sections. Dean Faris had picked the parts of Uxlay she wanted to share. What had she left out?
Laws of Inheriting a House
A vampire inheritor must occupy a Family House for a consecutive set of twenty-eight days in solitude so the will becomes rocis, that is, in effect.
Kidan read it again. Twenty-eight days. How long had it been since her aunt had died? A week? Two weeks? A sickening image of Susenyos Sagad sitting at a dinner table with June spread out as the meal, counting the days until he’d fully occupy the house, turned her stomach.
Rejection of the Will
If a human descendant of a Family House wishes to inherit, they must attend Uxlay University and receive education in human and vampire coexistence.
If the human descendant has not yet graduated but wishes to lay claim to the house, they can take shelter in their Family House during their study of Dranacti.
Dean Faris had highlighted the last line. A loophole: Stay in the house to interrupt the vampire’s solitary occupation. Kidan would have to live with him. Acid filled her mouth.
She stood and parted the curtains slightly, glimpsing a reporter and his camera, currently distracted by a smoke break. Out of habit, her eyes slid to the parcel locker.
Someone was there. Opening the locker. Taking out her letter. Kidan jerked to attention.
“Hey!”
The moment the word left her mouth, she was out the door, taking the stairs three at a time. When she burst outside, the figure was already gone.
“Fuck!” Her scream startled an old lady and captured the attention of the reporter.
He ran toward her, and she hurried across the street to the locker. She pulled the key from around her neck, fumbling to unlock it.
A thin man with sour breath, the reporter flashed his camera near her. Her instincts were to shove it down his throat, but remarkably, she restrained herself.
“Kidan, neighbors heard what happened. Did you plan this for a long time?”
She ignored him. Because for the first time in years, something had been left in the locker—a bound book. Her fingers shook as she tucked the heavy book under her arm, secured the locker, and quickly crossed back. The reporter was on her heels. Just when she was about to slam the door, he shouted.
“What does killing a member of your own community feel like?”
Kidan’s gaze lifted from the ground and stared straight at the camera. For a moment, she was June, fourteen and hiding in Mama Anoet’s bathroom, itching to tell the world all the things that made her afraid.
Evil, she thought. That was what it felt like. And all evil must die.
KIDAN DRESSED SLOWLY, PULLING HER TURTLENECK SNUG AROUND HER neck. She liked to cover as much of her skin as possible, particularly her throat. Either a scarf or a tie always fitted around it, a layer of protection she’d taken to.
She positioned her long braids around her shoulders. Their roots had loosened, strands cobwebbing onto themselves. Lack of natural sun had leached the rich brown of her skin to a cool, yellowed tint. Her mouth curved into a frown. She reached for some hairstyling cream and gave herself the appearance of cleanliness.
Kidan had read the first few pages of Aunt Silia’s book before throwing it against the wall. There were no answers in there, only more questions.
Aunt Silia had entrusted Kidan and June to a place that hadn’t been safe enough, and then she had failed to find June.
All the women who had vowed to protect Kidan abandoned her.
She reached for her butterfly bracelet on instinct. If Kidan peered closely, she could see streaks of blood still stuck to its wings. Its owner’s blood added a macabre ruby detail to the silver metal.
“Butterflies,” the voice of the owner echoed in her ears. “It reminds us we’re in constant transformation.”
Tucked inside was a small blue pill. It would only take one swallow to leave this world behind.
Kidan was too young at the time to recall her parents’ deaths, but the feeling that came after was haunting. Each moment of her life, she felt like she was alone in a pitch-black room except for an unsettling warm breath tickling her neck. The thing, whatever it was, kept breathing, launching Kidan’s heart into a painful frenzy. It never pounced, only waited. Watched.
Mama Anoet had vanquished the beast with tender fingers—parting Kidan’s coarse hair, making spiced chicken dinner, slipping on Sunday church dresses.
Safe. She’d tasted safe. A word more unfamiliar than moss growing on skin.
A year ago, during the night of their eighteenth birthday, it’d all been torn to shreds. She shut her eyes against the memory, but it was no use. That visual was stark in Kidan’s soul, in her very core.
June slumped in their garden, bathed in soft moonlight, her lips stained red with blood. Kidan struggling against the locked door of the lounge, pounding furiously as a shadow of a man gathered her sister and faded into the night. Kidan had told the police this many times—without mention of vampires. She’d told the fucking world. But June’s room had been packed up. Every trace of her gone. She was labeled a runaway girl. A legal runaway girl.
Kidan had tortured and killed to learn the name of that shadowy vampire. This whole time, had he been waiting in her Family House? Had he fed on June that night until she died? Or was he keeping her captive? Kidan’s vision swirled, and before she knew it, she was pulling out her phone, calling the number at the top of the admission letter.
Dean Faris answered immediately.
“It’s Kidan,” Kidan rushed out before she could second-guess herself. “I’ll attend Uxlay.”
“That’s excellent news.”
“On one condition,” she said slowly, trying to breathe. “I need your best lawyers for my trial. It’s in eight months.”
A long pause. Kidan needed time to search for June.
“And why would I agree to that?”
Kidan settled backward against her bed, voice steady.
“Because you don’t want Susenyos Sagad to inherit House Adane any more than I do.”
There was a beat of silence. Her heart drummed.
“Very well. I’ll send one of my trusted members to escort you here.” The dean hesitated. “But a warning, Kidan Adane. Legacies at Uxlay are not simply inherited. They must be fought for. Are you ready for that?”
Goose bumps climbed along the skin of her back.
“I am.”
After she hung up, Kidan sat there in the punishing silence, drawing her shapes.
Uxlay. She was going into their very lair. To live with him. To kill him.
The moonlight seeping in through the window lengthened Kidan’s shadow, distorting it to a thin and eerie shape on the carpet barely distinguishable from the figure who’d taken June.
You’re not them.
But she was a monster of her own making. And it broke Kidan’s heart to know she’d leave her sister behind again at the end of all this, after June was found and kept safe. June wouldn’t want to talk to her, let alone touch her, once she learned who Kidan had killed. Even if it was in June’s name—especially because it was in her name. June wouldn’t be able to forgive her, and that was something Kidan couldn’t live with. She shivered and played with her blue pill. All that was left to do was hunt and cage all evil inside her so when she did inevitably go, she’d leave the world a little cleaner.
LOCATED NEAR A TOWN STRUGGLING TO KEEP TREES FROM SWALLOWING it whole, Uxlay University was an immovable stretch of old stone. Silent as a monastery during prayer, the campus towers caught the sun’s first light, glowing against the muted fog. They resembled ancient candles held in the arms of a large
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
