Page 128 of Eternal Ruin
Kidan had asked Adjoa Piran about it and received a nonanswer. And she definitely didn’t want to give June the pleasure of asking, but her interest was piqued. After a few more seconds, Kidan’s impatience won. “What’s the myth?”
June’s honeyed eyes grew haunted. “The person who breaks the artifacts will break the Three Binds. But most of all, acquire the powers of a Sage. They want that power.”
Kidan took a small step back. She’d suspected there was more to it, but this… Her gaze flicked to the portrait. The slitted eyes seemed to mock her for not having known that all this time. They didn’t need to collect the artifacts, they had tobreakthem?
Susenyos’s thirst for power shouldn’t surprise her. Of course he wanted to be invincible, but she’d always thought the Sages were untouchable, divine beings. Could anyone become a Sage, then? Could she?
“If I have to inherit this house to get the mask, I will.” June’s voice reached her through the buzzing in her ears, distant and too sharp. “Unless you stop me.”
It was then she noticed the knife in her sister’s hand, slipping out of her long sleeve.
Kidan’s House Locking cracked, a sudden splinter that spilled cold inside her gut, icing her from the inside out.
“You came here to kill me?” The question hovered between two ancient mountains, a reckoning.
June whispered the word, staring at the floor. “Yes.”
There was a brutal kick to the middle of Kidan’s chest, swift and unexpected, and it released the wrong sound from her—laughter. It was a low, staggering laugh, in every bit of her body except her eyes.
Because her sister had done this to her.
Kept choosing power over family, over blood. And now Kidan had to do the same.
June’s pupils widened with each sound, her gaze flicking away and back again.
Her sister shook but she lifted her chin after a few seconds, a terrifying new resolve in her gaze. It was a look that mirrored Mama Anoet’s:There’s evil in you, Kidan.
June took a step forward.
It was a step too far.
The crack in Kidan’s emotions burst into a chasm.
Kidan lunged for her sister. A yell erupted from June as they knocked each other to the ground, the knife following them. They’d been on the edge of ruin for so long, and now they were off its cliff, hurtling into darkness. Pottery rained down from the shelves, meeting the floor in violent pieces.
After weeks of suppressing her emotions, Kidan was a slave to the smallest taste of her anger. It made sense it would be June who would finally unleash her.
This house had tried to warn her. Prepare her. Months before, June had killed her in so many rooms—pouring poisonous words in the hallways, feeding her the blue pill in the observatory, and Kidan had refused to accept it.
Her sister wasgood. She’d been the only good thing in this world. Until she betrayed her.
Kidan overpowered her easily, climbing on top, snarling like a beast.
Where the fuck did they go wrong?
June was struggling for something on the floor, a flash of silver, the knife.
Ice spread in Kidan’s blood. This was no vision. No one would come to rescue her. And there was no good here. Only evil.
Kill all evil.
Kidan seized June’s wrists and slammed them against the floor, hearing her groan.
The knife fell from June’s grasp, her curled braids fanning around her.
“You want to kill me?” Kidan shouted, all fire, no reason. “After everything I’ve done for you!”
The same cold, unfeeling eyes gazed back at her. Kidan would shatter this mask. This unknowable creature. Kidan saw the knife, imagined it in her hands.
