Page 186 of Eternal Ruin
“Quiet.” His order surprised her so much her jaw snapped shut.
The chains looped around their fingers were buzzing.
His face was focused on hers, head tilted a little in utter concentration. Then his pupils expanded fully into their scarlet red. Her spine weakened.
“Three… no, four,” he said under his breath.
“What?” she squeaked.
“Four Nefrasi. They plan to kill you.”
“No one is… here.”
GK lifted his bone chain, which was jittering like a boiled snake. “It’s so clear now. Focused.”
Kidan could hardly breathe. “What’s focused?”
“Death,” he said, voice haunted and timeless. “I can tell when it’s coming for you.”
Her panic broke a little. Though he’d changed, that instinct to protect others still remained. Hardened into a fossil and crystalized.
When she’d first challenged his need to help everyone, he’d simply said:If you’re in danger, it’s my duty to protect you.It was that sort of selflessness that drew her to him still, why she conspired with the devil to resurrect him.
Her heart rate calmed slowly. “Please, come with me to Uxlay. I can help you.”
She waited with bated breath, trying to catalogue his new features and what they translated to.
“I cannot kill anyone,” he told her, true ruin shining in his eyes. “I can’t harm anyone. I will not leave this cell. Ever.”
Her heart broke all over. It was clear, at his core, GK still wanted to help others. And any death, even an enemy’s, would pain him.
The loss of one finger should cut as deeply as the loss of a hand.
“You won’t have to,” Kidan said honestly, holding his gaze. “I’ll help you.”
GK’s eyes caught the shaft of light from the window, and for a moment, they were as reflective as they were when he was human.
“Kidan Adane must live,” he said in a tone she couldn’t read.
“What?”
“These bones. That’s what they say. What they’ve always said.”
Their gazes fell to their joined hands, the singing bones. It wasn’t just friendship between them, something ancient and powerful tied their fates together.
Slowly, GK crouched on the wet floor, breaking apart the bones and arranging them. Kidan swallowed, remembering the first time she saw him lay out these bones, in Ahnd Cemetery.
This was a… reading.
GK put the bones into three shapes. A square. A circle. A triangle. Just like in his journals.
“Those symbols. What do they mean?”
“They represent the Sage’s artifacts. The triangle for the blades. The square for the ring. The circle for the mask.”
Kidan stared at him, not believing what she was hearing. She thought about her fingers tapping out these symbols again and again since she was a child.
How had she known those symbols? Had she seen them somewhere? All she knew was, they were important, vital in showing her mind the right things to focus on when it was lost.
