Page 97 of Eternal Ruin
Susenyos nodded, smiling a little. It was a relief to finally return his people’s belongings. All those decades he’d spent polishing and taking care of their artifacts, thinking they were dead—he’d never thought he would stand in front of them again.
“This violent girl,” Biruk said after a moment. “Did she destroy anything else?”
Susenyos thought about it. “She turned my crown into a necklace.”
He gasped. “So she’s dead, then?”
A line marred Susenyos’s forehead. “She should be, shouldn’t she?”
“Why isn’t she?”
Susenyos paused, recalling the car ride here. His crown around Kidan’s lovely neck. “She wears it well.”
Biruk grinned, shaking his head.
“You can’t bribe us with blood and treasures.” Henok’s muscled arms crossed over his chest.
Susenyos reached into his other pocket, retrieving a wooden comb carved in the shape of a seahorse.
Henok took it in wonder, swearing softly. He frowned at the crack along the creature’s neck. “The same girl?”
Susenyos nodded apologetically.
Henok fixed him with a slow gaze, and Susenyos tensed, waiting. “Here we thought you were living in paradise. My condolences.”
Susenyos exhaled. This was what he wanted. Familiar conversations and shared jokes. He wished he could sit down all night and catch up on the last six decades but time was getting away from him.
“The blade artifact,” Susenyos said slowly, making his voice dip. “Our protocol has always been to have three people know its location. Do you know who Samson told?”
Biruk averted his eyes. “No.”
“No as in you won’t tell me?”
“Samson is the only one who knows where it is.” Henok sighed, placing the comb into his thick head of coils. He looked the same as on the day he’d won it from an Axumite trader.
“How can you all allow that?” Susenyos’s jaw tightened. “After all we went through to find it? What if he dies?”
“He saved us.”
Susenyos turned his face away, trying not to say something he’d regret. Iniko’s grunt echoed from outside. Arin must have rejected her gift.
“Tell me where you’re hiding,” Susenyos said quickly, grabbing their shoulders. Their faces became pained, torn, but not enough to betray their location. He shook them with urgency, eyes burning into them. Neither opened his mouth. Susenyos released them slowly. This was his doing. He should have suffered in that Lusidio cell along with his people. But there were so many things they couldn’t understand. What was coming for them. The marks on his back woke again.
When Arin called for them, Henok and Biruk gave him a defeated look and left.
Iniko came limping inside. Susenyos cursed, rushing to throw her arm around his neck.
“I’m fine.”
Iniko had once crushed her leg in a lion’s trap and said the same words. It was always a struggle to find her wounds because she hid pain so well.
Susenyos helped her sit on the stage and swayed backward, bracing against the wall, a sudden wave of exhaustion gusting over him.
Iniko righted him, her dark eyes worried. “You’re starving.”
Slowly. But yes.
From her brocade vest, Iniko retrieved her own bronze flask and drank deeply. Her smooth dark skin glowed, the ends of her sleek hair catching red.
