Chapter Eight #2
Reyes leaned in again, far enough that Solana had to concede an inch or risk gutting him, and she marveled at the control she had over her most impulsive thoughts.
They stared into each other’s eyes for several heartbeats.
The world beyond them blurred until all Solana could hear was the rush of blood in her ears and all she could see was the contrast of his brown skin and gray hair and black cloak burned into her retinas.
Then he pushed her away, the back of her head hitting the wall, and turned to stalk down the hall. Solana laughed to hide the tremor deep in her belly and lowered her blade. “All that power and he has you leashed like a dog.”
“Says the woman who just rolled onto her back for three hundred ilyas a week,” he threw over his shoulder. “You had the privilege of choice. Do not pretend otherwise.”
The barb landed as he meant it to, like an ice pick straight through her heart that made her breath freeze in her chest. “Should I have chosen execution, then?” she threw at his back and rushed after him. “Would choosing death have made me less of a coward in your eyes?”
He stopped so suddenly that she almost ran into him. She was tempted to stab him in the back, just to prove how dangerous she truly was. Perhaps she could convince the king it was an accident.
“I couldn’t care less what you choose,” he replied quietly, shoving open a set of double doors to his right before striding through.
Solana couldn’t quite force herself to follow.
For some reason, his words didn’t roll off her back like they had with others in the past. His judgment of her was jarring, but not surprising.
Perhaps because she had spent so long convincing herself and others that she wasn’t selfish or weak, and here was this man who barely knew her seeing past every wall and through every mask to the truth of who she was.
“I made the choice that was best for everyone.”
Reyes slid his hands into his pockets and turned to face her. “I think you made the choice that was best for you,” he said with a shrug. “The least you could do is have the audacity to admit it. Perhaps here is where you’ll find it.” He swept an arm over the room, and Solana’s eyes followed.
The vastness of the space was distracting.
Sturdy furniture, all gleaming wood and intricately carved legs, thick and vibrant textiles in shades of blue spread about, a fire roaring in the hearth, and large floor-to-ceiling windows against the farthest wall that let in the last rays of the sun as it disappeared behind the city far below.
It was three times the size of her home in the callejon.
In the twenty years she had been away from the castle, she had forgotten what it was like to have a room that was meant for sleeping and sleeping alone.
To the left was a door that led to a bathing chamber, and to the right was another door that she knew led to a space to entertain guests.
A sitting room. An entire room dedicated to sitting.
“This is…” She tried to find a better word, but settled on, “Excessive.”
When she turned back to him, she expected to find Reyes glowering at her, another retort on the tip of his tongue, but she caught him taking her in just as she was taking in the space.
There was something heavy between them, a weight of disappointment she had tried her hardest to avoid all her life. The shell of her exterior was purposefully hard, but deep below the castle, Reyes had cracked her wide open and glimpsed the soft inner parts of her that she kept hidden.
Solana opened her mouth to say something snarky, to put them back on familiar ground, when a voice from the doorway interrupted before she got the chance.
“So, this is the one that got away.”
A woman with bright green eyes and thick brown hair stood at the door. The light of the setting sun set her olive skin aglow, and Solana had the strangest sense of familiarity.
“Cora,” Reyes said warmly, the storm in his eyes abating long enough to give a peek of something kinder than Solana thought him capable of. She was immediately offended that he seemed to reserve all his ire for her. “I was just leaving.”
“Running back to your master?” Solana threw at him. She couldn’t help but smile when the storm returned to his eyes.
Cora was their exact opposite. She stepped into the room with a sort of mirth that Solana was not familiar with and extended her hand.
Solana, for all her trouble trusting people, took it without hesitation.
“I’m Cora. We’ll be working together. And friends, if my gut is right, which it always is.
” Cora glanced at Reyes, who rolled his eyes and shifted toward the door.
“I was beginning to wonder if there were any other women in this godsforsaken place,” Solana said breezily.
“And I was beginning to wonder if Reyes had secretly murdered you and stashed your body somewhere.”
Solana reluctantly smiled. “I think he might have, if he weren’t so obedient.”
Reyes tipped his head back and exhaled as if it were taking every ounce of self-control he possessed not to throttle her.
The movement shifted the collar of his cloak just enough to show more of the dark mark on his neck.
She remembered the way he had rolled up his sleeves, how the designs that covered his forearms had undulated in the dim light as he held her steady with one hand and cut into her with such precision with the other.
Never too deep to sever anything vital, but deep enough to split open skin and fat and muscle and draw out her screams.
Solana swallowed the tang of fear and glared at him. “I thought you were leaving?” she asked.
“I want to make sure Cora’s safe.” Reyes’s eyes darted to the dagger still squeezed in her fist. She’d almost forgotten it was there.
“From little old me?” she said, bringing her free hand to her chest in mock affront. “Didn’t you hear? We’re fast friends.”
“Then you won’t need that,” he said, nodding toward the weapon.
Cora’s head was swinging between them like a cat caught onto a game, and then she clapped her hands. “Care for a tour? I’m sure this one”—she hooked a thumb at Reyes—“didn’t give you one?”
“How did you know?” Solana fake-whispered.
Cora tapped her forehead. “The gift of discernment. But also, Reyes has a hard time with pleasantries. He’d rather brood in his chambers like the tortured soul he is.
” She reached out and gripped his jaw in a firm hand, and Reyes let her.
He didn’t so much as lift a finger or foot to remove himself from her grasp.
“Don’t let him fool you—he’s nothing but a pile of mush under all this muscle and ink. ”
Images of his muscles tensing above her flashed before her eyes. She blinked them away and swallowed. “I have a very hard time believing that.”
“You’ll see,” Cora said before patting Reyes’s cheek. “And she can keep the dagger if it makes her feel better.”
The words made Solana feel foolish. Neither Reyes nor Cora were armed, but neither were they prisoners and tortured very recently.
Solana’s nerves were frayed, and the contrast of near-death acceptance and current royal employee was too much to swallow.
She also wasn’t willing to let the dagger out of her sight again so soon.
Cora must have seen it in her face, because she reached down and untied the weapons belt from her own waist and held it out to Solana. “You’ll get your own soon, but use this in the meantime. I have several.”
The whole ordeal was taking much longer than she would have liked and drawing way too much attention to her. Solana snatched the belt and quickly tied it around her hips and then deposited the dagger into the appropriately sized sheath.
“There,” Cora said. “Let’s go quickly before Reyes decides he’d like to come.
” She grabbed Solana’s hand and tugged her out of the room.
Reyes gave her a glare full of warning that she barely caught as she had been studiously avoiding his face, and then she was back in the halls, arm in arm with a woman she only just met.
The longing for female companionship had always been strong, but never so strong as then. It was difficult but necessary to remind herself that none of this belonged to her as Cora happily chattered beside her.
And that every good thing came to an end eventually.