Chapter Ten #2
Risk wasn’t the right word. It was a risk to leave your house after dark or go swimming too far out in the ocean or wander the woods.
Attending the Academy wasn’t a risk. It was a privilege taken for granted.
A rite of passage for some who intended to do nothing with their education but wear it as a badge for bragging.
She found it difficult to have any sympathy for those who learned hard lessons.
What would they do if they knew the truth of what Solana had been through and who she was? It was possible betrayal ran through the blood, and there was a darkness inside of her that clawed and agonized until it was fed. It only made sense that it came from her father.
Lucia had been the light of everyone’s life. A beacon of safety and comfort to all she met. The world without her was a bleaker place. If Solana died, there wouldn’t be many who missed her, and she had kept it that way on purpose.
Nobody to hold her back. Nobody to answer to. Nobody else to lose.
They finally reached their destination several hours later, just when Solana was sure she would have to throw herself off the horse if she intended to ever walk again.
The quaintness of Iques distracted her somewhat.
The buildings were wide and squat with decorative features like wrought iron balconies painted green and scalloped trim that hung from the roofs.
There were flower beds under windows and cobblestone streets that made Solana think about twisted ankles and tripping hazards.
And then there was the Academy in the near distance, a mountain of a building that jutted above the rest of the city, with imposing stone walls and spires that pierced the sky.
“We’ll start hunting here,” Reyes said. Solana’s back went cold with his absence and then he steadied the horse while Solana gathered the courage to dismount.
Her muscles were screaming from the unnatural position.
It felt as though her butt was going to be permanently bruised.
She cringed when she hit the ground and didn’t even have the energy to bite Reyes’s hand when he wrapped it around her upper arm in support.
“Does she need to be carried?” Nikolas playfully asked Reyes.
“She can hear you, and she is just fine.” They tethered the horses to a low railing and formed a small circle on either side of her and Reyes, the whites of their eyes and teeth the only thing visible beneath the shadows of their hoods.
Slowly, smiles melted into grim determination.
Jesting was replaced with a tension that made Solana’s blood thrum with anticipation.
In the distance, she heard the low growl of a muki, the click of its claws as it prowled through the stone streets. Their heads whipped toward the sound, but Solana lowered hers and pressed a hand against her dagger. It was comfortably warm. A warning, but not quite dire yet.
“Split up,” Reyes ordered low. “Solana, you’re with me.”
“Joy,” Solana said under her breath. Like they had done this a thousand times before, the others dispersed.
Cora and Suri, Nikolas and Oskar, Reyes and Solana.
She grimaced as she took the first few steps after Reyes, cursing her inexperience and lack of access to things like horses and leather armor and proper footwear.
She knew all of it was meant to protect her, but at that moment, it felt more like a hindrance than a help.
Reyes kept close to the buildings, his steps silent from years of training, listening for the coming threat. But Solana had something more. At her side, the dagger grew warmer.
“It’s close,” she warned.
Reyes glanced at her and away, dismissing her, the gray of his eyes catching the light and sparking like metal. “We’ll wait for a signal,” he said.
But the hilt of her dagger was branding her palm, the largest stone in the pommel alight as if it were on fire.
Solana pulled it free from its sheath and shifted into a defensive position.
Everything in her gut told her to run, to seek, to fight.
Solana killed to survive, and the hotter the dagger grew, the more uneasy she became.
There was a snap of a jaw. The huff of a deep sniff. A rattle like bones clacking in a breeze. Behind her, the sound of a horse whinnying carried on the wind. In front of her, Reyes slowed and lowered into a lumbering crouch.
But he was going the wrong way.
The dagger was burning her hand, urging her down an alley to the right instead of straight where Reyes was headed.
She could likely cut it off before anyone else was near.
Perhaps a quick jab in its side to bring it down until the others arrived and did whatever they usually did.
Quick and efficient, and time enough left to find a glass of pisco.
Mind made up, Solana took off to the right.
“Solana!” she heard Reyes call. Her surroundings were a blur until she homed in on the muki at the end of the street one over, its back to her and on all fours as it sniffed the edges of a door.
It stilled, and then its head whipped to her. Beside it, another muki found her as well. Two pairs of soulless eyes stared and stared, skin rippling in the broken shadow of a small tree, clawed toes finding purchase in the stone to prepare for launch.
They burst into action at the same time, Solana and the beasts.
They were of one mind, three monsters in the dark hungry for relief.
The first muki ran on all fours before leaping into the air.
Solana hoped the leather armor held up under the pressure of stone and sunk to her knees.
The impact was jarring, but she didn’t give her body time to absorb it before she was rolling past the first muki and into the second.
They collided with a grunt, its cold, leathery skin searing Solana in the spots she was without protection.
Some muki had poison seeping from their very pores, but it mattered little when Solana was immune to it.
The pain was a temporary nuisance easily ignored when she was in the midst of the one thing she was good at.
Her instincts took over and guided her body exactly where it needed to go.
Sliding underneath the muki’s arm, she used it as leverage to pull herself up and over, onto its back.
The muki stood and swatted at her like a fly, and Solana lifted her dagger and brought it down in one swift arc.
It sunk directly into the base of the muki’s neck, and like a light gone out, the life left its body.
From nearby, she heard her name being yelled. The world tilted as she slid off its back. It crumpled into a lifeless heap next to her, and she watched as the remaining muki was shot with a dart that was filled with an iridescent liquid. It, too, crumpled, but in a much less lifeless way.
Oops. The habit to kill had been too ingrained in her to ignore, and it was only then, as she fell to her knees and the repercussions of killing flooded her body, that she felt a tinge of worry.
Warm hands slid over her cheeks and forced her head up.
Reyes’s dark eyes met hers, and the furrow between his brows was the thing that caught her attention and held it.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
If Solana didn’t know any better, she would have thought him concerned.
But she couldn’t answer even if she wanted to.
She was drowning underneath an onslaught of liberation, clawing for breath as her lungs expanded until they felt like they might burst. She needed Sami to hold her, to rock her, to sing to her.
To remind her she was real, she was human, she was not going to die. Not today. Not there.
Reyes didn’t know her or what she needed. His firm hands slid from her cheeks to her neck and around her back, holding her up as the world shattered underneath her knees. Her name was on his lips in a silent plea. Cora’s face appeared above her, and then Oskar, and Nikolas and Suri.
How embarrassing.
She always forgot how awful it was to experience the death of a soul.
“Do you feel this, too?” she wanted to ask, but of course they didn’t.
They weren’t murderers like she was. They rescued.
They believed in rehabilitation, not respite.
Because of her, there would be one less muki in a cell beneath the castle, and she couldn’t find it in herself to feel a single ounce of remorse.
Finally, the torment lifted and the world rushed back in.
Solana pushed at Reyes’s body and fell to her hands, sucking in gasping breaths and squeezing her eyes against the burn of tears.
Reyes slipped his hands beneath her arms. “Don’t,” she warned, her throat scratchy as if she had been screaming again. “I’m fine. Just give me space.”
“Space,” he repeated with a scoff, but stepped back, nonetheless.
Solana spread her fingers against the ground and took a single deep breath. She let the warm stone center her, and then she pushed herself to her feet. Five pairs of eyes met hers, but she only had eyes for her dagger in Reyes’s hand.
She reached for it, and he pulled it back at the last moment.
“It’s burning hot,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Good observation.” Solana lunged for it at the same time he swept it into his other hand. Cora murmured Reyes’s name and Suri chuckled under her breath. “Give me my dagger, Reyes.”
“You having this dagger was contingent upon your following the king’s orders. You’ve failed, on your first night. I don’t think you deserve to have it back.”
Anger, hot and blinding, rushed over Solana. “I deserve that dagger because it belongs to me. I don’t know who you think you are, but—”