Chapter Sixteen
After Solana almost died under King Killian’s watchful eye, everything seemed to settle down.
Their nightly hunts were uneventful, as far as hunting demons could be, and Solana and Reyes’s truce was holding steady in some ways and completely unfulfilled in others.
She felt less like she wanted to kill him, but she also tried her best to avoid touching him and him touching her.
That fateful dinner had set them all on weird footing. Reyes invited Solana to the infirmary to take her blood, and she went grudgingly, not a fan of the infirmary but also dreading the strange tension between them. They felt like allies and acquaintances.
Which is exactly as it should be, she reminded herself.
Out of foolish loneliness and a craving for something to keep her busy, Solana took Roiden up on his offer to teach her to ride so she wouldn’t have to share with Reyes.
The man said nothing else about knowing her, and neither did she bring it up.
Riding again was enough of a distraction on its own.
It was strange, how easily the skill came back to her and how much it reminded her of her father. Though she could hardly remember what he looked like—the proclamations in the city weren’t accurate—she knew that it was him in some of her dreams.
Steadfast, quick to laugh, hopeful. Masimu had been the calm to Lucia’s bright chaos, the shore upon which the waves broke.
The three of them had an unbreakable bond.
Or so Solana had thought. As an adult, she realized that she’d understood very little of the grim reality of adulthood and promises.
Everything broke, with time. Tethers wore down.
Hope was stretched thin. Vows were betrayed.
Love was never enough.
Not even when Cora made her laugh or guarded her back or brought her food when she knew Solana would be hungry.
She did not allow herself to love when she caught sight of Sami passing by the castle gates, his eyes lingering on each of the windows as if he hoped to catch a glimpse of her.
And especially not when Reyes’s movements in a fight became as familiar as her own, as if he knew her thoughts more intimately than she did.
There were only four months left until she was free, and it would not be love that held her back.
But Solana’s unfulfilled truce continued to dangle over her head like a snare.
Dressed in comfortable training clothes, the midday bells ringing throughout the city, Solana wandered through the castle in search of Reyes.
Staff scurried from room to room, readying the grounds for the king’s ball in three days.
They had been given time off, to take care of other affairs, King Killian had said with a pointed look at Reyes, and she wanted to get her affairs out of the way as soon as possible.
Which meant finding Reyes and demanding he help her try to imbue himaya, however much she wished not to.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t curious—it was that she was afraid that he was wrong. That everything she could do, all that she was, had nothing to do with her. That she was nothing but a tool, a vessel that could be filled and discarded when it was done serving its purpose.
The opposite was equally as terrifying. If it was her blood that held all this power, then any notion of escape she harbored would go up in smoke. Her burden would be magnified beyond comprehension.
Command the curse and reverse it. A fool’s errand, and yet there she was, searching for a man to help her complete it.
The first place she checked was his room, but it was empty.
Then she checked the stables but found only Roiden and the stable boy managing the horses.
She refused a ride and headed toward the training room, thinking perhaps he was sparring with Oskar and Nikolas, but they were nowhere to be found, either.
The kitchens were chaos, and she left that room faster than they could ask her to stay, and then, because it was close by, she checked the room he had held and tortured her in. Just to remind herself where they had started and how far they had come.
Of course he was there, hunched over the table in the corner, sleeves rolled up to expose ink-covered forearms and elbow-deep in a pile of notebooks and textbooks.
Solana leaned on the doorframe, satisfied that he hadn’t heard her and she could take her fill of him in this space where he had once seemed formidable and terrifying.
She wasn’t afraid of him any longer, she realized.
Sometime in the last month, the size of him had been decreased, like revisiting a place as an adult only to realize it wasn’t as magical or large as it had seemed as a child.
In this space, and any other, Reyes was just a man. He could not and had not hurt her any more than anyone else, and she would not give fear that power over her any longer.
“There are probably better places with more light and comfortable chairs to read. I’ve heard the library here is spectacular.”
Reyes didn’t whirl around like she thought he would. Perhaps he had known she was there all along. The thought didn’t anger Solana. No, the warmth that swept through her belly felt like something else entirely.
“I think the royal librarians would frown upon the blood and gore,” Reyes said, gesturing toward vials of brackish blood and instruments of the medical variety spread across the farthest end of the table.
Solana approached and slowly lifted a vial, watching the blood coat the sides as she rolled it back and forth, then replaced it.
She peeked at the notebooks and saw diagrams of demons and humans and their parts, all intricately labeled, with numbers and symbols she could not begin to understand.
School hadn’t been a priority for her or any of the other children in the callejon.
They were taught to labor from a young age, severely diminishing their opportunities to become anything other than a barkeep, a fisherman, a dockworker, a courtesan, a hunter.
“Is this what they teach you in that fancy Academy?” Solana asked with a pang of jealousy. It could have been her, had everything not happened the way it did. Had fate not hooked its talons into her family.
“That was a long time ago.” Reyes sighed and flipped the book closed. “And they hardly taught me anything of value. Experience is the best teacher there is.”
“Says the man who received a fully rounded education. Who knows what I might have become had I been taught any of”—she gestured to the books and tools—“this. More than a hunter, I’d assume.”
“Then the world would have been robbed of a great service.”
The sincerity in his eyes hit her like a punch to the gut.
She waited for him to huff, to make a sarcastic remark, to minimize or downplay and set them back on the right foot, but there was nothing.
Suddenly floundering beneath his gaze, Solana cleared her throat and walked over to the table in the center of the room. It rattled when she hopped onto it.
“Well?” she said, holding out her arm. “Do you want more blood or not?”
“Very much so,” Reyes said. “Do you want to go back to the infirmary?”
Solana shuddered. “Here is good,” she said, and meant it. There was a kind of power in reshaping her memories of this room, in seeing Reyes, hair mussed and feet bare, she noted, at peace in a place he had made his own.
He nodded and turned to the shelves lining the wall next to him, plucking a cylindrical tool from a glass jar and a bottle of clear liquid next to it.
Solana stayed relaxed as he turned to her and drew nearer.
Even when he placed the syringe and bottle next to her and the clank of glass and metal rang out, she did not flinch.
It was only after he wiped her arm with the liquid from the bottle and placed the tip of the syringe to the inner corner of her elbow that she twitched the tiniest bit.
Reyes pulled away immediately and peered down into her eyes. “We don’t have to do this right now. We can wait.”
“No,” Solana said quickly. “The more blood, the better, yes?” Reyes nodded, gray eyes swirling in the dim light. “Then this is good.”
It was gentle, the needle that dug under her skin and tapped into the stream of blood running beneath the surface.
Usually she looked away, but this time she watched the syringe fill and marveled at the depth of it, the color and the possibilities.
If Reyes was right, her blood could save lives.
People wouldn’t have to die like her mother had, feverish and festering and forgetful.
In those last few hours before her mother’s death, Solana might as well have been alone. She could still hear Lucia wailing for Masimu. Could still feel the sting of her mother’s absence as she turned to Solana and said, Tell her I love her. Wherever she is, please tell her I will never hurt her.
It was the last time she heard her voice.
Somehow, Lucia had kept her promise, but selfishly, a part of Solana had hoped her mother would one day return.
That Solana could have the honor of ending her misery and absorbing it into herself.
One last connection with the woman who had sacrificed everything for her.
Reyes held the syringe of her blood up to the light and eyed it with something like wonder. Then he placed it on the table behind him and turned back to her.
It was now or never.
“I’m ready to imbue himaya.”
With gentle fingers, he placed a small bandage over the dot of blood lingering in the crook of her arm. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“If I’m telling you, it’s because I am.” When he glanced at her entwined fingers, she loosened them and shoved them underneath her legs. “I think you’ll be disappointed with the results, but I’m willing to try.”
“I won’t be disappointed,” he said softly, the words dripping in sincerity.