Chapter Seventeen #2
The one encased in red snapped his head up to meet her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, torment seeping through his pores. “It’s time to rise.”
Solana woke with a gasp that echoed against the stone walls and mocked her. Above was a ceiling of dirt threaded through with tree roots and veins of black. Below was a body, warm and firm. A hand was tangled in her hair, another resting on her abdomen, fingers curled softly in sleep.
Ever so carefully, Solana turned her head to find Reyes pressed against the cave wall, head tilted back, eyes closed and throat exposed.
Another chance to kill him, but she found it wasn’t her foremost thought anymore.
Instead, she inspected the ink carved into his skin, the line of a thick vein that ran through one of the wings, the peek of hair that the open buttons of his shirt exposed.
Soft light filtered in from far-off. Dust motes glittered in the air. Birds sang, their melodies muffled by stone and distance. Solana sunk deeper into her body and closed her eyes.
Flashes of red and blue, light and dark, past and present.
She had almost forgotten that there was no peace in sleep—not for her.
The wisps of the dream tickled her mind and begged to be remembered, but try as she might, all she could see was a blank face screaming silent words.
They reverberated through her body, set her blood on fire with the urge to act, to do something, but what, she didn’t know.
Unsettled, Solana shifted gently out of Reyes’s possessive grip.
His hand in her hair tightened and she froze, breath held, as she waited for him to release her.
She felt his fingers loosen and then she slipped free.
It was becoming a bad habit, falling asleep in his presence.
Somehow, her body and mind had forgotten that he was a threat.
That the very same hand cradling her head was the one that had caused her so much pain.
They tried to convince her that it wasn’t so bad.
That he had only been doing what he thought was right. That she could—
“Plotting ways to kill me?” Solana spun around. Reyes’s eyes met hers, dark and drowsy and tempting.
“There’s no need to plot,” she said. “It wouldn’t be that difficult.”
With a laugh, Reyes stood and offered her his hand. “I guess it’s a good thing we have a truce,” he said, pulling her to her feet. Once there, he didn’t let go, instead tugging her closer, his eyes darting between hers. “Is everything okay?” he asked, head tilted to the side.
“Mhmm,” Solana said in response, but with every blink, she saw onyx eyes staring back.
With every step out of the cave, she heard a whispered ususi on a phantom breeze.
Together, they stumbled out of the dark and into the forest, where the sun was blinding but warm, and Solana tilted her face to the sky and inhaled deeply, pushing the odd tingle beneath her skin away.
In the light of day, the forest was magical.
Small butterflies flitted from bush to bush and the sunlight filtered through the trees in a haze that bathed everything in an orange glow.
They picked their way over roots and burrows down a gently sloping hill with thin trees towering overhead.
For once, she didn’t feel the need to fill the silence.
It was companionable. Comfortable. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt like nothing was expected of her, like she could just be.
Like this, relaxed and unrestricted, she felt like she could think. And it turned out that thinking led her to places she didn’t want to think too hard about.
“The horse,” she asked suddenly, her voice embarrassingly loud. She lowered it. “Will we find it?”
“I’m sure. If not, he knows his way home.” Reyes’s voice was much softer than hers, and the furrow in his brow that was always there was nowhere to be found. Perhaps he felt just as comfortable in her presence as she did in his.
“What’s his name, anyway?”
“Laqha.” There was a soft smile at the corner of his lips. She hated to admit that she liked this smile even more than the ones he gave Cora. This one was a secret, only visible to those close enough. “We didn’t get along, at first. But he wore me down.”
“And not the other way around?”
He shook his head, silver hair falling onto his forehead. “I know to accept when I cannot win.”
Solana ignored the sideways glance he gave her, and the way his eyes lingered on the side of her face.
She wondered what he saw when he searched her so intently.
The people in the callejon saw her as fearless and stubborn and wild.
Sami saw her as reckless, perhaps destructive, someone in need of saving.
Alina saw her as some sort of hero. Lucia had seen her as a responsibility, a reminder of her mistakes. A ghost of her father.
She would rather no one saw her at all.
“Your mother,” Solana started, hoping to ease the strange tension that eddied between them. “You mentioned she is from Achiq. Is she alive?”
“She is.” The fondness in his voice was refreshing to hear. “She’s housed at the Academy’s sanatorium.”
“I’m sorry,” Solana offered. She wondered if this was the story Suri would have told her had Reyes not stopped her. “I didn’t know the Academy had a sanatorium.”
“An infirmary as well. It gives students of healing the opportunity to learn.”
“Experimenting on the unwell?”
Reyes heard the teasing in her tone and laughed. “It’s gentle and not a cure. More of a temporary reprieve that many are grateful for.”
“How old were you when she went to live there?”
“Fifteen,” Reyes said. Close to the age she was when her mother died. Children still, but not small enough to garner the kind of sympathy that could have saved them from a harsh world and harsher reality.
“There was an incident,” he continued without prodding.
“Someone died, and my gift came to life. The Masters found me and took me to the king. I refused to train unless my mother could be provided for. King Killian agreed. Now here I am.” Reyes shrugged as if the whole thing was nothing out of the ordinary.
As if he hadn’t saved her life, and probably his own.
“Were you successful?” When Reyes glanced at her questioningly, she added, “With your gift. Did you save a life?”
The muscles in Reyes’s jaw shifted, and he looked out at the forest. “No,” he said. “I had no idea what I was doing.”