Chapter Twenty #2
He was beside her a moment later, leaning into her space and peering down at the book she pointed at. “It’s the history of Supay and our working knowledge of the curse.”
“Read it to me,” she begged.
“It’s in the gods’ tongue. I’m only able to read a few words.” He pointed to the word allpa, then at his notes. “This means land. And this”—he ran his finger down the page to the word ususi—“means daughter.”
Daughter, her dreams had whispered, come closer.
All along, it was her father in her head, sending visions and nightmares and messages veiled in darkness.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember his face as it was twenty years ago, the sound of his voice, the relief of his embrace, but she couldn’t.
It was too buried beneath resentment and regret.
Solana flipped to the next page, and there was another word she recognized. Vision gone blurry, she pointed at an underlined word in the center of many. “And this one?” she asked.
Reyes leaned ever closer. “?akapana means destroy, I think. I haven’t been able to confer with our head librarian because he’s been—”
The door burst open. Solana and Reyes jumped apart as if guilty, both of them reaching for weapons they weren’t wearing, but it was only Cora. Solana knew immediately that something was wrong.
“Reyes, come quick. Someone’s been hurt.”
Without question, Reyes ran after Cora, Solana following close behind.
They could hear the screams before they reached the infirmary, shrill and tortured, and the low hum of others trying to calm them down.
Reyes flew into the room with the kind of calm borne of someone who had seen his fair share of pain and death. Solana herself had seen it when he hovered over her with his knife, the way he maintained his composure even as she screamed and begged.
“What happened?” he asked, quickly dousing his hands in disinfectant.
Solana stood in the doorway and watched as he rounded the bed and slid between two of the three Masters on either side of the patient’s body. They looked young, fresh out of the Academy.
“One of the demons got him in the leg, right above his ankle.” Reyes shifted lower down the bed and ripped the patient’s pants open.
Solana couldn’t see much, but she could see the blood covering the white sheet, most of it red, save for a few damning streaks of a brownish black sludge.
“We rode straight here, but it’s been almost an hour. ”
“Did you give him something for the pain?” Reyes asked.
A nearby nurse, a different woman than the one she had met, nodded frantically. “Yes, as soon as he came in.”
Reyes placed his hands over the patient’s leg and closed his eyes. Three heartbeats passed, and then he cursed quietly.
“Take it,” the patient demanded, voice strained and body bucking off the bed. “Take the leg!”
“It’s too late,” Reyes said, shaking his head. “There’s nothing we can do. Except—” His eyes sought Solana’s, and that was all it took. She was rolling up her sleeve and striding toward him before he could ask her permission. “There’s something we can try, but it’s not—”
“Do it,” the boy shouted, spittle flying from his lips, eyes wild with desperation.
“It might not work, Diego. There’s no guarantee.”
“I don’t care.” Diego’s hand fisted the collar of Reyes’s shirt. “Please, Reyes. Save me.”
That was all he needed. Reyes turned to Cora and told her what to grab, and Cora ran to a nearby cupboard.
She came back with a small cloth soaked in disinfectant, wiped it over the pit of Solana’s elbow, and then Reyes gently steadied her arm while he pushed a needle beneath her skin.
They had an impressive kind of efficiency, an understanding of skills and needs that spoke of years working together.
The vial filled with her blood, and then he was removing the needle and turning back to Diego.
Now that she was closer, Solana could see just how young he was. Twenty, at the most, if she had to guess.
“Is that her blood?” one of his teammates asked, stretching out an arm to block Reyes from her friend’s leg.
She heard Reyes answer, but the conversation dimmed as if plunged underwater.
The boy was writhing against the hands that held him, spittle flying from his mouth as he screamed, and Solana couldn’t help but remember her mother and the quiet suffering she withstood.
The amount of pain she must have been in, and still she did not scream or twist away when Solana cleaned her wound.
For three days, Lucia had, little by little, lost her sanity and her life, but she had endured it with grace for her.
Even in the end, when she couldn’t remember who Solana was, Lucia had remembered her love for her.
A cold hand on her shoulder pulled her back to the present.
Solana found Cora beside her, eyes drawn with concern.
They watched Reyes pull the needle out of the top of the boy’s leg while his friends used their entire bodies to hold him down.
They had stuck a strap in his mouth so that he could bite down, but it did little to hold back his whimpers or the way his voice cracked with pleading.
Reyes moved the needle to the top of his hip and pressed a small amount of her blood there and then moved farther up onto his stomach and repeated until the needle was empty.
And then he stood back and wiped his brow. Solana wondered if she was the only one who saw the way his hand shook.
The boy had relaxed into the bed, but the veins in his neck and forehead were still bulging. His chest moved abnormally fast and his eyes tracked Reyes with a frantic desperation that made Solana look away.
“Give it some time,” Reyes said reassuringly.
Solana backed away from the bed. The boy’s friends dropped to their knees but kept their hands on him, murmuring quietly among themselves.
She heard encouraging words and jokes about what they would do once this was all done.
They had the bright-eyed optimism that came with never having watched a loved one die a gruesome death. She hoped they got to keep it.
“When will you know?” Cora asked Reyes, but he kept his eyes on Solana as he stepped closer.
“I already do,” he murmured. “It isn’t working.”
“Maybe it needs more time,” Solana offered.
But Reyes was shaking his head, silver hair falling over his eyes.
He pushed it back with frustration. “I can feel his blood, and the demon poison, and your blood inside of him. The demon poison is absorbing your blood and growing.” He paused as if examining the boy’s blood as they spoke.
“It’s not hurting him any more than the demon poison is, but it’s going to kill him much faster than it would have. ”
“That may not be a bad thing.” Cora placed a gentle hand on Reyes’s cheek and then left their small circle. Solana heard her offer water and chairs to the three friends. It was amazing how calm and collected she seemed.
All Solana felt was a searing disappointment. The price of hoping when there was none to have.
Reyes paced the room while the boy swiftly deteriorated before their eyes. Solana sat perched on the edge of a sick bed down the row. The girl who had balked at her blood cried into Cora’s shoulder while the others stayed stoically by his side.
Until the boy begged for Reyes to come closer and whispered in his ear.
Reyes’s whole countenance changed, defeat softening the jut of his chin and the line of his shoulders.
It was something Solana had never seen before and hoped to never see again.
Reyes bowed over the boy’s body, hands pressed against his chest, and Solana felt the waves of his gift even from where she sat.
It was a gentle tide. A soothing embrace. After a moment, the boy’s chest stopped rising, and then the tension melted from his body, life gone with one long, last exhale.
When Reyes turned to find her, she saw the guilt and grief in the press of his mouth and the tick of his jaw. A kind of understanding that she had never been given before.
He had used his gift to give that boy a merciful death. A blessed release.
Never had she felt more seen.