Chapter Twenty-Two #2
A young girl sat with her back against the bar top, shoulders heaving and eyes wild with fear.
There was blood smeared onto her face and neck and hands, and her light hair was thick with it.
One of her pant legs was slashed, and through the ruined fabric, Solana could see a gash with blackened edges.
A man came over and took a cloth to her face, wiping gently as he whispered soothing words, but the others in the room stood far back as if her infection could be caught. Solana slammed the door behind her and rushed forward. A woman in the corner yelped.
“Grab some alcohol,” Solana ordered, snatching the cloth from the man and moving it to the girl’s leg. She cried out but held still, nostrils flared as she watched Solana tear her pants further and inspect the gash.
The man handed her a bottle of clear liquid and then Solana met the girl’s eyes. “This is going to hurt,” she said, and before the girl could respond, Solana was cleaning out the wound and hoping beyond all possibility that the alcohol would be enough to burn the poison away.
The girl’s screams quieted enough for Solana to ask the man, “Where’s Sami?”
“He ran out to try and help,” he said, pointing toward the door set into the back of the tavern. “We told him to stay, but—”
Solana shoved the cloth back into his hands.
“Keep cleaning this, and stay inside!” she yelled over her shoulder, and then she was standing in the middle of the alley, eyes swiveling left to right.
The Sami she knew would have gone straight home or to Jacobi’s, but this Sami, the one that stayed in Sonqo for her …
The dagger pulsed in her hand as she turned and bolted back toward the castle, eyes darting left and right down the side alleys, searching for a head of curly hair and hoping he had stayed out of trouble like he was so good at doing.
Finally, she spotted him. Solana skidded to a stop and cut a sharp left, screaming his name as she ran, digging deep past her panic and terror to find that place of control she knew was there.
Sami was on his back with a large muki planted on top of him, arms stretched out to keep its snapping teeth from ripping into his throat.
She saw the moment he lost the fight. A scream tore from deep in her chest, a command that came just a heartbeat too late.
Everything happened as if she were underwater.
The demon lunged forward and Sami’s hand slipped.
Its elongated neck stretched until its mouth latched onto Sami’s.
He screamed, but she barely heard it over the pounding of her pulse.
His legs flailed, desperately trying to dislodge the muki, to no avail.
The alleyway seemed to stretch on and on, like a dream where her running got her nowhere, until suddenly, she was close enough that she knew she could throw her dagger and land true.
It left her palm with a hiss and sunk into the side of the muki’s neck with a metallic thud.
The force of its fear and hunger hit Solana like a wall, but she slid the last pace and used her dagger as a handle to rip the muki off Sami.
There was blood everywhere. Sami was choking on it, his hands scrabbling to his throat and then her, his beautiful brown eyes wild with panic and fear.
“No, no, no,” she was chanting. She tore off her cloak and pressed it against the wound, but her hands were shaking and her muscles were clenched against the onslaught of misery and there was so much blood. It pooled underneath him and soaked into his curls that were still too long.
“You’re going to be okay,” she choked out. “Everything’s fine. I’m here, I’m so sorry, I’m here, please stay.” Her words were incoherent lies, prayers to gods who had no power, offering herself in his stead, begging for this one thing, just this one time.
“We have to get you … we have to try to…” But there was nowhere to go. There was no horse to carry them, nobody nearby to help. If only she had gotten there sooner. If only Reyes had stayed with her. If only, if only, if only.
Sami went terrifyingly still beneath her hands. His lifeless eyes stared up at the sky, his body limp beside her, chest motionless underneath her hands. His name was a ragged plea on her lips. Her sobs consumed every breath. His blood soaked into her tunic as she pressed her body against his.
Nothing else mattered. Her life was forfeit to this pain, this suffering that she had done everything in her power to avoid. Solana begged the gods to strike her dead where she sat, to trade their fates.
Cool hands pried her arms from Sami’s body. She fought against them, fought to keep hold of her dearest friend, but she was torn away, her strength nothing in the face of such agony.
“Somebody heal him,” she begged and screamed, her voice breaking beneath the torment, her gift shuddering at the force, as if she could command a living being through desperate misery.
Beneath her agony was something else, something burning and raging and waiting. Something cloaked in shadows calling her name. Ususi. ?akapana. Solana.
His body grew smaller and smaller as they pulled her away. They left him there like a pile of refuse. Like the muki Solana and Sami would hunt.
Gone from the mortal realm, but cursed to return, to never know peace.
Something jabbed into her neck and she lost control of her body, of the rage and the pain and the time. Her last thought was that it would have to be her. She would do something. She would change everything.