Chapter Twenty-Three #2
It wasn’t until she was on the other side of the door that she finally stumbled.
Hands tried to catch her, but she pushed them away.
She had forgotten that Reyes had followed her, that he was waiting to give her the support she didn’t deserve, and now he was there watching as she fell apart, once again privy to the softest, weakest parts of her that crashed over her again and again.
Solana did nothing to stem the sobs that echoed down the narrow stone halls.
There was no stopping the force of her anguish.
Just this once, she allowed it to consume her, and when she was done, when every tear was drained from her body, she rose and turned away from the door.
Reyes’s face was half in shadow, and his hands were fisted by his side.
She felt her sorrow like a cloak on her shoulders and saw in his eyes just how willing he was to reach into the depths of her soul and help her carry it.
There could be no one else who loved her like that. She could not allow it.
Like a spark that lit a thousand fires, Solana suddenly understood what she needed to do. The answer to reversing the curse was reaching deeper into the dark, within those caves they had visited together, where hands had pressed against stone and betrayal had rent the world in two.
Only this time, she would be mending, and she would do it alone.
But not tonight. Not when she was weak with grief and the longing to be held.
There was no fight left in her when Reyes extended his hand and led her to his room.
There was no denying the press of his body against hers, holding the bits and pieces of her shattered heart together with hands and arms and sheer will.
There was no escaping the safety of his bed or the exhaustion in her bones.
It dragged her under into a dreamless, peaceful sleep. A reprieve from the world and the truth of what she must do, if only for a few hours.
Reyes was still beside her when she woke, the scent of him smokier than usual from the pyre that burned Sami’s body.
Purple light filtered in from the sliver of window behind his desk and bathed his body in bruised shadows.
She ached to reach out and slide her fingers across the sharp line of his jaw and the coarse hair there.
To feel his cheeks scrape against the inside of her thighs.
To make her body sore and exhausted and her mind shatter in a different way.
Using all the training she had ground into herself over the last fourteen years, Solana denied this indulgence and slipped from his bed. The wood floors didn’t so much as whisper as she tiptoed over to the desk to rifle through his papers. Reyes would have a map somewhere, she knew.
Sure enough, there was one tucked into a notebook, the edges of it worn and the colors of the ink faded from age. She folded it into a small square and shoved it into a pocket while Reyes slept on, blissfully unaware.
Messy silver hair splayed over his forehead.
He was flat on his back with one arm extended toward where she had slept and the other curled on his belly.
Her head had rested in the soft spot between shoulder and chest. Her hand had run over firm muscle and soft skin.
Solana wanted to crawl back underneath the covers and forget about loss and truces and oaths, but soon, the dawn bells would ring and wake the city.
The day would fill with light and noise and people carving out a life for themselves despite the devastation looming over all their heads.
Her grief was not unique, but their hope was.
She let it encourage her as she slipped out of Reyes’s room, her dagger still lying on his bedside table, and hurried back to her own.
It strengthened her as she pulled on her Masters uniform and dashed to the stables.
It steadied her as she lied to Roiden and took off toward the forest on a well-rested brown mare that she had come to know and trust.
So much had changed since the day Reyes had found her.
Then, his arms had felt like a cage, and his attention a threat, but it was the thought of him that urged her forward.
His belief in her, his hope, the way his gift soothed her darkness.
The way he accepted and embraced her for who she was.
Solana was doing this for Sami, but also for Reyes.
And Cora, who had opened her arms without judgment.
Even Nikolas and Oskar and Suri, who had managed to work beside her night after night and not stab her in the back.
For Alina, who looked up to her, and for Jacobi, who fed her, and Celeste, who let Solana listen to her music and cry without shame.
She let the weight of this last betrayal press her further into the horse.
It was for them that she rode hard through the forest and toward the caves of himaya, where the Uku Pacha and the mortal realm met deep below the earth.
Where the curse was nestled among the stone, rivers of it spreading all across Supay, tying them to the land for eternity.
Each person held their curse in their blood, but it was the blood of the land that needed to be cleansed.
It was the tether from Supay to the Uku Pacha that needed to break.
Solana felt the pull of the underworld grow stronger as she rode deeper into the forest. The sun was directly above but blocked out by a thick canopy of leaves.
The air was humid and warm, and birds sang sweetly as they flitted from branch to branch.
It was picturesque. Dreamy. And yet, Solana felt a heaviness underneath it all, like a current waiting to drag her under.
She followed that pull up a shallow mountainside, past rocky ledges and thick-trunked trees, over gently burbling creeks and to the small mouth of a cave that looked eager to swallow her whole.
With shaky hands, Solana pulled the map from her pocket and unfolded it.
If she was understanding it correctly, where she stood was the main entrance to the himaya caves.
King Killian had a team of trained miners that would come and excavate the stone as needed, but it was never in short supply.
She wondered if he knew how extensive its reach was.
How far and wide the fingers of the underworld had spread.
What would happen when she extricated the curse and the Uku Pacha from the mortal realm?
It was only her that could manage the dark, and there was only one way to find out.
The temperature dropped the moment she ducked into the mouth’s shade.
A chill worked down her spine, and Solana paused to allow her eyes to adjust, for her pulse to steady.
It suddenly felt as though she couldn’t get in enough air, and she knew that if she continued to breathe too quickly, she would lose herself to fear and the panic that turned her belly.
She counted to five and took deep breaths.
The sheath at her hip was empty, but she rested her hand on it, nonetheless.
The birds sang at her back. Loose rocks shifted underneath her boots.
Solana plunged into the dark without another moment of hesitation.
The walls on either side of her were close enough to stretch out her arms and touch.
She used them as a guide when the light behind her completely faded and she was left to stumble forward in complete darkness.
Every so often, her fingers would slide against a particularly cool patch of wall and she would get a flash of a vision.
A stutter of the past, or perhaps the future, that pulled her ever forward toward an uncertain fate.
The air became so cold that it stung her nostrils and throat, and the passage widened so she could no longer reach it with both hands.
Solana followed the wall with her left hand and kept her right pressed to her chest. Her power seemed to pulse with every beat of her heart until it felt as if it was burrowing into her head and eagerly guiding her deeper and deeper into the cavern, farther and farther below the earth.
Just when Solana thought there would be no end, she saw a dull light ahead.
The passage widened further until it suddenly expanded into a cavernous room that dropped into several sharp ledges that mimicked stairs.
The entirety of the walls and floor were a solid, iridescent black that glowed eerily.
Columns stretched up from the ground and down from the ceiling, ending in tips sharp enough to impale if knocked loose, and in the center, like an unnatural invasion, was a perfect circle of cleared floor.
Solana stood at the edge of the path and marveled at the himaya, at the pulse of death that called to her from its very core.
This was where her father had betrayed King Killian.
This was where everything had changed, and now Solana had the power to change it back.
To make things right. To set them all free.
Carefully, she picked her way toward that perfect circle, eager to lay her hands where her father’s had once been, to erase the damage the gods had bestowed upon them.
There was fear buzzing underneath her skin, but she had never felt stronger than she did in that moment.
It was the kind of power that came with taking control.
Memories of storm-gray eyes looking down on her from above made her fingertips tingle with anticipation.
When this was over, she would tell Reyes it wasn’t enough, that she wanted more.
Perhaps she was like the gods in that way—greedy and unsatisfied—but she would not allow it to lead her into destruction as it had them.