Chapter Twenty-Three #3
Solana reached the bottom of the room and strode to the center of the circle with purpose.
The pressure in the air intensified and pulled her to her knees.
The stone was unyielding. It felt eager for her touch, like the muki who sought her for a true death.
It was her gift they craved. Solana was more than keen to give it.
With a quick slice of the dagger, Solana split the sensitive skin of her inner wrist, just deep enough to collect a small pool of blood in one palm. She pressed her hands together, closed her eyes, and took a deep, steadying breath.
And then she slammed them against the stone.
It hissed at her blood. The hiss turned into a sizzle that seared and fused her skin to the ground.
A scream cut the air, and for a moment, Solana thought someone was there with her, sharing in her suffering and vengeance, but it was only her in that cavernous room.
It was only her pain that echoed off the walls.
Because she had chosen to do this on her own, because she thought she was strong enough and brave enough, Solana was alone.
There was no one there to remind her of her humanity when the current of the himaya sucked her under, as if she were nothing more than a piece of driftwood, and cast her into a sea of memories and recollections of time that didn’t belong to her.
There was grief and sorrow, but there was also wrath and retribution.
A vicious cycle of healing and hurting, of penance and betrayal.
Amidst it all, Solana searched for the center of her soul and the well that held her gift.
She wanted to plunge beneath its still waters and soothe the burn in her hands and mind.
To find that place of peace and surrender that allowed her to command.
She imagined feeding that power into the earth and into the barrier between realms and separating them forever.
Like a chasm where life and death could not touch.
Except for Solana, who held both within her hands. It would be her that set things right.
But pushing against it gave her little success. The current wanted to take her, and she remembered Reyes telling her how much easier it would be if she let his gift in. If she just let go.
So Solana did exactly that. Every muscle in her body unclenched.
Every thought dissipated into smoke. She let the tides of her gift guide her to the tethers of the curse that branched out from every living being and stemmed back to the center of their land.
It was like a spider’s web, intricate and complex and glistening under the light of her attention.
Solana wondered if she had ever seen something so dangerously beautiful before.
?akapana, it whispered to her. Destroy.
The beings of the underworld were asking her to destroy the curse. Perhaps their whole realm. Solana wondered if her father had heard the same voices. If he had been lured to the dark, just as she was being lured to it. But she wouldn’t make the same choices he did.
In fact, if she closed her eyes and pushed past the surface of the dark, of the whispers of the demons and their own desires, she could feel another presence there. Hear another whisper that begged her to listen.
Ususiiiiiii.
The world tipped further until it felt like she was upside down, hanging on by a thread of consciousness. She needed more. More power, more reason, more strength. Solana thought of King Killian’s words as he spun her around the ballroom.
Masimu is alive.
The pull to the dark. The whispers in her dreams. It was Masimu calling to her.
And if they had the same blood, perhaps they had the same gift.
Solana could use him to give her what she needed.
Bolstered, she reached past the web of the curse, poured her gift into one desire, one word that left her lips like a whisper but shook the ground underneath her palms.
Come.
From far away, she heard someone screaming her name.
Solana ignored it and continued to push her power, to soak the ground in her anger and heartache and loss.
Everything that Masimu had taken from her flashed before her eyes.
A happy life, a healthy mother, a successful future.
For the first time in twenty years, she saw his face floating in her mind’s eye.
His dark hair that was just like hers, thick and wild.
A dimple on his left cheek when he spoke.
A glitter of mischief every time he smiled.
That smile morphed into terror that widened his eyes and poured out of his mouth.
SOLANA!
She reached for him, punched her hand through the pressure that held her back from her vengeance, her fingers curled into claws to tear—
Shackles wrapped around her physical body and yanked her back.
It was like digging up the roots of a tree and ripping them from the ground.
She felt the sundering in her soul. Flesh tore from her palms, and she cried out at the burn it left behind.
Someone carried her backward, away from the place where she had poured her power, away from her one true purpose.
Solana kicked and screamed but it was drowned out by the roar of the earth surrounding her.
Columns of himaya tore from the ceiling.
The ground cracked and shattered beneath her feet.
Reyes’s smoke-and-wood smell enveloped her, his body protecting her head as he ran with her in his arms. The light disappeared.
Solana wasn’t sure if she was awake or not.
It felt as though something vital had been left behind, like she was in a nightmare and the whispers of the dead were chasing after her, the chant growing fainter the farther out of the cave she went, until finally the light of day burned through her eyelids.
Solana pressed herself closer to Reyes’s chest and let him hold her together.
Every part of her hurt. She couldn’t understand what had happened or how she had failed so spectacularly, but she knew she had.
There was a strange pressure in the air that hadn’t been there before.
An icy finger of dread that walked along her spine.
When Reyes came to an abrupt stop and lowered them both to sit at the base of a tree, Solana kept her eyes squeezed shut, afraid that when she opened them, the world would be filled with the decaying and the dead.
“Gods, Sol. Hold on,” Reyes whispered against her forehead.
She felt the tendrils of his gift begin to burrow underneath her skin and to the root of her pain, but it was too deep for even his power.
It was in her soul, the core of her gift torn and tossed aside.
It was in the darkest recesses of her mind where she had seen her father’s face filled with terror after punching through what little bit of space separated them.
The whisper in her mind was silenced, but her fear was not.
Solana tore her eyes open. A wave of pressure swept past her, the trees swaying in a nonexistent breeze, the ground shivering with change. The sky darkened as if submerged under a film of murky water. “Reyes,” she whispered, watching shadows shift and undulate.
“I’m almost done,” he said, but she was barely aware of the ruined flesh on the palms of her hands or the bits of himaya embedded in her skin.
She was too busy watching birds flutter into the strangely colored sky.
Droves of them in bursts, first close, then farther and farther until they were fleeing from the center of the city.
The ground rumbled deep and far. Solana pressed her hands to it and knew, at that moment, what she had done.
Come, she had said to her father, to the dark, to the Uku Pacha and all of its children. One command, and they had obeyed.