Chapter Twenty-Six #2
It was that barren space that Solana held in her mind.
The cobwebs in the corners and the empty pots on the windowsill.
The exterior that had faded with time and neglect and the sun.
The doorjamb with her heights that stopped at the tender age of thirteen, and the doorknob that had been repaired more times than seemed feasible.
Solana exhaled all her stress and urgency and focused only on what it would feel like to slip her hand over it once more.
The metal would be cold against her palm. The smell of the sea would be thick in the air—it always was, that close to the docks. Most days, the door stuck so badly that there had to be an equal measure of push and pull before it finally budged.
Solana felt like that door as the shadows coalesced over her body and swept her away.
She was being pushed in a direction while also pulling it toward her, imagining what could be while remembering what had been.
The ground rose up to meet her violently, but when she looked up from her hands and knees, the door to her house was just an arm’s length away.
Masimu landed next to her with much more grace. “You did it,” he breathed, pride shining in his eyes.
There had been a time when making him proud had been her greatest mission in life, even if it was never very difficult.
Just making sure you’re real, he had said, watching her with such love that she never questioned who she belonged to and if she was wanted.
It wasn’t until after he disappeared that Solana began to doubt everything.
That she worried she was the reason he abandoned and then betrayed them all.
Perhaps she had been too needy, too difficult to tame, too disruptive to teach, too hard to love.
In the end, it mattered little. Masimu had disappeared, her mother had died, and now there she was, facing them both once again.
Instead of running into her home, Solana slowly got to her feet, took three steps back, and faced the door straight on.
Masimu quietly stood beside her and together they inspected the weathered wood.
There was no balcony or flower boxes beneath the windows.
No need for flowers in a world with no sun.
“Is she…” Solana’s words trailed off, throat tight with hope and heartache.
“Yes,” Masimu said softly.
“All this time.” She kept her eyes pinned to the door, remembering a time when she knew she would open it and see her mother there.
At the table, sewing a hole closed in her one good shirt.
In the kitchen making tea. On the bed, curled in a ball when her grief was too heavy to bear, then when she was too sick to leave it.
Eventually, she was gone, and opening the door became the most difficult thing to do.
“She never came back. Did you keep her here? Did you command her to stay?”
“I don’t have your power. The most I could do was keep her company.”
Solana didn’t know if it was a comfort or not, knowing that he had been with her mother all this time when it was all she had wanted when she was alive. But it was Solana that was left alone. Without guidance or explanation, left to fend for herself. “What do you mean, your power?”
With a sigh, Masimu shifted to face her. “I can’t call them or release them. I can rift, and I’m immune to their poison. The perfect soldier, but nothing more. Only you can release them.”
Which meant that he couldn’t break the curse, or call and control demons as the king claimed he could, and possibly everything she thought she knew was a lie. Including the truth of where Lucia’s soul had rested all these years.
Instinctively, her hand moved to the hilt of her dagger, dreading the idea of using it against her mother, but a gentle touch stopped her short. “You can do it without your dagger,” he said softly. “Your power is so much greater than you know.”
Because you weren’t there to teach me, she wanted to say, but it wouldn’t change anything, and she was grateful to have this opportunity to see her mother one last time, to finally give her a true death.
Before she could talk herself out of it, Solana strode forward and grasped the handle.
It turned easily—Masimu must have fixed it—and the room came into view slowly.
It was nothing like she remembered it. There were books piled all over the floor, and small globe lights that cast a warm orange glow over the space.
The table to the left was covered in papers and a pair of spectacles that looked vaguely familiar.
The chair on the right had a blanket tossed over the back that wasn’t moth- or mice-eaten, and on the bed, curled into a ball on its side and pressed against the wall, was a muki.
Solana knew it was Lucia immediately. She could feel it in her soul. The muki was still, as if it were sleeping or dead, but its lidless eyes were forever open. It made no move when Solana stepped farther into the room, or when a shaft of watery light touched the edge of the bed.
Stomach in her throat, Solana stepped slowly closer, past the books and the cracks in the stone floor, to the same bed she had sat beside for three days straight before her mother left the mortal realm forever.
She imagined Masimu sitting there instead, day after day, powerless to help Lucia but unwilling to let her suffer alone. The pain it must have caused him.
The pain she was now willing and eager to accept.
“Tell me what to do,” she whispered.
Masimu’s voice was equally soft and soothing, reminding her of the nights she had trouble sleeping and he would tell her stories to settle her mind.
“You have to wield your gift like a knife. This is not about letting go or surrendering. It’s about control and intention.” Masimu moved closer and placed his hands on her shoulders. She didn’t feel the need to shake them off. “Find her soul and cut it at the root.”
With his touch grounding her, Solana sunk deep into the well of her gift and imagined honing it into the sharp edge of a blade.
The waters were her weapon, not a threat.
They answered to her command, just as the curse would.
She let out a deep exhale and extended her awareness toward Lucia’s muki form, prodding at the edges of her quiet consciousness with gentle pressure.
Those familiar emotions were there waiting for her, but nothing so agonizing as before. Solana was able to navigate them with a quiet certainty and heartbreak until she found the very core of the muki’s being, and placed the tip of her gift against it.
Fear, sharp and hot, stabbed her in the chest. A drop of sweat rolled down the middle of her back. Her mother’s grief was heavy, pressing against her, threatening to suffocate and snuff out the power she had collected to release her.
“Breathe, Solana,” her father said, his voice distant but within her all the same. “You are in control. You are strong and capable.”
He was right—Solana knew that. Her power was glowing in her mental mind, the edge glistening against the pit of the curse waiting to be severed.
This was what she had always wanted, what she had been waiting and waiting for.
It didn’t matter that it might hurt; Lucia had suffered enough, and Solana wasn’t a little girl anymore. She wasn’t afraid of pain.
“Do you want to say goodbye?” she asked her father.
There was a pause, and then he said, “No,” so softly Solana almost didn’t hear it. “The last thing she feels should be you.”
So, Solana exhaled all of her doubt and inhaled a steadying breath.
“Hello, Mami,” she said gently. “I’m here to set you free.
” She pressed her power deeper and then paused again.
“Thank you for saving me. Thank you for making me strong and brave and difficult. It’s kept me alive all these years.
You have kept me alive all these years. I want you to know that. ”
Solana didn’t expect to feel or hear anything in return.
She didn’t wait for permission or for forgiveness, but she felt it all the same.
A gentle warmth that washed away the cold anticipation.
A burning, healing love that strengthened her gift and steadied her hand.
The light of the blade cut into the darkness with little effort.
A graceful severing that rushed through Solana like a wave of freedom so fresh and pure that she felt like she could breathe for the first time in fourteen years.
She was weightless. More powerful than ever. Free.
Lucia’s muki form dissipated into smoke, the fragments of her soul swirling around her like tiny shards of diamonds and stars.
The pressure of Masimu’s hands lifted, and when she glanced over her shoulder, she found him on his knees, one hand in the air lovingly caressing those shards of stars, rivers of tears cutting through his cheeks.
Solana swiped away the moisture on her own.
“What else do I need to know?” she asked firmly.
Masimu sniffed and lifted his head. He left the tears where they were, unashamed to let her see his shared pain. “There’s so much,” he said, eyes distant. “But we’ll start here.”