Chapter Twenty-Eight
They rifted back to the castle in spurts, each distance farther than the last. The intentionality of it was difficult when there were a hundred things on her mind and her body was fighting the urge to be reckless.
There was no diving in headfirst this time.
Their plan would have to rely on precision and skill.
“We’ll rift into the castle in the mortal realm,” Masimu said, pointing at the throne room on a large map hung over the desk in his room.
It was the same room he had kept when she was a child, and even if it looked entirely different, Solana could see the touches of his that were familiar.
A coat tossed over the back of a chair. An empty mug on the bedside table.
An open book on what would have been her mother’s side of the bed.
Solana could hear her scolding him to put it down and pay attention to his family.
All that time, he had been searching for a way to save them. To save her from the very thing she was about to face head-on. Fighting to avoid becoming the thing we fear most often brings it nearer. Cora’s wise words had been right, after all.
“We can split up in there.” Masimu rested a finger over his lips in thought. “And—”
“I have to find a friend first,” Solana interrupted. The way Reyes’s eyes had shifted from concern to betrayal was forever burned in her mind. If he knew the truth, she had a feeling he would gladly help them kill the king. “I’ll take the lower half of the castle.”
“And you’ll call for me if you find him.” Solana opened her mouth to argue, but Masimu put up a hand. “Together, all right? This isn’t only your fight.” He handed her his dagger in place of hers. “Remember—your gift is a blade. Use it wisely.”
Masimu’s reminder felt out of place, but coveted and welcome. She placed his dagger in her sheath and straightened her shoulders. When this was all over, perhaps they could get to know each other again, and his words of caution wouldn’t feel so foreign.
“I’ll go first,” Masimu said. “It’ll be easier for you to move through the realms if you follow my trail.” His eyes darted over her face as if memorizing her. As if it would be his last chance. “You look just like her.”
“She always said I looked just like you.” Solana pushed a lock of dark hair behind her ear and shifted on her feet.
The memories she had of Lucia were precious, and she was tempted to keep them to herself, but she remembered the gift it had been to see her face one last time, and how it had been even longer since Masimu had seen it, and she stepped forward to place a hand on his arm.
He closed his eyes before she did, like he was making up for lost time and savoring every moment.
Underneath the darkness in her mind were brighter memories.
Moments in time that she had captured and stored in a corner for when she needed them most. One was a memory of Lucia planting a stolen plant in a small pot that she placed in the window.
Solana was still in the bed that they shared, trying desperately to block out the light that Lucia had let in with the open curtains, but the sun was relentless and bathed their entire home in a warm glow.
When Solana gave up and opened her eyes, she saw Lucia outlined by the sun, a bright halo of love and goodness clinging to each and every detail of her. She had died one week later, the plant followed soon after, and Solana never closed that curtain again.
It was only the one image she could manage to send to Masimu, but she knew the moment he saw it the way she did.
A gasp left his mouth, and she felt his arm tremble beneath her palm.
“Beautiful,” he whispered, and then his body crushed hers, his familiar scent washing over her.
Solana allowed herself to be held and slowly counted to three before she pulled away.
“Thank you,” he said, voice cracking. It felt good to know that someone else existed that had loved her mother as much as she did. That if Solana died, there would be someone left who remembered her.
Someone left to avenge them both.
“Let’s go kill a king,” she said, baring her teeth in a smile.
Solana kept her eyes closed as Masimu rifted away and tried to envision where she wanted to go.
It wasn’t a good idea to rift right into the dungeons, even if she was tempted to, just to find Sami and release him before everything became messier and more complicated.
But what if she miscalculated and got herself locked in the cages with them?
No, she needed to be reasonable and land somewhere she could bypass staff or guards, then find Reyes as quickly as possible.
Perhaps the room Reyes had tortured her in would work. It was close enough and behind a closed door. Privacy and convenience.
With a deep breath, Solana imagined herself there, sitting on the table with Reyes looming over her, a needle in her arm.
Suddenly she was lying down and her hands were chained above her head.
It wasn’t a hard table underneath her, but a bed, and there weren’t shackles around her wrists, but a hand, and the pressure of Reyes’s body was warm and delicious and—
Solana rifted even as she tried to focus, her mind split between what she needed and what she wanted. Even after swearing she would never allow herself to fall for such a thing.
The temperature dropped, and suddenly she was weightless, the world a blur as she rifted from the Uku Pacha to the living realm.
The ground broke her fall, the intensity of it enough to send her teeth into her tongue.
She groaned and rolled to her feet, prepared to fight off an attack from unsuspecting staff or guards because she was most certainly not in the room she had meant to rift to.
A long, carpeted hallway stretched out in either direction.
An empty hallway. No members of the court, no Masters or guards or staff to be seen, and when she strained her ears, she heard nothing.
There was a moment of stark relief before suspicion sunk in.
Moving quickly, Solana placed her back against the wall and slid along it, careful to make as little noise as possible.
The carpet would end soon and Solana’s boots would echo against the stone.
At that point, she would run. There didn’t seem to be anyone to stop her.
She was just about to round the corner when she heard a sound.
At first, she thought it was a shuffle of boots.
She froze with her back pressed against the wall and tried to steady her wildly beating heart.
There it was again. It wasn’t boots, but something softer. Fleshier, and wet. Solana’s hand was steady as she shifted her dagger into position and counted to three before bursting around the corner, ready to run through anybody who got in her way.
Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw.
A body rested in the middle of the hall, a pool of blood collecting beneath them and a large muki hovering over them.
Its face was buried in the body’s neck, feasting on flesh and tendons and blood.
The shock of it was so brutal that Solana gagged.
The muki’s head snapped up and its unblinking eyes found her.
Around its neck was a gleaming band of silver with a purple stone in the dead center.
“Fuck,” Solana whispered. She took a step back and bent her knees, ready for the collision she knew so intimately.
But the muki did something that surprised her more than she already was—it disappeared.
Solana blinked again, just to be sure it was gone, and then she rushed forward and slid onto her knees.
Nikolas looked up at her, his blank eyes open and startingly blue in contrast to the blood covering his face.
Solana slapped both hands over her mouth to muffle the scream building in her chest. There was no point in checking for a pulse, but she tore a hand from her face and did it anyway.
His skin was still warm. Blood still poured from the gaping wound.
Sami’s face replaced Nikolas’s. Then her mother’s. Then her own. All of them dead, all of them casualties of the gods’ greed. The king’s greed.
Oh, how Solana would delight in ripping Killian apart piece by piece. She might even have a muki do it, just so he could know how it felt to die such a gruesome death. And then she would relish the opportunity to kill him all over again when he came back as a muki.
A tear fell from the tip of her nose and splattered against Nikolas’s badge. She ripped it from his cloak and threw it down the hall. It bounced with a metallic clink before it came to rest at the tip of a black boot.
Reyes stood at the end of the hall, brackish blood dripping from the end of a wicked-looking dagger he held in his right hand.
His eyes met hers, and there was nothing soft in them.
No hint of relief or acceptance. Nothing but brutal, unyielding loathing.
His eyes flicked to the badge at his feet, then to Nikolas’s body, then to Solana with his blood on her hands.
“What have you done?” he whispered, the sound carrying to her as if they were cheek to cheek.
Her heart broke at his words. How easily he believed the worst of her.
Each of his steps toward her were a fist against her skull. Solana scrambled to her feet and held out her blood-soaked hands. “Reyes, wait. Please, let me explain—”
But he lunged before she could, forcing Solana to rift out of his way. Her gift stuttered midway and spit her out too quickly, close enough that she could see the look of absolute shock on Reyes’s face as he attacked her once again. They collided in a tangle of limbs and carelessly flung gifts.
The cold tendrils of his magic slithered under her skin and held her in place.
Solana grasped frantically for her father’s dagger, ready to stab him in the leg to save herself, but Reyes’s rage fueled him, one hand snapping out to slam hers against the ground, the dagger clattering out of her slippery grasp.
Panic and instinct kicked in. She lifted her knee and jammed it into Reyes’s groin and punched out at the blade in his hand.
When he lost hold of it, she tried to roll herself over and swipe it up, but he pushed her down and pressed his body into her, effectively pinning her against the ground.
Neither of them were armed, and Solana was entirely incapable of doing anything remotely close to focusing so she could rift. She thrashed and bucked underneath his weight like a wild animal, his gray eyes watching her with a simmering disgust that further fueled her anger.
Reyes leaned closer to seethe into her face and Solana instinctively slammed her head upward, her forehead meeting his nose with a crack, loosening his hold just enough that she could partially slide out.
She rolled onto her belly and stretched for her weapon.
Reyes caught her again and yanked her backward.
The stone floor bit into her chin, but when she turned to meet him, it was with a blade against the hard flesh of his abdomen.
“Tell me where the king is and I won’t open your belly.”
“Tell me why you killed Nikolas and I won’t open your belly.” His eyes cut into her sharper than any blade. “Actually, I lied. I’ll kill you either way.”
“I didn’t kill him, you stupid fool. A muki did—and it was wearing a collar that your traitorous king put on it.”
“That’s rich, coming from the woman who disappeared with the traitor of Supay three days ago.”
“Three days?” Solana gasped. Reyes shushed her and glanced over his shoulder toward the end of the hall.
“Please. Listen,” she pleaded, voice softer.
She hated to be the one to bend, to explain herself as if she were in the wrong, but she knew Reyes was just as stubborn as she was and she was running out of time.
“King Killian lied—there’s no way to reverse the curse.
He’s trying to find a way to control demons and Masimu tried to stop him twenty years ago and failed and now I need to stop him. ”
Something like grief and regret flashed across his face before it disappeared. A sinking suspicion settled in Solana’s gut.
“I know,” he said, voice firm.
The rest of her speech died on her tongue. All along, he’d known and he’d gone along with it. Her hand holding the dagger against his side shook with restraint. “I will kill him and then break the curse, and I will not hesitate to kill you if you try to stop me.”
“You’re hesitating right now,” Reyes said. His hair fell like a silver curtain around his face. One hand was planted on the ground beside her and the other was wrapped around hers squeezing the hilt of her dagger.
“I’m not hesitating,” she lied, pressing the tip in deeper to prove her point, but her efforts were met with pressure from Reyes’s body. It brought them closer together so that she could smell his familiar, smoky scent and feel the heat of his breath wafting over her cheek.
“You’re too late,” he murmured, voice thick with regret.
Suddenly, he pushed away, the space his body had occupied going cold with his absence.
Solana pushed onto her elbows and watched Reyes approach Nikolas’s body.
The gentleness with which he brushed Nikolas’s forehead made her look away.
“He made his collars, and they’re all gone. ”
Solana snapped her eyes back to him. “Who is all gone?” she asked, scrambling to her feet and swiping up her dagger. Reyes paid her no attention as she stalked closer and stopped at his side.
“The king.” He paused and swallowed, the apple of his throat bobbing heavily. “The muki. All of them. Including my sister.”
Solana froze. Suddenly, Reyes’s desperate, foolish hope and frustration with her recklessness made sense. A sister.
And Sami. In her mind, Solana saw his broken body, his muki eyes full of pleading, the dark and cold future she had led him to.
Reyes called her name, but she was already running.