Chapter Thirty #2
“That explains a lot,” Reyes said slowly, focus distant as if digging through the past. “He dismissed all of us after the first muki was collared.”
There was guilt in the lines of his body.
Solana softened her voice. “Masimu said it takes time, and then eventually you believe every word he says. There’s never been a king that has spoken of a way to reverse the curse, because it isn’t possible.
But he spoke of it often enough that my father—Masimu—began to believe, and then Killian’s parents died in the aftermath of Masimu’s supposed betrayal, and he became king and had many more ears to listen to his lies. ”
She sat forward and drew her finger through the spilled coffee on the map.
The light brown mixed with the blue made a purple that reminded her of the stones on the muki’s collar.
“Reyes, you said the king uses his gift to make the elixir. But did anyone ever wonder what his gift was? Or how it mollifies muki?”
“I never even thought to ask.” Reyes gazed into the dark of the room, jaw tensing. “I only knew that it made things easier when hunting and experimenting, and finding a cure was all that mattered.”
“Because of your sister,” Solana said softly.
“And you went back to save her?” Reyes’s lips tightened.
“Your love was strong enough to fight against everything you thought you knew. So you can understand why I did what I did. Sami was the closest thing I had left of family.” She paused and swallowed thickly.
“I thought I could break the curse on my own, but I can’t. I need more power.”
Oskar whistled low. If that’s the case, then let’s go now. You can take from us whatever you need.
Solana shook her head. “It’s not so simple.
I’m not sure what will happen to the demons under Killian’s control if I break the curse first. I might be damning them to their fate.
I need to release them first, but I can’t do that while they’re leashed, which means I need to kill Killian first. If I kill him, his power over them ends, and mine begins again. ”
“Is there a way to remove the collars first? If they’re made using your power, can’t you control them as well?” Suri asked, the lines between her brows deep.
“Not just my power,” Solana whispered. The room fell quiet and she watched as they all glanced at Reyes at once.
“They know. Of course, they know.” She laughed, the sound sharp and bitter.
The muscles in his jaw flexed, but he said nothing.
Betrayal swelled within her once again. “You have his blood. Does that mean you can also persuade?”
She thought of the way he had worked his way under her skin, first with taunts and challenges, then with a truce and trust in her that she wanted to prove worthy of.
Reyes laughed, the sound frigid, and pushed off the wall. “Any draw you felt toward me was all your own,” he said, his eyes boring into hers with a kind of intensity that felt too intimate in the small space. “You should know more than anyone that we are not our fathers.”
Solana’s mouth snapped closed.
“Save the lovers’ spat for later, please,” Suri interrupted. “I’d like to get some sleep before we have to save the world.”
From the corner of her eye, Solana saw Oskar signing, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from Reyes. Couldn’t stop seeing all the ways he had lied to her and wondering if any of it mattered at all.
“Excellent question, Oskar. Do we have a plan to do that, Solana?” Suri asked.
Her name grabbed her attention.
“She has an idea of where the king might be keeping the muki,” Cora said.
She pointed to the spot on the map where Solana had placed the ilyas.
They all moved forward to lean over the table, including Reyes, the proximity of him invading her senses.
Solana shifted while Cora explained her theory about the Servants of Death.
I thought those people just comforted the dying and dead, Oskar signed once Cora was done.
“Perhaps once upon a time, but Killian’s had twenty years to plan and deceive us. His control runs deep. We find him and kill him,” Solana said.
“And then hundreds of muki will be free to return to their natural state.” Suri’s eyes roved over the map as if seeing all the people it contained. “And we’ll, what? Kill them one by one? We’re good, but we’re not that good.”
“We need to make more daggers like mine.” Solana’s hand flexed, the absence of her dagger like a missing limb. “They can release demons and confuse muki and Killian, then there would be less chance of him seeing me coming.”
“Your blood.” Regret bloomed over Reyes’s face with the word. “The oath was never about keeping your word. It was about keeping tabs.”
“Godsdamnit,” Suri muttered and sat back.
“I can release the muki without my dagger. If I can do that on a larger scale, then I could end this. I just need time,” Solana said, ignoring their skepticism.
“More daggers will hopefully confuse the king enough so that we can move and figure things out. We’ll need himaya and a blacksmith and then we can—”
Cora placed a hand on Solana’s arm and squeezed.
“Today, we rest and mourn, and then tomorrow we fight. Together,” she added with a pointed look at each of them.
Solana’s first instinct was to shake off her hand, to tell them all she could do this herself, that there was no need for anyone else to die for her mistakes.
But she couldn’t do this without them. There were too many moving pieces, too many variables beyond her control. This wasn’t just hunting and releasing one muki at a time and accepting their pain as her own. This was saving Supay, possibly all of Auquis. It was so much bigger than her.
One by one, they left the room, until only Reyes and Solana remained. She stared at the map instead of looking at him, but she could feel his eyes on her as he rounded the table and sat across from her.
Reyes broke the quiet first. “I didn’t know anything he had planned,” he said. “I didn’t know he was my father until the night you left with Masimu.”
Solana stared into his roiling gray eyes, at the blood caked on his face from where she had thrown her head, the black of his uniform without the Masters badge that was always there, and she wanted to believe him so much it hurt.
“You’re being very cavalier about all of this,” she said and leaned back in her chair.
“What would you like me to do, Solana? Should I go out and get wasted like you did? Should I ignore my responsibility to my people and my hand in all of this?”
The chair scraped back with a screech as Solana shot to her feet and leaned over the table. “Do not dare to compare your circumstance to mine. I have had everything taken from me. Everyone. I am broken, and what I choose to do with my time is none of your business.”
Reyes calmly unfurled from his seat and matched her stance.
He leaned in close, and she was mesmerized by the way his eyes swirled like a restless sea.
“You are not the only one who has lost, and not everyone has been taken from you. But you’d rather believe you are alone than allow anyone the choice to choose you. ”
“Because the people who have chosen me have ended up dead, Reyes.” The words were a knife, sharp and cutting with truth.
Silence fell, and Reyes’s gaze shifted over her, unwavering as they searched and measured. “Why do you think you don’t deserve to be loved, Solana?”
It wasn’t what she was expecting. The question threw her off guard and stole the ire straight from her chest. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, embarrassed to be the one to avert her eyes first. His attention was too heavy. Too understanding.
“It does matter, because I need you to understand that I didn’t betray you. That I meant it when I said I would never hurt you again.”
Solana scoffed. “You can’t make that promise. We can’t control everything that happens.”
“Exactly,” he said and slowly lifted his hand to tuck an errant curl behind her ear.
Despite herself, Solana leaned into his touch until his hand was cupping her cheek.
It would have been in her best interest to step away, to separate herself from anything that could be taken from her, but she was tired of depriving herself of good things.
“I didn’t betray you either,” she finally admitted.
“I know,” Reyes said.
Solana dropped her forehead against Reyes’s and laughed. Tears burned her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. Not yet. “He’s been building this army for twenty years,” she whispered.
“And then he took you off the streets and removed his greatest threat.”
Solana shook her head, mind racing. “He kept me because he thought I would be easy to control, to use.”
“That’s because he doesn’t know you like I do,” Reyes said, the words light with teasing. “We’ll stop him together, Sol. Any of us can kill him, but you are the only one who can break the curse. We need you.” He paused and shifted ever closer. “I need you. Let me show you how much.”
It was her greatest fear, and yet she held the words close and allowed them to give her the strength she needed to stay, to follow Reyes until the end, whatever that may be.
Solana was in the middle of the ocean, the color a deep, iridescent blue like a mixture of Killian’s gift and Reyes’s eyes. The water was still, and she was standing on a rock. Above her, the sky was black, the stars sharp pinpricks of light in the abyss.
She wasn’t alone.
Bodies floated in the water, mortals and muki, red and black blood swirling closer and closer, merging into hands that reached for her, grasping and gasping, tearing at her flesh with their claws and their fear as they tugged her under into that watery grave, until all she could see was darkness and death.