Chapter Thirty-One
Sleep evaded her once again. Solana sat on the edge of her bed, breath held and straining to listen to the sounds of the night seeping through the small window high above.
The room was tiny, big enough only for the bed and a chest of drawers directly beside it. There was the small window that let in a stream of soft light, and then there was the door. Only one way in and out.
Next to her, Reyes’s breathing was steady and comforting. She used it to calm her racing heart and clear her muddled thoughts.
There was a thump from somewhere beyond the door. Fingers tingling, Solana was up and brandishing her father’s dagger before her. On the other side of the bed, Reyes had rolled to his feet and stood shirtless in the shadows, the lines of his body rippling with tension.
The door handle clicked, so quiet she could barely hear it over her own pulse. A lithe figure slid through the small crack. Solana released her breath and dropped her hand.
Cora’s sharp eyes shone in the dark and softened with relief when they met hers and then Reyes’s. She pressed her fingers to her lips. They all stood deadly still, listening and waiting.
Another thump, this one clearly from somewhere below. Solana didn’t have her dagger to warn her, but she knew. “They’re here,” she mouthed.
Cora nodded calmly. Even though Solana’s mind was racing, she could feel the weight of Reyes’s attention begging her not to do anything reckless.
She could rift, but nobody else could, and taking them one at a time would take too long and leave too much of a trail.
If they were here only for her, then she could leave and hope that they’d follow.
But if they weren’t, she’d be leaving them in danger.
The handle clicked again.
This time, two familiar bodies slid through a wider crack. The door snicked closed behind them with barely a sound, and then Oskar and Suri were staring at her, waiting. They all were.
Solana glared at them in turn. “You’re looking at me as if I have the answers,” she whispered harshly.
“You aren’t the type of person to be without reckless plans,” Reyes said, a sly smile at the corner of his lips.
It was a challenge that set Solana’s blood thrumming with thrill.
She thought of the way he had clasped onto her in the castle and how he had rifted along with her.
If she could do that again, but with more than one person, they could escape the room with their enemies being none the wiser.
“I can rift us out a few people at a time.”
“You had a hard time rifting with only me,” he said, giving her a pointed look before he tugged his shirt over his head. “We’ll keep it to one person at a time.”
But Solana shook her head. “That’ll take too long.”
Downstairs, something shattered. They all tensed. “I’ll stay with Reyes,” Cora said quickly.
“Absolutely not,” Suri argued at the same time Oskar frantically signed at Reyes.
“Oskar and I will stay.” Reyes rounded the bed and joined Oskar’s side “There’s another house we can go to. I’ll grab a map and show you—”
“There’s no time. I know somewhere I can take them.
” She grabbed Cora and Suri by the wrists and tugged them closer.
“I’m not sure how well this will work, so be prepared for a rough landing.
I’m not trying to hurt anybody.” She glanced at Reyes, seeing if he remembered saying those words to her.
He was already watching her, eyes dark. She looked away. “Okay. Here goes.”
“Wait!” Reyes whisper-shouted. “Where are you taking them?”
“Home,” Solana said after a moment. “We need to get out of this city.”
Reyes’s mouth tightened in consideration, and then he nodded.
Solana took a deep breath and hoped Cora and Suri didn’t notice her shaky hands.
She imagined the place she had grown up, the walls that had protected and witnessed and withstood the test of time and grief.
It was the last place she wanted to go, but they needed that protection again.
Rifting with two people in tow felt like dragging bodies through water.
Upstream. Very heavy bodies. It took all her concentration and strength to deposit them in one piece.
The force of it threw them apart. Solana’s back hit the leg of a table and sent several glasses of pisco to the floor.
She heard shouts of surprise and saw Cora and Suri helping each other up.
Solana whipped to her right and saw Jacobi, a dagger in one hand and a bottle of pisco in the other held by the neck.
“Solana?” he whispered, eyes wide. Alina’s head popped up from behind the bar top. “You’re alive. How did you—”
“Protect them,” Solana said to Cora and Suri, pushing to her feet. She turned back to Jacobi. “I’ll explain everything when I get back.”
And then she was rifting again, pushing herself blindly through time and space with Reyes’s face in mind.
She landed in the middle of chaos. Oskar and Reyes were on either side of the small room downstairs, mounds of furniture and muki between them.
Solana ducked underneath a muki’s talons and swept its legs out from it. It crashed, and she popped back up.
“Get over here!” she yelled at Oskar and Reyes, but they were too busy avoiding talons and teeth to move toward her.
Solana threw herself at a muki and crashed into a cabinet.
Glass and wood cracked and shattered with the force of their weight.
She fumbled the unfamiliar dagger and tried to sink it into the base of its neck, but the collar deflected the blade like it was nothing more than a pesky fly that left not even a scratch behind.
“Shit,” Solana whispered and threw herself off the muki.
Its movements were steadier than she remembered, smooth in a way that was eerie and unpredictable.
These weren’t the creatures she was used to fighting and she feared that they wouldn’t dissipate from a nonblooded dagger as they had before.
She spun around and sunk her blade into its temple.
It twitched and then fell limp while still upright, its body entirely corporeal.
But neither did it move, as if it was simply stuck.
All of them were. Solana shot to her feet and turned in a quick circle. There were four muki besides the one she had stabbed. They had all frozen mid-swing, Reyes and Oskar in various positions of attack and defense, their chests heaving with ragged breaths.
“What the fuck?” Reyes whispered hoarsely.
Solana didn’t waste another moment. She reached for Oskar first as he was closest. “Come on, Reyes!”
But it was too late. Within one breath and the next, another muki appeared in a swirl of shadows and mist. The room spread out before her in slices of time.
Solana placed her hand on Oskar’s arm, and he pulled her out of the way of a muki’s claws. The newly appeared muki stretched out its arms toward Reyes with something clenched between both hands.
“Solana, go!” she heard Reyes scream.
A flash of light, and then Solana saw the circle of gleaming metal, the swirling purple stone, the trajectory of its path, and screamed.
It locked into place around Reyes’s neck like the clank of the cages beneath the castle, final and devastating.
Arms clasped around her waist like shackles. The muki burst back into action around her, blocking Reyes from her sight, coming toward her as one unified front, Oskar whistling a low tune in her ear.
It reminded her of Sami grounding her. The agony in her gut was the same sense of loss and grief and overwhelming rage. She needed to get to Reyes, would claw that collar off his neck with her bare hands if she had to. Throw herself at the king’s feet to get him back.
And then she saw his face through the bodies of muki. Just a sliver of blank eyes pinned to her and it stole her breath. Oskar was pulling her back, farther and farther away from saving him, and she needed him safe and out of her way so she could fight.
She rifted him to Jacobi’s. They landed in the middle of the tavern, but Oskar’s arms stayed around her as if they had become fused together.
They were on their sides and she was screaming, flailing, demanding that he let her go so she could go back.
Cora’s and Suri’s faces hovered above hers, their concern blurred through her tears.
Oskar couldn’t explain what was happening with his hands busy holding her down, and he held her as if his life depended on it.
So she took him with her. They rifted just as they were, on their sides and struggling against each other, and landed in the middle of the street outside the house they had been hiding in.
Small stones cut into her side and cheek.
Oskar’s hand beat against her shoulder until she looked up and saw what he saw.
A row of muki, all of them collared, with Reyes at the center.
The world felt as if it were spinning. Solana tried to steady herself to stand against them, but her vision pulsed in and out. Shadows crept at the corners. Oskar pushed her to sitting, and only then did she compel herself to rift.
It was too much at once. Solana lost control of her body and her gift, vacillating between solid and shadows, throat raw from screaming, head pounding from the amount of effort it took to move herself and Oskar again, hoping the force of it would land them safely where they needed to go.
They bounced from one street to another, closer and closer to the tavern, until finally, the scent and sights became familiar enough that Oskar’s hands slipped from around her waist and she stumbled forward out of his embrace, only to land in another pair of arms.
Cora pulled her close, wrapped her up as if she were a child, arms locked and words whispered over her head. “Solana, please. Please, stop. Please, stay. Please.”