Chapter Thirty-One #3
It was a testament to who she was, her strength and loyalty, that she was so kind and optimistic. Solana vowed to appreciate it more, and to make sure that nothing ever took that from her.
They carefully combed the castle to make certain there was nothing and no one left.
All the hearths were cold. Reyes’s room looked untouched and smelled overwhelmingly like him.
Solana saw his face in her mind, full of heat and the dogged determination with which he did everything, and then she saw his blank eyes and shivered.
She hoped he wasn’t aware of what was happening under the king’s control.
They left Reyes’s room and ran to the kitchens. Soggy and half-prepared food littered the tables. Chairs were turned over on their sides. No blood that either of them could find. They had simply left in a hurry.
“One last place,” Solana told Cora. They rushed to the stables and peeked in through the large doors that were half open, but it was quieter than the castle. Not even the mice in the rafters greeted them. Roiden and his horses were nowhere to be found.
Heart heavy, Solana focused and rifted them back to the tavern, grateful to find everyone had obeyed and stayed put.
They spread the himaya across a table and Solana began imbuing them one by one, until the well of her gift was dry and there were sixty-three red stones staring back at her.
She collapsed into a chair and turned to face the room.
They were all staring at her. Jacobi and Alina with wonder. Celeste with worry. Suri and Oskar with anticipation. Cora with pride. Solana had to look away.
“We’ll take them to Lochan in the morning,” Jacobi said, searching her before he pointed to the group. “Sit. I’ll get us all some food.”
Nobody argued. Bodies fell into chairs with sighs of exhaustion and sorrow.
After Jacobi disappeared into the kitchen, Celeste picked up the cuatro and began strumming casually at the strings.
A familiar melody floated through the air, quiet enough that she could hear Alina asking Suri and Oskar all sorts of questions about the Academy and hunting.
They obliged her, but carefully. Solana could see the memories and the pain play across their faces.
They had lost Nikolas just as she had lost Sami, yet there they were, following her lead.
Trusting her. Entertaining a young girl with eyes full of stars.
Jacobi returned with plates full of meat wrapped in doughy corn, cheesy bread made with yuca, and muffins that she knew were deliciously warm and slightly sweet. Plates and glasses clinked, gratitude was mumbled, and then there was the silence of the contented.
“I’m sorry,” she said, catching Jacobi’s hand as he sat beside her. Celeste came to join them at their small table. “I shouldn’t have brought this trouble here, but I didn’t know where else to go.”
Celeste placed a soothing hand over theirs. “You can always come here. This is your home,” she said, reminding her so much of her mother.
Solana took a bite of arepa to distract from the lump in her throat, even though it sat like a rock in her belly. “What has it been like here since I left?” she asked around another bite.
Jacobi scoffed and leaned back. “The muki are discreetly swept away by the Masters before anyone can so much as protest, but now they have these things around their necks, and they walk in broad daylight.” He paused and bobbed his head side to side.
“Well, if it can be called daylight anymore. And the muki are more like tamed dogs.” Celeste reached over with a thumb and wiped away a drop of meat juice hanging from Jacobi’s beard.
He gave her a familiar smile before turning back to Solana.
“Have you seen the newest proclamations?” he asked, focused now on the glass of swirling pisco in his hand.
Solana glanced at Cora, who shook her head. At the table over, Alina was still asking questions between every bite of food. “I haven’t seen anything,” Solana said.
Wood scraped against wood as Jacobi pushed back in his chair and rounded the bar top.
He came back with a large piece of parchment in one hand.
King Killian, Savior of Supay was written in bold black letters across the top.
Underneath was the profile of the king in the center of an eye, and farther down, the words Enemies of Supay will pay in blood.
“Please tell me no one is falling for any of this.”
“Mostly no one,” Celeste reassured her. “The people of Qhilli are warier than ever. More than anyone, we understand the danger of the quiet before the storm.”
With a sigh of relief, Solana sat back in her chair and considered what to say next, and how much to tell. The whole story was so much of a burden, and bleak, if she was being honest. There was a large chance that none of them would make it out alive.
“Tell them,” Cora encouraged her, as if reading her mind.
Tell them. Like it was the easiest thing in the world. Perhaps it could be.
“I met my father,” she started, and then she told them the rest.