Chapter Thirty-Two
They slept in the tavern near the hearth on piles of pillows and blankets brought down from Jacobi’s upstairs home. Solana was awake before everyone else, sitting with her knees curled to her chest and staring into the murky room. She sat, and she stared, and she thought about her dream.
It was similar to one she had before, where she was on a rock in the middle of the sea surrounded by bodies, but this time they weren’t faceless.
One had Suri’s black hair, most of it matted with blood and scraps of flesh that floated around her like seaweed.
Nikolas’s neck had been torn almost all the way through so that his head drifted at an angle from his body.
Oskar’s abdomen was splayed open and left a trail of guts in its wake.
Cora had been torn into pieces and one of her eyeballs had bumped Solana’s foot, carried on a rogue wave.
Reyes wasn’t in the water. He had watched her from the shore, the gray of his eyes matching the gleaming collar around his neck, a mass of muki spread out among the familiar trees behind him.
Solana scrambled to her knees and crawled to Cora, careful not to wake Suri pressed against her back, dark hair spread over her face. Solana saw a flash of her in her dream and shook it away.
“Cora,” she whispered frantically. “Wake up.”
Her eyes popped wide open. It would’ve been comical were it not for the situation. “You know where Reyes is.”
“Yes,” Solana said, and then added, “Your gift is strange.”
“No stranger than yours. Let’s go.” Cora slowly rolled away from Suri and crawled to the door behind Solana. They were both still in full uniform, boots and all, prepared to go at a moment’s notice. Solana swiped the bag of himaya from the table and led Cora outside the tavern.
It was dark again. The dawn bells hadn’t rung yet, but they meant nothing now that the muki could walk the streets in broad daylight.
The collars around their necks gave them the kind of strength that only the king would celebrate.
She imagined the mass of them sweeping through the unsuspecting lands of Auquis, unfeeling and unkillable and unfulfilled like their master.
They would ravage and tear apart the world one person at a time, with Reyes at their side.
Solana couldn’t allow it. She carefully guided Cora through the callejon in silence, haunted by memories.
There was where she had killed her first muki.
There was where Sami had first kissed her.
She remembered it fondly, even though she had been devastated at the time.
Not because she didn’t love him back, but because she was so scared to lose him.
She had let her greatest fear dictate her life instead of enjoying the small bits of happiness while she had them.
Curtains fluttered in windows and one door opened.
A small face peeked out, and Solana waved.
Another door opened, and another, and soon the street was lined with her people, hands extended, strength in each of their touches, love in all their eyes.
No one dared to say a word or breathe too loud, but they came out despite the danger.
Her home.
Her family.
The dawn bells began to ring, and they pressed their hands to their hearts as she passed by. As unworthy as Solana felt, she didn’t take this moment from them. She let their silent support carry her all the way to the blacksmith’s house.
It would stay with her until the day she died, and well beyond that.
Cora said nothing, only wiped at her eyes and waited for Lochan to answer his door.
It had been a long time since she saw him.
They had briefly played together as children, before he got too busy to come down the hill and Sami began spending most of his time with her.
He was only a year older than her, but he looked weary and worn with his light brown hair sticking out in all directions and the buttons on his shirt half done.
The shop was smaller than she remembered. When she placed a purse full of ilyas on the workbench between them, Lochan’s eyes flared wide. “That’s a lot of ilyas, Solana.”
“We have a big ask,” she said, pulling the himaya from her pocket and handing it to him. “We need you to add this to the hilts of several blades you’ve already made.”
“How many is several?”
Cora slung the bag of himaya onto the bench. The ilyas rattled in their bag.
“As many as you can make today.”
Lokan stared at both bags for a moment, lips slightly parted, and then he glanced at Cora before giving Solana his attention once again. “What will happen to the people on the other end of these weapons?”
“They’ll die, just like any mortal would, if the curse didn’t exist.”
His eyes narrowed. Solana thought he might ask more questions, but he stuck out his hand and said, “Come back tonight and I’ll give you as much as I can finish.”
Solana left with something like hope stirring in her chest. They were higher up from where she lived, and several of the alleys unfurled below them in a riot of muted blues and greens and purples.
This wasn’t a part of the city she often visited, and she was glad to be able to see it like this, awash in sunlight and peaceful, one last time.
“There’s something I need to do before we go back to Jacobi’s,” she said to Cora, a second pouch of ilyas clutched tightly in her cloak pocket.
Sami’s house was a pretty light blue with flower boxes affixed to the small window to the left of the door.
The curtains were drawn, so she couldn’t see inside, but she had knocked and waited for what felt like an hour before deciding either they were gone, or they didn’t want to see her.
She was afraid it was the latter, even as she hoped for it, and she didn’t have the time or the courage to wait and find out.
The extra purse of coins she had brought for them was heavy in her pocket as they snuck their way back to Jacobi’s, dipping in and out of side streets to avoid the collared muki that patrolled the city.
They didn’t seem to be looking for anything in particular, which felt more dangerous than mollifying.
Cora remained quiet, but Solana could feel her worry just as sharply as her own. It felt as though Killian was waiting for something. What, she didn’t know. What she did know was that she had to fight to stay where she was instead of rifting to where Killian might be. Where Reyes might be.
But she would never forgive herself if she failed again. The only logical thing to do was wait and plan, to be certain that everything was thought out and taken care of, even if it meant accepting help.
The door to Jacobi’s gave way after a complicated jiggle and swung open to reveal a hush of conversation. Her eyes adjusted and she gaped at the room before her.
It was filled to the brim with people. Jacobi was behind the bar pouring drinks.
Oskar and Suri were with him, while Celeste and Alina ferried glasses from the bar to tables.
Mouth open, she watched for several heartbeats before someone said her name, the conversation slowly quieted, and all eyes turned to her.
There were faces she recognized and some she didn’t.
Children she had snuck sweets to after a particularly lucrative kill.
People whose loved ones she had freed. An older couple who hadn’t been able to pay her and had fed her dinner for three nights in a row instead.
And then a face came into view that she knew from a distance, that she recognized only because it had the same kind eyes she had looked into for so many nights.
Sami’s mother approached her slowly, her eyes already filled with tears that pooled along her bottom lashes. There was a cool hand at her back that nudged her forward, into the waiting woman’s arms, and then she was enveloped. “Solana,” she whispered.
Nothing else was said, but nothing else needed to be said.
They had both loved Sami so much, and the loss of him was like a piece of her soul forever missing.
She couldn’t imagine what it would have felt like to lose a son.
She didn’t deserve her comfort, but when she tried to pull away, Mariana only pulled her closer.
“Sami made his choices. He loved you,” she murmured into her hair. “Do not use his death as an excuse to sacrifice yourself.”
Mariana pushed her to arm’s length and that was when Solana noticed the rest of the room had stood, the weight of their eyes solemn and heavy. “We’re here to fight with you.”
Solana looked at their faces, young and old, people she had lived beside and survived beside her entire life, and she knew that some of them would not survive what was to come.
She wanted to tell them to go home, to lock their doors and close their curtains, to take this from them so that they never had to face it.
But it was their own choice to help her.
Whether they were simply repaying debts or something else entirely, Solana nodded and accepted her people for who they were.
Fighters willing to die to save their city.
They were the best of Supay, her people, and she would serve them to the best of her ability.
By the time night fell, the daggers were ready and spread among everyone in Jacobi’s tavern, including herself.
The room was full of people she had known for her whole life and people she had just met, all of them eager and willing to die to release the people of Supay and protect all of Auquis from Killian.
The responsibility was not hers alone, and it never had been.
Solana felt the burden of it lift from her shoulders, replaced only with the desperate, aching need to save Reyes.
“I’m coming with you,” Cora demanded for the tenth time, but Solana only shook her head. “You can’t go alone. What if you’re caught? What if—”
“I can rift out if I need to, but it’ll be more difficult to rift both of us.
This is the best option.” Cora stared at her, jaw working.
Oskar leaned back in his chair with a mostly full glass of pisco swirling in one hand.
The mood was somber, but there was music, food and drink, and good company surrounding them.
A strange contrast to their conversation.
Suri placed her elbows on the table and stared at the map covering it, her fingers hovering over the spot of dense trees and empty shoreline. “Why can’t you just rift in and kill him?” she asked. “King Killian, I mean. You could have the element of surprise.”
“I can’t rift somewhere I haven’t been.” That wasn’t entirely true.
She could still feel a connection to Reyes, to his magic and his soul, and she knew that she could use it to find him, but the rest remained the same.
“I don’t know exactly where he’s standing or who is around and how many.
I could rift right into his blade or a cage, and if this is a trap like we assume it is, then I’d be giving him exactly what he wants.
” Solana imagined being forced to rule by his side and shivered.
With Reyes as a threat over her head, she wasn’t sure what she would agree to.
“When I kill him, all of the muki he has collared and tamed will go free. There will be madness in the streets. Everyone has to be prepared.”
But if she left blood, they could make enough daggers to arm all of the Masters and more. They wouldn’t even need her. The curse would still exist, but there could be a true death for everyone. And it would only be a backup plan to use in an emergency, like her death or imprisonment.
Perhaps she could find the king, kill him, and end all of this before anyone else was hurt.
“Do not do anything stupid, Solana,” Cora said, reading her as if her thoughts were written across her face. “Not without us at your back, at least. We need you to come back.”
“Nothing stupid,” Solana conceded. “I promise.”
And most of her meant it. That was the thing about hunting and killing—it was unpredictable. If she was too rigid, she would end up dead. If she was reckless, she would end up dead. If she did nothing, everyone else would end up dead. But in order to assess the situation, she had to see it.
Solana went into the kitchen to rift so she didn’t have to explain that particular gift to the people of the callejon. It was too similar to muki, even if they shared the same blood and thirst for freedom. Some things were better left unknown.
Before she went, she used a wicked-looking knife to cut open her left palm and found a glass vial on one of the shelves pushed against the wall.
It filled with enough of her blood to imbue many more himaya, and also possibly confuse Killian as to her whereabouts.
She tied a piece of cloth around her hand, the world shifted, and she was swallowed by the dark.