Chapter Thirty-Three
The location on the map was more of a general idea than a pinpointed place, which made rifting more difficult.
There was no way to know what she was landing in, and the tangle of trees that caught her and the sound it made was thankfully covered by the crash of lightning that cut through the sky.
A stabbing pain swept down her leg. Branches snapped and unceremoniously deposited her onto the ground.
She lay there for several heartbeats to catch her breath, rain from a dark sky pelting her face, and then rolled out of the open and into the brush for cover.
A new dagger was in her hand as soon as she came to a stop with her back against a tree.
The hilt was unfamiliar, but the red sliver of himaya in the hilt glowed softly, and it was warm enough to tell her that danger was near.
Which was great, because it was too dark to see anything.
Clouds covered the entire sky and lit up only in searing spurts of white that blinded more than illuminated.
Solana didn’t know what to do but follow the heat of her dagger.
She ran in a crouch from one tree to the next, ignoring the rain pouring into her eyes and the bits of leaves and branches that slapped her face.
She was grateful that her footsteps couldn’t be heard over the downpour, but it also meant she could not hear anything, either.
If only she could sense them like they did her.
Why couldn’t she? The himaya could, which was made with her blood. There was no reason she couldn’t do the same.
After sliding underneath a particularly low and heavy hanging treetop, Solana placed her hands on bent knees and closed her eyes.
Several deep breaths and she was calm enough to dip into the well of her gift, replenished by rest and food and love.
She imagined the surface like a map, and the muki nearby like stars.
One by one, they popped up in her mind’s eye, tiny spots of light that multiplied with every heartbeat.
There were so many. Some were moving, darting from one spot to another.
Nearby, a mass of them sat incredibly still.
Solana couldn’t tell where they were in relation to her, but she could see that the farther they were, the weaker their light, and that in the middle of it all, between the still and the moving, was a large, dark space in the shape of a structure.
Like a house, or a manor large enough to hold an entire group of people that worshipped the muki.
The hilt of the dagger lit up in a sharp heat. Solana was torn from her mind and hissed with surprise. It slipped from her hand and disappeared into the thick foliage at her feet.
“Shit,” she whispered, shoving her hands beneath the leaves, her fingers scraping across the flat surface of the blade. Slowly, she walked them up to the hilt and breathed a sigh of relief when she plucked it out of the brush.
When she straightened and lifted her eyes to scan the woods, a muki was a handsbreadth away from her face.
Solana jerked back just in time to avoid its teeth, but she couldn’t move fast enough to avoid the swing of its left hand. Its talons caught her cheek and she cried out. For the first time since she had started hunting, she panicked. She was rifting away before she meant to.
The muki rifted after her and collided with her body midair.
Solana screamed again and rolled into the fall.
They tore apart in the crash, and she wasted no time getting to her feet to rift.
It followed her again, tearing at her clothes with its talons, yanking on her hair to get her to stop.
She hurtled into a tree and fell into the brush at its base.
The muki didn’t follow, but she could hear it huffing as it searched the ground ahead of her.
Solana couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
Suddenly, she was seven years old again, and her mother was tugging her through a small door in the castle wall and out into the chaos of the city.
They were hiding behind bushes and around corners, waiting for muki to skitter by.
Solana tried being strong—she was too old to cry—but she wanted her father.
She wanted to go back home where it was safe, where Masimu would solve all her problems and tell her everything was going to be all right.
But he was gone, and there was no other choice than to finish what she started.
Solana counted to three in her mind, and then she rolled out of the bushes and into a sprint, the trees rushing by in a blur.
A flash of lightning lit up the woods and she saw the muki closing in, darting closer and closer, eyes and teeth and collars glistening in the night.
Solana pushed herself harder than she ever had.
Closer and closer the muki came, until she could feel them breathing down her neck.
With a burst of power, she rifted toward the structure-shaped shadow she had seen in her mind, but not close enough that she could see it. The muki followed as she expected, but by the time they landed, she was sprinting away, darting between shadows and dodging low-hanging limbs.
The wall appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
It was as tall as the castle walls with a metal gate at the center.
Solana wiped the water from her eyes and wrapped her hands around the cold bars.
No amount of pushing or pulling made them budge, and there were no footholds to climb.
Beyond the gate, she could see an empty courtyard and the manor, pockets of shadows looming beneath its tall towers.
There was nothing and no one to witness her rift.
She landed against the tower wall and pressed herself further into the stone, waiting to be certain there were no guards to see her.
If there was a window, then she could see the best place to rift inside the manor.
Just a peek, and she could rift away with a better idea of the layout and how to reach Killian and Reyes.
The wall was rough and wet at her back. She kept her eyes ahead, glancing over the grounds, looking for any movement through the rain and dark. Her right hand was stretched out and feeling for the end of the wall and the edge of a window.
Finally, she felt the slick of wet glass.
A chill beneath her fingertips. Ducking low, Solana shifted underneath the window and turned her head just enough to see both inside and outside the manor.
There was a flash of movement, the hem of a dark cloak snapping between footsteps, and she forgot to worry about whatever was outside.
Through the blur of rivulets running down the pane, and the dim of the interior, Solana saw his silver hair and his lithe body moving confidently up a dark and twisted set of stairs. A quick look around the room told her there was no one else that she could see. Only Reyes.
Nothing stupid, she had told Cora. It wouldn’t be breaking her promise if she was able to grab Reyes and rift away.
All she had to do was lay a single finger on him.
Perhaps less than that. She had felt the gravitational pull of Masimu’s gift, and the subsequent disappearance of the muki giving chase.
If she was close enough, she could take Reyes with her, then they could figure out a way to remove the collar away from this place.
She wouldn’t leave him. She couldn’t.
The inside of the tower was warm and deadly silent.
Solana’s wet boots squeaked against the stone as she skidded to a stop at the base of the stairs, almost falling over them from the force of rifting.
Reyes was out of sight. She took off up the steps, careful to keep her feet light, but her footsteps echoed against the walls despite her efforts. Quick it was, then.
Up and up she went until it felt like she had made no progress at all, and she paused to look up. There was a landing six steps away. Solana’s nostrils flared with each shaky breath. Nothing stupid, she reminded herself.
Dagger in hand, she climbed those last six steps and silently entered a large, circular room seemingly made of glass.
Windows covered the entire wall in front of her.
They were high enough above the trees that she could see past them to the abyss of a cove and the ships stretched across the water.
Five that she could count at a glance. Standing before the sea on the sandy shores were rows and rows of dots of black.
Their shackles glinted like stars against the night sky.
“It’s quite a sight to behold, isn’t it?”
Solana spun around, dread in her belly and her dagger squeezed tight in her hand. Killian stood before her dressed in all black with a silver crown atop his head. There was a purple stone in the middle that glowed faintly. He was wearing a himaya made with her blood. The sight of it made her sick.
From the shadows behind him emerged several more shapes, one she faintly recognized and another that was achingly familiar.
The room began to lighten slowly, just enough so that it seemed as though a fire glowed gently in a far-off corner.
With it, she could see true. A long corridor lined with globe lights stretched out behind Killian.
To his right stood Reyes, and to his left was Hakun in a gray robe, his colorless hair pulled back severely.
Beyond them were more Servants of Death, their heads devoid of hair and their robes shimmering faintly in the dim light.
But it was Reyes that demanded her attention.
His eyes had purple bruises underneath them, as if he hadn’t closed them since he had been taken.
His hair hung limp over his forehead and he made no move to sweep it back like usual.
The badge on his cloak was back in its normal spot, and the gleam of it matched the jarring circle of metal around his neck.
Solana felt like a coward, but she had to look away. The harsh lines of his face were too much to bear.