Page 53 of Daughter of the Dark

“I am not your enemy, Solana. Your father made his choices, and they broke my heart. But I know that you won’t follow in his footsteps.” He looked directly into her eyes as he spoke, the lines at the corners of his mouth creased softly with a cheap imitation of a soothing smile. “You were just a child. No one will hold you accountable for his mistakes.”

He pushed her out into a twirl and then pulled her back in, like she was a toy on a string. The crowd oohed and aahed. The chandeliers sparkled garishly. Solana wanted to close her eyes and pull away, to gather her thoughts and come up with something clever to say, but the king came closer, his cloying scent crowding her, his tepid breath in her ear as he whispered, “Masimu is alive.”

No.

The only things holding her up were the king’s hands, one firm at her waist and the other clasped in hers at his chest. She was coming undone at his words, ripping at every seam she had sewn into herself to keep the memories and longing at bay. If what King Killian said was true, then they had left Sonqo for nothing, had lived in squalor for nothing, had died and killed for nothing.

For so many years, she had chosen to believe he was dead and gone rather than accept that he had left them of his own accord. A coward running from his mistakes. A worthless husband and father leaving his family alone to live a life of pain and suffering.

The devastation wouldn’t be his death, but that he still lived.

“Why?” she asked through the burn in her chest. “Where?”

“He’s hiding like a coward in Uku Pacha.” The king paused, watching Solana carefully as she swallowed the revelation. “I tried for many years to find him, searched every corner of Supay for sign of him. With him gone, so was any chance at finding a cure for the curse. When I heard news of a slayer with a special dagger, I thought he had finally returned to finish what he had started. But it was you that we found.

“For so long, we had feared that all hope was lost. Now that we have you and your blood, there is hope again. Masimu’s fate is no longer of concern to me, and neither should it be to you.”

They turned in another dizzying circle, lights and faces rushing by in a blur. “I’m telling you this so you will know that you can trust me. I want to save our people, Solana. I want to set everyone free.”

Free. It was what she wanted most for herself, and of course, for her people as well. The king was right—her traitor father’s fate was no business of hers. She could solve all his problems and clean up his mess. Reverse the curse and leave Supay for good. She was doing all the right things.

“Stay the course,” she whispered, and the king’s answering smile was brilliant. Perhaps she had been unfair in her judgments of him. It must be incredibly difficult to run a kingdom, to protect the people and the land from forces outside of his control. Masimu deserved to be trapped in the underworld.

“That’s exactly it,” King Killian murmured, his hand tightening around hers.

The song ended and, as if in a trance, Solana stepped away from him. His fingers came up to brush her cheek. “Remember this conversation,” he said, then turned away in a flourish of silver and velvet.

But how could she ever forget?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The ball ended with the dawn bells, and Solana slipped out of the castle among the crowd of stumbling partygoers. Some entered carriages once outside the gates, others meandered down the main road, past the stores opening for another day and the merchants trying to make a living in the inner city. Those were not the vices Solana was seeking. She wanted to drink until she forgot the weight of the king’s attention on her.

Until she forgot who she was.

The best course of action would have been to slink into a faraway tavern where she knew no one. But she wanted some semblance of comfort. A sliver of normalcy in a world that had been turned upside down.

Masimu was alive. Her father was not dead. He was trapped in the underworld, suffering for the betrayal he had wrought. Solana had spent the majority of her life in the shadow of his existence and disappearance, ravaged with guilt and misplaced responsibility, and now the culmination of that was her father, alive, her mother, dead, and her, aware of his survival and given an impossible task to leave well enough alone.

Something Solana had never been very good at. Hence the forthcoming ocean of pisco she was about to drown herself in.

The tavern was entirely empty, with stools on top of tables and one person behind the counter buffing glasses. He glanced up at her. “Not open yet,” he said dismissively.

Solana slammed a handful of ilyas on the counter. “How about now?”

Eyebrows raised, the man swiped the ilyas into an apron tied around his waist and slid a glass in front of her. “Grab a seat,” he said, gesturing with a nod toward a stool. By the time she sat down, there was a full glass of pisco in front of her, the dark amber color warming her insides just by sight.

It wasn’t as good as Jacobi’s, but it was good enough, and the man serving her never let it empty before pouring her another round. She was three deep when someone else walked in.

“Hey, Lujan,” the barkeeper called.

The man named Lujan waved over his shoulder and then went to the corner of the tavern and unpacked a cuatro. Solana turned and leaned against the bar top and imagined it was Celeste readying to play, and she was back in Qhilli, where the tavern wouldn’t have been so empty and she wouldn’t have been so alone.

As the hours passed, people slowly filed in, some on their breaks from local shops, some passing by from a morning spent in the market. Solana watched them all and created stories for them. The one eating in the corner by himself was escaping a needy wife. The boisterous one sitting with friends was escaping himself. Anything to keep from thinking of her own problems. Lujan played and played, and Solana sat and sipped and listened until the room spun and she lost track of time and reason.

“Hey, Sami,” the barkeep called. “This one here is cut off. She’s drank her weight in pisco. King Killian won’t be too happy if she suffocates in her own vomit.”

Hardly inebriated enough to let that comment slide, Solana spun in the stool and planted her elbows on the bar top. “I paid you more than enough to keep this coming.”