Page 56 of Daughter of the Dark

“Stop, stop, stop,” Solana chanted, plunging the dagger in again and again with each word. Bits of gore splashed onto her face. Talons dug deeper into the fleshy parts of her arms. It wouldn’t stop talking. It wouldn’t die. She bucked with her hips, desperate to dislodge it, to make it stop.

Finally, she gained enough leverage that she was able to swing up and around and sink the dagger directly into its spinal cord. Its mouth stopped moving mid-word, and still she heard the end of it like a plea.

Ñakapanaaaaa.

The muki slumped over her with all its weight, and it was there, covered in blood and alone in the middle of the street, that she weathered all of its relief and grief and turmoil. Absorbed it into herself as if, in death, it had finally been granted eternal peace. It hurt to experience it while pinned to Supay, while knowing that future for herself was so far away. It filled her with envy, with rage, with the need to pummel and tear and destroy anyone and everything.

But eventually it faded, sapping her strength along with it, and she was left stuck beneath the weight of her choices. That was when they found her. Reyes appeared above her, his silver hair matching the stars haloing his head, face set into a careful expression of clinical concern.

“Can you move?” he asked distantly.

“Well, no, but that’s because there’s a giant man-eating creature on top of me.”

Reyes rolled his eyes and pulled a pair of gloves out of his pocket. Oskar popped up next and gave her a small wave. He glanced at the muki and then shook his head, but there was a half smile revealing the beginnings of dimples in each cheek.

“It’s so funny, right?” Solana asked, but she was smiling despite the leftover ache in her chest and the incessant throb of her head.

They counted to three, and then the muki was rolled off her and Solana took a deep breath, wincing slightly as a twinge of pain shot through her side. Broken rib, most likely, and not her first. The ground tilted when she pushed herself to her feet, and she reached out for the wall to steady herself. She found Reyes’s chest instead. None too gently, he twisted her arm to the side and inspected the gouges from the muki’s talons. Then he grabbed her face.

“Look at me,” he demanded. When she did, his fingers gently slid into her hair and felt along her scalp.

They came away with blood, and she groaned at the sight.

“What were you thinking?” he asked and moved her aside so she could sit against the wall. He stayed standing where he was, towering over her like she was an insolent child.

“Do you think I meant for this to happen?”

“Well, you certainly didn’t leave the castle alone with good intentions in mind.” Reyes ran a hand through his hair and turned away with a sigh. “Gods, Solana, you could have died.”

She tilted her head against the wall and closed her eyes, secretly enjoying his attention. “That would put a damper on your grand plans, wouldn’t it?”

Though she couldn’t see him, she could imagine the way his jaw tensed with frustration, and how his fists clenched to keep from striking the wall, or perhaps her. “Our grand plans. We agreed to a truce. Don’t act as if I’m pinning you down and taking what I want by force.”

“I don’t mind being pinned down,” she said suggestively, eyes still closed and dangerously imagining what it might look like if it was her hands tied to his bed instead of that stupid table in his stupid torture chamber.

A much better use of our time, she thought.

Except, she might have said it out loud, because Reyes asked, “Are you drunk?” with all of the judgment reserved for a jealously sober person.

“That’s none of your business.” Solana yawned and peeked open an eye. Just as she thought, Reyes’s perfectly chiseled jaw was tensed, and his nostrils were flared as if it was taking all the patience in the world to speak to her. “I was doing a perfectly fine job of keeping myself alive before you and your band of hooded men arrived, thank you very much.”

The hooded men were loading the muki’s body onto the stretcher as she spoke. Nikolas glanced at her. “It was a great kill,” he said with a glove-covered thumbs-up.

“Eyes on the job,” Reyes ordered, and Nikolas made a face behind his back before returning to the task at hand. “There are more important things to be focusing on right now than your desire to drink yourself into a—”

“It’s always something, isn’t it? Solana, kill the demons, Solana, give us your blood, Solana, reverse the curse and save everyone, Solana, your father is actually still alive and trapped in the underworld, but don’t do anything about it.” She snapped her mouth shut and looked away from Reyes’s shocked eyes. “All I want to do is finish my contract and get the fuck away from this place. Why is that so difficult for everyone to understand?”

Reyes snorted, and when she looked back, she saw not pity, but disappointment. Perhaps even disgust. “You’ve made it very clear what you want. What I don’t understand is how someone like you was given such a gift when all you do is spit on it.” Reyes scoffed down at her, as if she were nothing but a pile of stinking horse shit, and turned and walked away.

“Someone like me? What’s that supposed to mean?” she called after him, uncaring of Nikolas and Oskar, who were trying not to look like they were listening but absolutely were.

“Yes, Solana, someone like you.” Reyes didn’t turn as he spoke. “Someone selfish and too afraid to do what’s right. Someone undeserving.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” she said through gritted teeth.

This time, Reyes did turn, but partially, so that she could only see the side of his face. As if she wasn’t worth his full attention. “None of us asked for this,” he said, gesturing toward the walls and city beyond them. “And yet there are those of us doing everything we can to change the unchangeable. You are no different than anyone else. Your suffering is not greater than theirs. Your choices not more impossible.”

He was right, Solana knew that, but there was a part of her that felt different. Like she was moving through life as a separate entity with an anchor tied around her soul. One that she was deeply, achingly, afraid of. What if the darkness consumed her like it consumed everyone on Supay, and she became the thing she hated most?