Page 6 of Daughter of the Dark

Then, little by little, like the dew drying from the heat of the midday sun, her own awareness returned to her body. The sky above was cloudless and moonless, an inky, unending black that mocked her. The sounds of a struggle echoed against the stone walls and slowly slipped past her bubble of oblivion.

Then she heard her name, sharp and urgent. A ringing in her ears that shook away some of the lingering fog.

“Solana!”

There it was again. Sami was calling—no, screaming—her name. Her head rolled to the side, and she saw a blurry version of him fall to a knee, the gaping hole of darkness shaped like a muki towering over him. It screeched without a mouth, somehow, a sound that burrowed like needles underneath her skin and finally snapped her out of her daze.

She watched in horror as the muki shot out a hand and wrapped it around Sami’s neck.

Solana sat up with a jolt. There was a sharp pull on her side, but she barely noticed the dead muki’s claws ripping out of her flesh in her haste to get to Sami.

It was sheer panic that gave her the strength to push to her feet, to open her mouth and scream a solitary command. “STOP,” she roared, the force of her voice pressing against her skull and the walls and the demon that snapped its eyeless gaze to her. She had no time to consider that it had obeyed before she slammed into it.

They hit the ground with a thud that rattled her teeth, and then she scrambled and slipped to pin its body to the ground, one leg on either side to gain enough purchase to drive her dagger into its neck.

A chill ran through her from the pressure of its unseeing eyes pinned to her. It didn’t so much as blink as she sliced its throat, deep enough to sever its spinal cord and end its miserable life.

The alley fell quiet. Solana’s chest heaved with ragged breaths, and the world around her tilted. She listed sideways, but it wasn’t the ground that caught her. It was Sami’s arms, his warm, hard body wrapping around her and pulling her away from the rotting, gelatinous corpse.

“Fuck,” she heard him whisper as he leaned against the wall with her between his legs. He held her while she convulsed with unending torment, flashes of light and shadows racing behind her closed eyes, drowning her every thought in desperate suffering.

Just when she thought it would kill her, that her punishment for taking a life would be for her own life to be taken, it ended. Sweat rolled down her temples and between her breasts. One of Sami’s hands was wrapped around her forehead, the other around her abdomen, both holding her tight as he swayed and hummed a soothing lullaby into her ear. She matched his breathing, calmed her racing pulse, and reminded herself who she was.

Solana Grey, the Demon Slayer of Supay.

It was only her that was fast enough to fight and kill, strong enough to weather the onslaught of agony that came with each life she took. It was her atonement for the wrongs her father had committed. A way to prove to herself that she was nothing like the traitor of Supay. A responsibility she had carried for fourteen years. She wondered if she would be strong enough to walk away when the time came.

It was minutes or hours or days later by the time Solana felt like she could breathe normally again. The wound in her side was throbbing, sending waves of agony up into her chest and down her leg. Would this be the time the poison took her as it took her mother? Had her immunity and her questionable luck finally run out?

But when she wiggled out of Sami’s hold and lifted her shredded tunic, there was nothing but gaping flesh and tacky red blood. No blackened veins or sizzling skin or putrid smell. Only pain and scars and memories.

“Gods, Solana,” Sami breathed, his hand coming to cover hers over the wound. “Can we both agree that this was a terrible choice?”

Solana laughed, and then she groaned. Warm blood trickled between her fingers. “My dagger?” she asked, feeling around with her free hand.

“I have it,” Sami reassured her. “We need to get you up and over to—”

But Solana was shaking her head and pulling away, holding in a wince as she tried to push to her feet. “The Medallion, I need to—”

“You have got to be kidding. Solana, your insides are practically outside of your body. I know the poison doesn’t affect you, but you can still die from blood loss or an infection. The Medallion can wait.”

“It can’t, Sami. There won’t be another opportunity like this.”

Sami’s jaw rippled in the moonlight. “You’re so desperate to leave Supay that you’ll kill yourself doing it.” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “And you’ll do it with or without my help.”

“If you come, you can catch me when I pass out.” Solana smiled brightly, but it felt brittle. She had been nothing but honest with him from the moment the plan had begun to form in her mind. Her staying was never an option and still, he chose her.

She opened her mouth to tell him she had changed her mind, that they could go back to Jacobi’s where he was sure to call in the doctor to stich up Solana’s side, after which she could slip out and follow the trail two drunk men were sure to leave behind, Sami none the wiser.

But the scuff of a booted foot against stone interrupted the tense silence after battle. Solana was on her knees facing Sami one moment, and then he was up and blocking her body with his back to her in the next, her dagger clenched tightly at his side.

From out of the shadows emerged one figure, and then two, their heads bowed and their gaits slow and sure. Solana squinted into the dark, trying to decipher whether they were muki or human, and then inhaled sharply once they stepped into the singular block of light between buildings. It was Nikolas and Oskar, as if her thoughts had conjured them out of thin air. The cowards must have been hiding while Solana and Sami fought for their lives.

Solana staggered to her feet, but Sami stepped backward and into her, further blocking her view of the men she planned to rob. “Sami, what are you—”

Behind Nikolas and Oskar, another figure appeared. A flash of light caught her attention, and she saw something she hadn’t noticed before. On all their cloaks, over their hearts, was a silver badge, one that she knew had the word Masters engraved into the top over an eye with the king’s profile in the pupil. This time, it was Solana who took a step back, hand pressed to her side to keep as much of her blood in as possible while her heart raced.

When she glanced at Nikolas, he winked at her. A rush of embarrassment and anger turned her cheeks hot. Her hand clenched into a fist at her side. They had tricked her, but two could play that game.