Page 73 of Daughter of the Dark

“Do not say my name,” she said through gritted teeth. Never had she felt like a child as much as in that moment. Her gift wasn’t working. She had been wrong, again. She had failed, again. There was only one thing left to do.

Solana swung her arm in an arc, the edge of her blade perfectly poised to cut through flesh and sinew, but Masimu shifted back and to the side faster than she had expected. The forward movement pushed her off-balance and forced her to turn to keep Masimu in her line of sight.

She swung back around, dagger lowered to slash across his middle. It was almost unbelievable how easily he dodged each strike. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she would have thought it a myth.

It would have been in her best interest to run. To find her friends and regroup with this new information, but Solana was scared and angry and she threw herself at him, fully expecting the collision of their bodies to knock the air from her lungs. Instead, she only grunted as the ground rose up to meet her.

Masimu appeared above her with pity in his eyes and a hand extended. “I am not your enemy,” he said. “Put down your anger, and let me explain everything.”

But Solana was not in the mood to hear more lies, nor accept another truce. What little mercy she possessed had run dry. She accepted his hand and used it to propel herself forward, plunging her dagger through the air and into where his shoulder should have been, but the blade caught only his clothing and tore through. Masimu had shifted so quickly that he was there and gone within one blink and the next, tendrils of shadows and mist trailing in his wake like the muki that appeared in the night.

The stories that were told of him spoke of how quickly he moved. The king’s right hand was unbeatable in a fight. Unstoppable against their enemies. In her dreams, Masimu had been a creature of obscurity. An apparition of darkness that she had thought was her mind trying to comprehend the dichotomy of rumors and reality and loss. The truth of it was that Solana was faster than the average mortal, and whatever gift she had inherited from him, Solana had honed it and used it to keep herself alive thus far. But this was different. This was not a dream and his gift was beyond her imagination.

Unless it was, and none of this was real. Abruptly, Solana turned the dagger on herself and nicked the palm of her hand. She hissed from the sting of it and watched a bead of red bubble from the small wound. Very real, then.

Which meant King Killian was right, and the underworld had warped her father into something different.

“What are you?” she whispered dreadfully, inspecting every inch of his face. Trying but failing to reach inside of him like she had before.

“I can explain everything, if you give me the opportunity.”

It wasn’t an option. Solana wanted nothing except for the truth, and if he wasn’t willing to give her that, then she wanted his blood on her blade. No other outcome would satisfy her in that moment, with her own blood racing through her veins, scenting the thrill on the horizon.

With a cry, Solana threw herself at Masimu again and again. It was like dancing with a figment of her imagination. Each strike was met with empty air. Every parry was a gentle whisper across her skin. Masimu was made up of insubstantial particles that floated between time and space, light and dark, and Solana spun and spun and spun like a child’s toy, until she was sick with disorientation and fell to a knee.

Masimu stood across from her, an arm’s length away, his breathing even and his body solid once again. There had been plenty of opportunities to kill her, and he never so much as lifted a hand, much less a weapon, in defense. Solana wasn’t sure he even had one on his person, which was wildly insulting.

A part of her hadn’t expected to survive this encounter. The other part of her was stupidly confident she could present his head and the answer to the problem of the curse to the king. But the longer they played this game, the more she realized the first option wasn’t possible, and possibly not the second, either.

Brute determination and stubbornness would not serve her this time, but because Solana could never leave well enough alone, she surged to her feet and gave one final jab. A stiff wind blew her coat back and Masimu was no longer in front of her. This time when she fell, she didn’t get up.

The last time Solana had sat like this, Sami’s body was bleeding out underneath her. The sound of him struggling to breathe would haunt her forever. The way his brown hair had turned black and heavy with blood. How the light had left his eyes. Solana squeezed her own against the memories and pressed a hand to her heart, as if she could keep it all in, but there were too many pieces of her, the fragments scattering without anything to hold them together.

Perhaps this would be the thing to finally break her.

There was movement, and then Masimu crouched beside her. How easily he could have taken her life and still, he stayed his hand.

“The curse cannot be reversed, Solana.” His words were a whisper crueler than any other, but the truth of them reverberated in her soul. The web of the curse spread out before her mind’s eye, black and glistening like the skin of the muki, like the himaya embedded within the earth, entangled and entrenched deep in the very core of the land. “It can only be broken. The dead cannot return.”

Solana felt the devastation of his words like a distant thing overshadowed by the absolute relief in knowing that, all along, she hadn’t been destroying her people’s chances to see their loved ones again. All the muki she had released had been saved from prolonged suffering. Her instincts had been right.

And there were hundreds of demons below the castle, including Sami. She had to release him, all of them, but how? A blade to the back of each and every neck? The weight of their grief and suffering hers alone to bear? It would crush her. She would never survive it.

Solana opened her mouth to speak when she heard Reyes call her name again, closer this time. Masimu shot to his feet and she followed, uncertain whether she meant to run or fight or surrender.

“Come with me to Uku Pacha, and I’ll show you everything I know,” Masimu said quickly. His hand was extended to her once again. An offering. A choice.

There was a war within Solana that was only compounded when she saw Reyes’s head of silver hair appear at the end of the alley directly ahead of her. The moment he registered the situation, he removed a long sword from its sheath and pushed off into a sprint, Solana’s name on his lips. Unnatural shadows swirled around Masimu’s feet, rising higher and higher until she could barely see the fear on Reyes’s face.

He thought she was in danger, perhaps being held against her will, but Masimu’s hands were free of weapons and there was a promise in his eyes that she could not ignore.

“I want to break the curse,” she said, just to be certain her motives were clear.

Masimu nodded calmly. “As do I.”

Reyes screamed her name again, but the wind in her ears and the racing of her pulse drowned most of it out. This might be her only chance at redemption. It was too late to save Lucia and Sami, but it wasn’t too late to save Reyes and all the others that she loved. An end to the curse and a future for all.

Through the inky mist, Solana found Reyes’s eyes and held them. His lips formed her name over and over, a plea, a prayer, until she placed her hand in Masimu’s.