Page 74 of Daughter of the Dark

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, hoping he could see the truth in her eyes. There was confusion in the furrow of his brow. The tilt of despair at the corners of his mouth. A stutter in his steps as she leaned closer to Masimu. The sting of betrayal was the last thing she saw before the world shifted beneath her feet and a rush of cold wind swallowed her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Moving between realms felt similar to being underneath the earth in the himaya caves. Eerie and cold, like being embraced by frigid waters that both preserved and killed. Solana lost her breath. When she opened her eyes, they were no longer in the middle of Sonqo.

The ceiling above her was a dingy gray riddled with cracks and missing stone. Water dripped somewhere nearby, each droplet landing with a soft tap tap tap. The room was large and mostly empty except for a table with six chairs pressed against it, the wood bleached of color like everything else.

Behind the table was a step up onto an empty dais, and beyond that a set of floor-to-ceiling windows trimmed in crumbling molding. She saw a flash of the same windows in a different time—a different realm. Familiar, but not. Solana felt Masimu watching her as she picked her way closer, certain of exactly what she would see below.

An endless sea that met an endless sky, but these waters were still. There were no whitecapped waves, no ripples of breath. And the sun was diluted, desaturated like the light had turned in Supay after she left the caves. Everything was so still that it looked dead. Nothing but an imitation of the living realm.

“There is no time here.” Masimu’s voice resonated through the emptiness. “There is no night or day, no moon to push or pull, and so the waters stay calm and the light doesn’t change, even as everything else falls into disrepair.”

“Where is here?” Solana asked without turning to face her father. She was afraid of the man she would see in this lonely place.

“The Uku Pacha is a mirror world of Key Pacha—the mortal realm, as you call it. In the time before the fall of the gods, it was only meant to contain the dead for a time of reflection, but Supay’s curse tainted that. Now his dead stay too long and the realm grows too heavy. It expands like an overripened fruit, and then it bursts.”

Solana remembered the pressure that had exploded beneath her hand. The shift of the air that rushed over the land and toward the city. “And the muki overflow,” she whispered.

“Exactly,” Masimu said. “Twenty years ago, I tried to end the curse—”

“I’m not here to hear your version of the story.” Solana turned to face her father and instantly regretted it. There was a layer of pain in the shadows underneath his eyes and in the downturned angle of his mouth. The way he looked at her made her wonder what he saw. Made her wonder if he missed her and if he was as full of regrets as she was. “I only want to know how to break the curse so I can free the people I love.”

As if realizing he was staring, Masimu cleared his throat and averted his eyes. It was only then that she noticed he was wearing all black, a Masters uniform, just as she was, but without the badge. “What we want does not matter,” he said with a sigh.

“I don’t have time for this.”

“You do, actually.” Masimu rubbed the back of his head, contrition in the lines above his brow. “The only way to leave the Uku Pacha is to rift.”

“Rift?” she repeated, the word sending a thrill through her. Just then, Masimu’s form melted into a shadow that surged toward her. Solana inhaled sharply and held out her hands as if she could fight an incorporeal thing.

“It’s how the muki move between realms,” Masimu said from behind her. “It’s how you and I are such formidable fighters.”

Heart in her throat, Solana spun around. “Are you a muki, then?”

The hairs around her face shifted and shadows curled around her. “No,” Masimu whispered in her ear. “But we do share their blood.”

“This isn’t a game,” Solana said, refusing to rise to his bait.

He solidified in front of her, his back to the doors once again. “I know,” he said somberly. “I told you I will tell you everything. But first, there is something I have to show you.”

Solana blinked at him. She had given her hand to a man who was trapped in the underworld for twenty years with no one but demons for company. She shouldn’t have expected to receive a quick, uncomplicated answer.

Shit. There was nothing to do for it now.

With a sigh, Solana swept a hand toward the door. “Lead the way.”

Masimu turned and strode through the double doors of the dilapidated throne room and into the receiving room, where two crumbling staircases spiraled into the second floor. The silver gilding on the banisters had long since flaked off, and the carpet was shredded and discolored. Masimu skirted a puddle of water—that’s where the dripping was coming from—and exited through the main doors and out into the castle grounds.

There was no sun in the sky, or moon, or clouds, or anything that would give any hint of what time it might be. It was a bleak, washed-out blue that bordered on gray and cast the world beyond in shades of the same color. The wall surrounding the castle was piles of crumbled stone with iron gates propped between them. They opened with a flick of Masimu’s hand.

The main road that was flanked by markets and taverns in Sonqo was eerily empty and forgotten there. Shattered glass littered the ground. Strips of colorless fabric fluttered from awning poles. The path underneath her feet was cracked and cumbersome to walk.

“Where are all the muki?” Solana asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“The ones who have accepted their fate stay. They find their homes and sometimes their kin and they continue to exist together. Then there are those who seek release or revenge,” Masimu said. “They went when you called.”

He glanced at her, waiting for a reaction. She couldn’t help but wonder if Sami would have been there had she not called him to her. Instead, he was corralled into a cage with hundreds of other muki, waiting for a fate that would never find him. Solana shoved her guilt down and focused on the task at hand.