Page 79 of Daughter of the Dark

They rifted back to the castle in spurts, each distance farther than the last. The intentionality of it was difficult when there were a hundred things on her mind and her body was fighting the urge to be reckless. There was no diving in headfirst this time. Their plan would have to rely on precision and skill.

“We’ll rift into the castle in the mortal realm,” Masimu said, pointing at the throne room on a large map hung over the desk in his room. It was the same room he had kept when she was a child, and even if it looked entirely different, Solana could see the touches of his that were familiar. A coat tossed over the back of a chair. An empty mug on the bedside table. An open book on what would have been her mother’s side of the bed. Solana could hear her scolding him to put it down and pay attention to his family.

All that time, he had been searching for a way to save them. To save her from the very thing she was about to face head-on. Fighting to avoid becoming the thing we fear most often brings it nearer. Cora’s wise words had been right, after all.

“We can split up in there.” Masimu rested a finger over his lips in thought. “And—”

“I have to find a friend first,” Solana interrupted. The way Reyes’s eyes had shifted from concern to betrayal was forever burned in her mind. If he knew the truth, she had a feeling he would gladly help them kill the king. “I’ll take the lower half of the castle.”

“And you’ll call for me if you find him.” Solana opened her mouth to argue, but Masimu put up a hand. “Together, all right? This isn’t only your fight.” He handed her his dagger in place of hers. “Remember—your gift is a blade. Use it wisely.”

Masimu’s reminder felt out of place, but coveted and welcome. She placed his dagger in her sheath and straightened her shoulders. When this was all over, perhaps they could get to know each other again, and his words of caution wouldn’t feel so foreign.

“I’ll go first,” Masimu said. “It’ll be easier for you to move through the realms if you follow my trail.” His eyes darted over her face as if memorizing her. As if it would be his last chance. “You look just like her.”

“She always said I looked just like you.” Solana pushed a lock of dark hair behind her ear and shifted on her feet. The memories she had of Lucia were precious, and she was tempted to keep them to herself, but she remembered the gift it had been to see her face one last time, and how it had been even longer since Masimu had seen it, and she stepped forward to place a hand on his arm. He closed his eyes before she did, like he was making up for lost time and savoring every moment.

Underneath the darkness in her mind were brighter memories. Moments in time that she had captured and stored in a corner for when she needed them most. One was a memory of Lucia planting a stolen plant in a small pot that she placed in the window. Solana was still in the bed that they shared, trying desperately to block out the light that Lucia had let in with the open curtains, but the sun was relentless and bathed their entire home in a warm glow.

When Solana gave up and opened her eyes, she saw Lucia outlined by the sun, a bright halo of love and goodness clinging to each and every detail of her. She had died one week later, the plant followed soon after, and Solana never closed that curtain again.

It was only the one image she could manage to send to Masimu, but she knew the moment he saw it the way she did. A gasp left his mouth, and she felt his arm tremble beneath her palm. “Beautiful,” he whispered, and then his body crushed hers, his familiar scent washing over her. Solana allowed herself to be held and slowly counted to three before she pulled away.

“Thank you,” he said, voice cracking. It felt good to know that someone else existed that had loved her mother as much as she did. That if Solana died, there would be someone left who remembered her.

Someone left to avenge them both.

“Let’s go kill a king,” she said, baring her teeth in a smile.

Solana kept her eyes closed as Masimu rifted away and tried to envision where she wanted to go. It wasn’t a good idea to rift right into the dungeons, even if she was tempted to, just to find Sami and release him before everything became messier and more complicated. But what if she miscalculated and got herself locked in the cages with them? No, she needed to be reasonable and land somewhere she could bypass staff or guards, then find Reyes as quickly as possible.

Perhaps the room Reyes had tortured her in would work. It was close enough and behind a closed door. Privacy and convenience.

With a deep breath, Solana imagined herself there, sitting on the table with Reyes looming over her, a needle in her arm. Suddenly she was lying down and her hands were chained above her head. It wasn’t a hard table underneath her, but a bed, and there weren’t shackles around her wrists, but a hand, and the pressure of Reyes’s body was warm and delicious and—

Solana rifted even as she tried to focus, her mind split between what she needed and what she wanted. Even after swearing she would never allow herself to fall for such a thing.

The temperature dropped, and suddenly she was weightless, the world a blur as she rifted from the Uku Pacha to the living realm.

The ground broke her fall, the intensity of it enough to send her teeth into her tongue. She groaned and rolled to her feet, prepared to fight off an attack from unsuspecting staff or guards because she was most certainly not in the room she had meant to rift to. A long, carpeted hallway stretched out in either direction. An empty hallway. No members of the court, no Masters or guards or staff to be seen, and when she strained her ears, she heard nothing.

There was a moment of stark relief before suspicion sunk in.

Moving quickly, Solana placed her back against the wall and slid along it, careful to make as little noise as possible. The carpet would end soon and Solana’s boots would echo against the stone. At that point, she would run. There didn’t seem to be anyone to stop her. She was just about to round the corner when she heard a sound. At first, she thought it was a shuffle of boots. She froze with her back pressed against the wall and tried to steady her wildly beating heart.

There it was again. It wasn’t boots, but something softer. Fleshier, and wet. Solana’s hand was steady as she shifted her dagger into position and counted to three before bursting around the corner, ready to run through anybody who got in her way.

Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw.

A body rested in the middle of the hall, a pool of blood collecting beneath them and a large muki hovering over them. Its face was buried in the body’s neck, feasting on flesh and tendons and blood. The shock of it was so brutal that Solana gagged. The muki’s head snapped up and its unblinking eyes found her.

Around its neck was a gleaming band of silver with a purple stone in the dead center.

“Fuck,” Solana whispered. She took a step back and bent her knees, ready for the collision she knew so intimately. But the muki did something that surprised her more than she already was—it disappeared. Solana blinked again, just to be sure it was gone, and then she rushed forward and slid onto her knees.

Nikolas looked up at her, his blank eyes open and startingly blue in contrast to the blood covering his face. Solana slapped both hands over her mouth to muffle the scream building in her chest. There was no point in checking for a pulse, but she tore a hand from her face and did it anyway. His skin was still warm. Blood still poured from the gaping wound.

Sami’s face replaced Nikolas’s. Then her mother’s. Then her own. All of them dead, all of them casualties of the gods’ greed. The king’s greed.