Page 8 of Daughter of the Dark

“Suri, bind his hands, please—”

“With pleasure,” came the sultry voice.

Solana took a step forward. “Don’t you dare put your hands on him.”

“Solana, don’t—”

But his warning was lost to a knee slamming into her wounded side. Solana crashed to the ground with a groan, ears ringing, the sound of Sami’s voice screaming her name from far, far away.

Her head spun, and her shoulders screamed as someone pulled them back and shoved her face into the ground. Unnatural cold settled over her wrists and forearms, and then she was being lifted by each arm, pulled forward and out of the alley, her feet dragging on the ground uselessly.

“Don’t hurt him,” she demanded. “I’ll kill you all.” But her words were pathetically winded, just a scrap of a threat from a wounded and bound woman.

They spoke a murmured conversation over her head, words that made no sense, and led her down a street that widened and cleared, and she knew they had made it back to the center of the square. The spots of black that had threatened to consume her vision receded enough to see that they approached a group of tethered horses, the saddles on their backs a glossy black leather studded in silver. Giant beasts that huffed with impatience.

Around them, the street was completely empty. She saw a flicker of movement in a nearby window. Heard the barely audible click of a door cracking open. Solana shook her head, hoping whoever it was saw and understood.

Nobody needed to die for her, including Sami, and after twenty-seven years of living on this godsforsaken land, the Masters would not be the thing to kill her. She was going to free them both if it was the last thing she did.

CHAPTER FOUR

As much as she promised herself she wouldn’t fight back, she couldn’t help but curse and spit as they came at her with a blindfold. It took three of them to tie it on. Her performance earned her a gag, and then they threw her belly down over the back of a horse.

Deprived of sight, Solana began to panic. The horse shifted, and then a body slid on beside her. Knees dug into her side. A hand pressed into her bound hands, holding her steady as the horse was spurred on.

The lack of freedom, the jostling of the horse underneath her, the loss of her eyesight, it made her wild with dread. Every shift of her body was met with a firm press of his hand, a reminder that she was, quite literally, underneath his thumb and completely at his mercy, until she gave up altogether and let her body go slack.

Suddenly, it was much easier to breathe. There was no point in fighting if there was nowhere to go.

At least, not physically. Mentally, the dark called to her. She had lost too much blood. It was possible she’d die from it, and she realized there were much worse things than dying and becoming a muki, like dying and leaving Sami to an uncertain fate that her recklessness had gotten him into.

Not all muki returned, but Solana knew she would. She was too full of wrath and resentment. Too restless to accept her fate. Too hungry. If she died, she would come back and eat these Masters with their dramatic cloaks and fancy shackles and shiny, useless badges. She wondered what gift they had mastered at the Academy. It was the only place in all of Supay that taught and practiced gift manipulation, and it cost just as much as, if not more than, a Medallion to attend.

Those that survived training were granted the honor of serving King Killian and paid handsomely for it. The privileged grew more privileged while the rest of them worked themselves to a cursed death.

But even privilege was not enough to save them. In the end, they’d all end up as muki forever tied to the Uku Pacha without any chance of ascending to Hanan Pacha. The thought was both comforting and terrifying, knowing that nothing she did or could do would change anything.

Staying would see her turned into a monster, but leaving would turn her into something else. Something selfish and unforgivable.

The decision was being made for her. The shackles around her wrists were unyielding, digging into her bones and tightening with every move she made. The gag pressed against her tongue and made her stomach roil. If she vomited, she would choke on it, and she refused to die that way. Instead, she focused on the burning pain in her side, the pressure of a large hand against her back, the wind that whipped her face, the rhythm of the horses’ hooves over cobbled streets.

It was several hours before their party slowed. Solana had managed to stay awake, somehow. At some point, they would have to be off-loaded from the horses, and they hadn’t bothered to bind her legs. She could take off and create a diversion so that Sami could make a run for it. With him gone and safe, she could focus on saving herself. As long as they had Sami, she was as good as clay in their hands.

And she really wanted her dagger back.

The horses came to a stop. “Master Reyes,” she heard someone say. “Welcome back. Fruitful evening?”

“We’ll see just how fruitful soon.” The voice came from above her. Already, she could picture his eyes as he said it, glittering sharply, pinned to whoever he spoke to. Reyes. Now that she had a name, perhaps she could appeal to his humanity. If he had any left.

Metal gates clanked open, and then the horses started forward again.

The man’s chuckle faded away, and the sound of the horses’ steps changed from clops over stone to thuds. Dirt, perhaps, or grass. They were most likely in the outer ward of the castle grounds and on their way to the dungeons, which meant they were surrounded by stone walls as tall as trees. Walls she had climbed as a small child, before she had begun to climb the walls of the callejon.

Solana steadied her breathing and pushed the memories of this place away. There wasn’t any time to get sucked in, to allow herself to remember and wonder and wish. If only her father had stayed with them. If only he had listened to her mother. If only—

“Take him to the dungeons,” Reyes ordered. She was jostled and then cool air replaced where Reyes’s body had been. Firm hands grabbed her waist and tugged her down.

This was her chance. But when her feet hit the ground, she was betrayed by her own legs folding underneath her. It was only Reyes’s arms that held her up. Under the blindfold, tears gathered and leaked from the corners of her eyes. Everything hurt. Solana couldn’t swallow the bile that rose in her throat and she instinctively folded over to expel her insides.