Page 91 of Daughter of the Dark

Suri placed her elbows on the table and stared at the map covering it, her fingers hovering over the spot of dense trees and empty shoreline. “Why can’t you just rift in and kill him?” she asked. “King Killian, I mean. You could have the element of surprise.”

“I can’t rift somewhere I haven’t been.” That wasn’t entirely true. She could still feel a connection to Reyes, to his magic and his soul, and she knew that she could use it to find him, but the rest remained the same. “I don’t know exactly where he’s standing or who is around and how many. I could rift right into his blade or a cage, and if this is a trap like we assume it is, then I’d be giving him exactly what he wants.” Solana imagined being forced to rule by his side and shivered. With Reyes as a threat over her head, she wasn’t sure what she would agree to. “When I kill him, all of the muki he has collared and tamed will go free. There will be madness in the streets. Everyone has to be prepared.”

But if she left blood, they could make enough daggers to arm all of the Masters and more. They wouldn’t even need her. The curse would still exist, but there could be a true death for everyone. And it would only be a backup plan to use in an emergency, like her death or imprisonment.

Perhaps she could find the king, kill him, and end all of this before anyone else was hurt.

“Do not do anything stupid, Solana,” Cora said, reading her as if her thoughts were written across her face. “Not without us at your back, at least. We need you to come back.”

“Nothing stupid,” Solana conceded. “I promise.”

And most of her meant it. That was the thing about hunting and killing—it was unpredictable. If she was too rigid, she would end up dead. If she was reckless, she would end up dead. If she did nothing, everyone else would end up dead. But in order to assess the situation, she had to see it.

Solana went into the kitchen to rift so she didn’t have to explain that particular gift to the people of the callejon. It was too similar to muki, even if they shared the same blood and thirst for freedom. Some things were better left unknown.

Before she went, she used a wicked-looking knife to cut open her left palm and found a glass vial on one of the shelves pushed against the wall. It filled with enough of her blood to imbue many more himaya, and also possibly confuse Killian as to her whereabouts. She tied a piece of cloth around her hand, the world shifted, and she was swallowed by the dark.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The location on the map was more of a general idea than a pinpointed place, which made rifting more difficult. There was no way to know what she was landing in, and the tangle of trees that caught her and the sound it made was thankfully covered by the crash of lightning that cut through the sky. A stabbing pain swept down her leg. Branches snapped and unceremoniously deposited her onto the ground. She lay there for several heartbeats to catch her breath, rain from a dark sky pelting her face, and then rolled out of the open and into the brush for cover.

A new dagger was in her hand as soon as she came to a stop with her back against a tree. The hilt was unfamiliar, but the red sliver of himaya in the hilt glowed softly, and it was warm enough to tell her that danger was near. Which was great, because it was too dark to see anything. Clouds covered the entire sky and lit up only in searing spurts of white that blinded more than illuminated.

Solana didn’t know what to do but follow the heat of her dagger. She ran in a crouch from one tree to the next, ignoring the rain pouring into her eyes and the bits of leaves and branches that slapped her face. She was grateful that her footsteps couldn’t be heard over the downpour, but it also meant she could not hear anything, either. If only she could sense them like they did her.

Why couldn’t she? The himaya could, which was made with her blood. There was no reason she couldn’t do the same.

After sliding underneath a particularly low and heavy hanging treetop, Solana placed her hands on bent knees and closed her eyes. Several deep breaths and she was calm enough to dip into the well of her gift, replenished by rest and food and love. She imagined the surface like a map, and the muki nearby like stars. One by one, they popped up in her mind’s eye, tiny spots of light that multiplied with every heartbeat.

There were so many. Some were moving, darting from one spot to another. Nearby, a mass of them sat incredibly still. Solana couldn’t tell where they were in relation to her, but she could see that the farther they were, the weaker their light, and that in the middle of it all, between the still and the moving, was a large, dark space in the shape of a structure. Like a house, or a manor large enough to hold an entire group of people that worshipped the muki.

The hilt of the dagger lit up in a sharp heat. Solana was torn from her mind and hissed with surprise. It slipped from her hand and disappeared into the thick foliage at her feet.

“Shit,” she whispered, shoving her hands beneath the leaves, her fingers scraping across the flat surface of the blade. Slowly, she walked them up to the hilt and breathed a sigh of relief when she plucked it out of the brush.

When she straightened and lifted her eyes to scan the woods, a muki was a handsbreadth away from her face.

Solana jerked back just in time to avoid its teeth, but she couldn’t move fast enough to avoid the swing of its left hand. Its talons caught her cheek and she cried out. For the first time since she had started hunting, she panicked. She was rifting away before she meant to.

The muki rifted after her and collided with her body midair. Solana screamed again and rolled into the fall. They tore apart in the crash, and she wasted no time getting to her feet to rift. It followed her again, tearing at her clothes with its talons, yanking on her hair to get her to stop. She hurtled into a tree and fell into the brush at its base.

The muki didn’t follow, but she could hear it huffing as it searched the ground ahead of her. Solana couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Suddenly, she was seven years old again, and her mother was tugging her through a small door in the castle wall and out into the chaos of the city. They were hiding behind bushes and around corners, waiting for muki to skitter by. Solana tried being strong—she was too old to cry—but she wanted her father. She wanted to go back home where it was safe, where Masimu would solve all her problems and tell her everything was going to be all right.

But he was gone, and there was no other choice than to finish what she started.

Solana counted to three in her mind, and then she rolled out of the bushes and into a sprint, the trees rushing by in a blur. A flash of lightning lit up the woods and she saw the muki closing in, darting closer and closer, eyes and teeth and collars glistening in the night. Solana pushed herself harder than she ever had. Closer and closer the muki came, until she could feel them breathing down her neck.

With a burst of power, she rifted toward the structure-shaped shadow she had seen in her mind, but not close enough that she could see it. The muki followed as she expected, but by the time they landed, she was sprinting away, darting between shadows and dodging low-hanging limbs.

The wall appeared seemingly out of nowhere. It was as tall as the castle walls with a metal gate at the center. Solana wiped the water from her eyes and wrapped her hands around the cold bars. No amount of pushing or pulling made them budge, and there were no footholds to climb. Beyond the gate, she could see an empty courtyard and the manor, pockets of shadows looming beneath its tall towers.

There was nothing and no one to witness her rift. She landed against the tower wall and pressed herself further into the stone, waiting to be certain there were no guards to see her. If there was a window, then she could see the best place to rift inside the manor. Just a peek, and she could rift away with a better idea of the layout and how to reach Killian and Reyes.

The wall was rough and wet at her back. She kept her eyes ahead, glancing over the grounds, looking for any movement through the rain and dark. Her right hand was stretched out and feeling for the end of the wall and the edge of a window.

Finally, she felt the slick of wet glass. A chill beneath her fingertips. Ducking low, Solana shifted underneath the window and turned her head just enough to see both inside and outside the manor. There was a flash of movement, the hem of a dark cloak snapping between footsteps, and she forgot to worry about whatever was outside.

Through the blur of rivulets running down the pane, and the dim of the interior, Solana saw his silver hair and his lithe body moving confidently up a dark and twisted set of stairs. A quick look around the room told her there was no one else that she could see. Only Reyes.