Page 11 of Daughter of the Dark

She did the same to him, eyes darting between his, her own mind replaying the fight and the sequence of events to dredge up an acceptable answer to his insane question. “Control who?” she asked, brow scrunched.

Reyes sighed dramatically. “Wrong answer,” he said, and then he shoved the dagger into her thigh, parting flesh and muscle until he hit the bone with a thud.

Solana bit her tongue to keep from screaming and swallowed her own blood. Her nails cut crescent moons into her palms. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and joined the sweat rolling down her temples. It was cold in the room, but inside she was burning with pain and rage. With promises of revenge.

Just as slowly as he pushed it in, Reyes pulled the dagger out. A gush of warmth followed it, and she knew he had hit something vital, that she had minutes before she bled out on that table.

“I thought you needed me alive.” Already, her head was spinning and her fingers were tingling and she was so fucking angry with herself for dying like this. “When I come back as a muki, I’m eating you first.”

“You’re not dying today, Solana. I’ll make sure of that,” Reyes said, and then he slammed his hand over her thigh and poured his horrible healing gift into her body.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Your dagger.” Reyes walked over to the table against the wall, snatched up a small drying cloth, and wiped her blood from his hands. Solana watched him through a haze of phantom pain. He had healed her again and again, so there was nothing currently wrong with her, but the memory of metal searing flesh and magic mending sinew was not so easily forgotten, and the chains attached to her arms and legs shivered in the quiet. “The stone in the hilt is himaya, did you know?”

The switch in conversation took a moment for her to register. Himaya was just another rumor to them in the callejon, another thing that separated the inner city from the outer cities, the rich from the poor, the privileged from the forgotten.

“Using himaya without a certificate of ownership is illegal.” When Reyes came back to her side, her dagger was in his hands, his blood-crusted fingers tracing over the carvings in the hilt and the face of the largest scarlet stone. “Did you steal it?”

“No,” Solana said tersely, but her quivering chin gave away the fear that began to bubble in her chest. Her body expected the hurt, waited for the punishment with clenched muscles. Before she knew it, she was giving him information he hadn’t asked for. Anything to avoid more of this special brand of torture. “It belonged to my father.”

Reyes hummed and placed the tip against her forearm. “And who was your father?”

Gritting her teeth, Solana said, “I don’t know.”

In response to her lie, Reyes dragged the blade through the thin flesh there. Solana couldn’t help the whimper that escaped, or the gasp of relief when he pulled the blade away. She didn’t bother to look down—it would have only made it worse. Instead, she stared at the dark stone ceiling and imagined all the ways she could kill him, let her loathing strengthen her for whatever was to come.

“This is muki poison that we’ve harvested for research purposes.” He held the vial in front of her face, forcing her to acknowledge it. “All it takes is a scratch from their teeth or talons to kill, but with an antidote, that could change. People could have more of a chance at survival.”

Solana scoffed. “Only if they can afford it, right?” There was no hiding the quake in her words, or the way her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She was so godsdamned thirsty, so unspeakably tired. Of pain, of fighting, of barely living.

There were hundreds like her in Qhilli. People that could barely afford to feed themselves. People that were sick and dying and couldn’t afford what little care was available to them. People who would give all they had for the chance to save their loved ones from the fate of muki poisoning. If they created an antidote, the possibility would be there, but would it become just another myth like a Medallion?

All thoughts fled when she heard a pop like a bottle being uncorked. “What are you doing?” she asked, the words frantic even to her own ears.

“I’m testing a theory,” he said, and then Solana watched in terror as Reyes poured the sludgy black liquid over the slice on her forearm. At first, there was nothing but the burn of torn skin, and then it hit her all at once. A deluge of blazing agony that seeped into her blood and spread far and wide.

Solana couldn’t get in enough air through her nose, but she knew if she opened her mouth, she would scream and scream until her voice abandoned her. There was no way to describe the pain, to convince herself that she wasn’t dying, that demon poison alone could not kill her, even if it felt like it might.

In her mind, she saw herself tearing free from her shackles and using her own dagger to saw her arm off at the elbow, stopping the spread of poison before it reached her heart. And then she saw herself turning that dagger onto Reyes, severing his throat with one smooth arc, bathing the room in both of their blood.

Was this how her mother had felt while the poison consumed her mind and body?

There was pressure on her arm. Solana looked down through watery eyes to see Reyes’s hands covering the wound, his long fingers digging into her flesh. She could feel the tendrils of his gift rooting and prodding, inspecting the parts of her that weren’t meant to be exposed, an icy touch that both soothed and seared.

“Incredible,” Reyes whispered. All at once, his touch and his magic disappeared. He stepped away and stared at her as if she was a marvel of indescribable existence. “It has no effect on you whatsoever. It’s as if your blood absorbs it as its own.”

“Lucky me,” Solana croaked.

“You don’t understand. This could change everything. Your blood could be the answer.”

Solana finally gave in and closed her eyes. “Guess that means you really do need me alive.”

And then she gladly lost the fight against the encroaching dark.

But even in her dreams, she wasn’t free of pain. She was seven years old and she was standing in the middle of a street, chaos surrounding her as bodies rushed past, blurs of colors and conversation, panic and preparation. They avoided her as if she weren’t there. An invisible pillar in a sea of ruin.

Across the way, the sea of bodies parted around another obstruction, but they were too many and she was too small to see above. She could only catch glimpses of a dark figure, a hand reached out, a flash of their mouth moving, a whispered word carried to her on a knife-sharp breeze.