Page 32 of Daughter of the Dark

At the end of the hall was a stairwell that led down to what she thought were the dungeons. A separate entrance, perhaps. But when she followed them and the air cooled and thickened, she realized it was not the dungeons she was being led to, but another, familiar hallway.

The stone walls were thicker, and the carpet had given way to matching stone floors. A sea of gray interrupted by the light of fewer and fewer orbs. It didn’t take a gifted person to know that there was something different about the air besides the temperature. It felt heavier, charged in a way that lifted the hairs on Solana’s neck. The tang of fear settled at the back of her throat at the same time her dagger lit like a blaze.

Anyone else would have turned away. Freeing her dagger from its sheath, Solana adjusted the hilt in her hand and placed her back against the wall, slowly sliding down the hall and toward a door she could see every time she closed her eyes. This was the room where Reyes had held and tortured her, and if her instincts and dagger were to be trusted, there was a demon on the other side.

Ever so gently, she reached for the metal latch and pulled. It creaked as it shifted, and a puff of cold air licked her face. The door swung open. Solana’s heart thudded as she waited for the room to come into view, and when it finally did, she couldn’t help but gasp at what she saw.

In the center of the room was a muki chained to a table by its wrists and ankles. Dim globe lights illuminated the space in a ghastly blue light, including the man standing over the muki. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew it was him by the ink on his arms and the way his muscles rippled with careful precision in the eerie blue shadows. There was a blade in one hand and a vial of dark liquid in the other.

And then Reyes turned to her, his gray eyes sharp enough to cut. Like they would eviscerate her if she held them for too long. A lock of dark silver hair fell into his face, and he blew it back with pursed lips. “You’re just in time.”

Solana’s heart was pounding so hard she barely heard him. Her eyes were darting over the room, taking in the smaller details that she had missed before, like the tables pressed against the wall full of ominous-looking tools and trinkets. The chains draped from the ceiling that had wrapped around her wrists and ankles and held her down. Reyes’s cloak hanging from a peg pressed into the wall, as if he were getting comfortable in his own home.

Solana took a step back. The hilt of her dagger cut into her palm with how tight she held it. Had she been foolish enough to walk right into a trap?

If the king hadn’t decided to offer her a job, would she have stayed down there indefinitely, her body nothing but a tool, a prisoner for torture? She couldn’t stand back and watch another being undergo the same torment, but by the time she gained the courage to step forward, Reyes stood directly in her path.

“Don’t,” he said calmly, the blade and vial that were previously in his hands gone and replaced with a dark cloth. He wiped the muki’s blood from his gloved hands in much the same manner he had wiped her blood away.

How little he thought of her that he would place his only means of defense out of reach. But standing this close, with the cloak gone and her mind clear, Solana could see that Reyes had honed all of himself into a weapon. It felt like he was twice her size, a monster in a man’s clothing with the power of a god at his fingertips.

No. That was just the remnants of her fear tinging her view of him. Reyes was nothing more than a man, and he would bleed just as easily as she had.

“You really should find a healthier way of dealing with your inadequacies. Torturing helpless beings is a bit pathetic, don’t you think?”

“It’s hardly a helpless being. Would you like to know what it is I’m doing, or will you continue to assume and crash through things the way that you do?” Reyes challenged.

What would it say if she turned her back on him and walked away? Instead, she reached behind her without looking and gave the door a shove. It clicked closed with her inside the room.

Solana swallowed down her memories and slipped to the side, out from underneath his shadow and his piercing attention. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t bring herself to witness the satisfaction in his eyes if she left the room.

“This is unethical,” she said, slowly approaching the muki on the table.

“But killing them isn’t?” Reyes stood opposite her across the table, a challenge in his voice.

“I’m releasing them from their torment, not chaining them to it.”

“You’re not releasing them from anything. Their demon forms return to the Uku Pacha to start the cycle all over again.”

Solana was shaking her head before he was finished speaking. “I can feel their souls—or whatever is left of them—leave their bodies. It’s a kind of pain that not even you can inflict on me.”

Reyes straightened, suddenly incredibly intrigued by her. “Is that what happened the other night?”

Not once had Solana discussed this with anyone, not even Sami. He knew something happened, but not the details. Solana had always been afraid to tell him that she was tethered to the darkness, that it wrapped around her and consumed her, and she often wondered how easy and satisfying it would be to succumb to it instead of clawing her way back to life.

That sometimes, it felt more natural than the light.

It was one of the reasons why she so desperately wanted to leave Supay and its curse behind. One of the many reasons she could never love him the way he deserved. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold on to who she was.

But Reyes wouldn’t care. There was something kindred in him, and he might have answers, as ill-gained as they were.

“Yes,” Solana said, the truth slipping out with a sigh. “I can feel their grief, their torment, but also their relief. It’s all-consuming, like it might swallow me whole, and then it’s just … gone. There’s nothing left of them at the end of it.”

“That’s why the bodies stay.” Reyes’s face was lined with his thoughts, his gaze going distant before focusing back on her. She wondered what he was remembering. “That happens every time you kill?”

“With this,” she said, spinning her dagger between her fingers, “yes.”

A look of confliction crossed his face before he seemed to shake it away. “This one is unconscious,” he said dismissively. “It’ll go back in its cell none the wiser.”