Page 41 of Daughter of the Dark

That had been easy. Too easy. Solana had a feeling this next ask would not be. “The antidote, if successful, will be made publicly available. At an affordable cost, or no cost at all for those who are in dire need.”

Reyes lifted his head and met her gaze, the tendons in his neck pulsing as he mulled over her demand. “I’m not sure that’s within my power to grant, but I’ll speak with King Killian. I can’t imagine he’ll say no.”

Then you lack imagination, Solana wanted to say, but she held her tongue. She was turning over a new leaf. Forming an alliance with her rival. Finally making good choices. Sami would be so proud of her, if she ever got the chance to speak to him again. She winced at the thought.

“Then that’s all I’ll ask of you,” she said instead.

It was Reyes’s turn to snort. “I doubt that,” he said, but his voice was soft and strangely fond.

The room fell quiet except for the crackling of the low fire, lulling Solana into a place where the world blurred around the edges. Her eyes drifted close. This time, she didn’t have the strength to open them again, and she fell asleep wrapped in the scent of smoke and earth.

The silhouette of a man stood in the middle of an abandoned city. Bodies littered the floor, some of them so far past the point of decay that they were nothing but bones that rattled in the wind, a tempo of death that matched the rhythm of her heart. It thumped wildly in her chest. Her fingertips tingled with equal parts power and dread.

“Ususi,” the man whispered, “come closer.”

One blink, he was far enough that she could just make out his shape.

Another blink, and he was closer, a trail of shadows in his wake.

Another blink, and he was in her face, too close for her eyes to see, her heart pounding so erratically that it stole her breath.

He grasped her upper arms and screamed, “YOU MUST WAKE UP.”

Pounding on the door perfectly aligned with the tempo of her racing heart. The dream had left the tendrils of fear clinging to her skin in a layer of slick sweat.

She was in Reyes’s bed, still in the same bloodied and crusted clothes from the previous night. Her head whipped to the side, but the bed was empty save for her, and when she ran her hand over the sheets, she found them cold.

The sound of a soft inhale reached her, and she turned toward it, shocked to find Reyes asleep in the plush chair he had lowered himself into the night before. A shaft of orange light cut through the dimness, illuminating his olive brown skin, her blood still dried onto his hands that hung over the arms of the chair, the long line of his legs stretched out before him. There was so much of him, yet in sleep, he was reduced. Almost innocent, if one could ignore the cut of muscle that shaped him into a weapon visible through the thin fabric of his shirt.

Solana could have very easily given in to her desire to plunge a blade into his slow-beating heart, or slit his exposed throat. Or slowly run her fingers over the ink there.

The door vibrated underneath a heavy fist. “Reyes, open up!”

Solana jumped and pressed her hands over her mouth, but Reyes didn’t so much as twitch. If she closed her eyes and filtered past the shadows of her nightmare, she could feel the slivers of his gift embedded into her tendons and muscles and skin like a brand of sorts. He had given so much of himself to save her, and now his body was forcing him to rest and refill, whereas she felt more alive than ever.

Guilt trickled past her efforts at neutrality.

More than anything else, she did not want him to wake and find her in his bed in the light of day. Under the cover of dark and desperation was an entirely different thing. The light was too revealing, too demanding. When they prowled the city together, there were shadows to duck into. Tasks at hand. Arguments to be had. This was unacceptable.

She waited a few minutes for whoever had decided to wake Reyes at this ungodly early hour to leave, and then quietly rolled out of bed and darted for the door on tiptoes. She made no sound as she turned the handle and slipped out. And came face-to-face with Nikolas and Oskar.

Shit.

The former opened his eyes so wide that she thought for sure they would fall out of his head. The latter simply raised a brow with a certain look on his face that Solana chose to ignore.

“I guess that answers our question,” Nikolas said, finally recovered from his shock and wearing a smug grin.

“And what question would that be?” Solana crossed her arms over her chest and pushed down any sort of denials that would make her look guilty of his assumptions.

“If Reyes was up for a round of sparring. But it seems like he might be a little taxed at the moment.”

Solana shrugged casually, although she could feel her cheeks starting to burn. “More than a little, I’d say.” She sent a wink at Oskar, who huffed a laugh and shook his head, and then she strutted down the hall, careful to keep calm and casual instead of melting into the floor in a puddle of mortification. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed. There was nothing embarrassing about carnal pleasures. It’s that she wasn’t partaking in carnal pleasures, and especially not with him. Reyes, of all people, was the last person who would dare to touch her. And if he tried, Solana was more likely to cut off his hand than enjoy the moment.

Although, now that she knew what his hands felt like—large and dominating and confident—she couldn’t help but be curious. What more could they do, and how could they make her writhe in other ways?

Absolutely not.

She shook her head. It was only that she had gone without intimacy of that sort for far too long and had spent an entire night wrapped in his sheets and scent. She was absolutely not thinking about Reyes specifically, or his weight over her, the heat of his body pressing into her, or hearing him beg and scream her name, for once.