Page 67 of Daughter of the Dark

And there was nothing she could do to make it right. Except …

If she could reverse the curse, then all of her reckless choices and stupid mistakes would be rectified. Sami would be free. The muki under the castle could be returned to their families. Solana could be known as the Cursebreaker of Supay. She could leave more than death and destruction in her wake.

The curse in Nikolas had felt distant and thin, like an undercurrent too deep to reach. But what if she could command a muki to her, feel inside of it without killing it and find the curse that consumed their souls? She could tear it apart one thread at a time. One muki at a time.

Starting with Sami.

For now, Solana couldn’t think about that. Not yet. First, she had to watch Sami’s body disappear, and then she had to wait until the sun fell and she could use her gift in the same way that had started all this.

Night came, and Sami’s pyre was nothing but embers that she watched unendingly. Her hand was empty, Cora having gone inside hours or days ago. Solana was more alone than she had ever been. More lost than she had ever felt.

She waited, and waited, and waited, just like she had all those years ago, for a father that never came back, for a mother who died and never returned, for a life that she could only imagine but never touch.

The light from the windows of the throne room shone on the ground where she stood. She moved away from it, into the dark and closer to the edge of the cliff, until she was so close that the toes of her boot hung over the edge. One more step and her body would fall onto the jagged rocks below. One more step and she would cease to be.

Except she wouldn’t. She’d come back to haunt and suffer some more.

Perhaps then Reyes could use her own dagger to finally end her once and for all. What happened to her after was inconsequential. She had never expected to be welcomed into Hanan Pacha. She had only ever wanted to be free.

Solana stepped back from the ledge. Behind her, rocks skittered across the ground. A quick look over her shoulder told her that Reyes was there, crouched in the shadows, watching and waiting.

Always waiting.

The pointlessness of life was enraging. No matter the good they did, the people they loved or the choices they made, they ended up cursed and suffering. Men like her father lived while men like Sami died.

All the years she had spent feeling sorry for herself, hiding herself away and accepting a life half lived as if she were some type of martyr. Reyes had been right to call her a coward, but no more. She was done with pity, with weakness. Solana would rage against the curse, against the creator god who had condemned them all, and she would begin by calling Sami to her so that she could reverse all the damage that she had wrought.

Before, when she had reached for her gift, it was like skimming the surface. This time, she waded in knee-deep. It filled her within heartbeats, a sense of otherworldly calm slipping into her veins, between her bones and tendons, wrapped around her heart until it was barely beating, and she could hear beyond it. The waves crashing against the rocks. Muki skittering across stone. Families in their homes chanting prayers and whispering soothing words to fearful children.

A brutal wind tore the hair from her braid and tossed it against her cheeks. Rocks pelted her legs. Seawater splashed her back. When she opened her eyes, she saw the shadows surrounding her like a second skin, swirling and slithering and beckoning. In her mind, she saw Sami’s face, spoke his name over and over, felt his hand in hers.

Before her, the space filled with shadows that cleared away to reveal a twisted form of him. Unrecognizable, if she hadn’t called him to her. If she wasn’t so entirely familiar with every crease of his forehead and the way his eyes always watched her, wide and intentional and loving.

They watched her the same even as they were, filled with black and lidless, unable to close as she stepped forward, dagger in hand. He stood entirely still as she placed a hand to the cold, slippery skin of his chest, desperate to feel the heart within that had beat against her cheek so many times.

But there was nothing. No flicker of life. Only emptiness.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered dreadfully. “I’m so sorry.”

The muki’s hand grabbed her wrist. She heard the rocks behind it shift again, but they stopped as it lifted her dagger to its chest and placed the tip right where Sami’s heart would have been. In its eyes was a plea.

Solana shook her head vigorously, eyes and nose streaming, chest aching and splintering.

Release me, his eyes begged, but Solana was going to make this right. She was going to make certain that Sami came back, got to see his family again, and never had to pay the price for loving her.

With shaky hands, she pried her wrist from his grip and took a small step back. He went to follow, but Solana held a hand up, palm out, and shook her head.

Sami’s creature form froze. The handle Solana had on her gift wavered with the look of confusion that flitted across his face. She blew out a breath and kept that hand up, directed at the center of his body, and reached further into her own mind, into that well of power, to find the thing that kept Sami prisoner.

It was a long descent into darkness. The waters of her gift rose slowly, thick like mud, until her mind was drenched. Until it felt as though it was stuffed up her nose and in her lungs and every single breath was a chore. Sami’s body trembled, skin and muscle rippling with restraint. A low hiss slipped out of its lipless mouth.

The air turned icy, Solana’s breath clouding in front of her, and still she dug deeper.

The curse slipped between her fingers, elusive and intelligent, crafted by a god who was filled with grief at his children’s betrayal. The ground beneath her seemed to slip away, and Solana hardly felt as it cut into her knees, as the blood in her body leaked from her nose and ears.

Still, she reached, she pushed, inserting herself into the crevices of light that speared through the dark, desperate to blow them wide open.

But they squeezed her instead. Ensnared her in their agonizing grief. The curse wrapped itself around her and took bites of her soul, one at a time, until she knew that she would die from its teeth and terror and transform into the curse itself.