Page 89 of Daughter of the Dark

Jacobi returned with plates full of meat wrapped in doughy corn, cheesy bread made with yuca, and muffins that she knew were deliciously warm and slightly sweet. Plates and glasses clinked, gratitude was mumbled, and then there was the silence of the contented.

“I’m sorry,” she said, catching Jacobi’s hand as he sat beside her. Celeste came to join them at their small table. “I shouldn’t have brought this trouble here, but I didn’t know where else to go.”

Celeste placed a soothing hand over theirs. “You can always come here. This is your home,” she said, reminding her so much of her mother.

Solana took a bite of arepa to distract from the lump in her throat, even though it sat like a rock in her belly. “What has it been like here since I left?” she asked around another bite.

Jacobi scoffed and leaned back. “The muki are discreetly swept away by the Masters before anyone can so much as protest, but now they have these things around their necks, and they walk in broad daylight.” He paused and bobbed his head side to side. “Well, if it can be called daylight anymore. And the muki are more like tamed dogs.” Celeste reached over with a thumb and wiped away a drop of meat juice hanging from Jacobi’s beard. He gave her a familiar smile before turning back to Solana. “Have you seen the newest proclamations?” he asked, focused now on the glass of swirling pisco in his hand.

Solana glanced at Cora, who shook her head. At the table over, Alina was still asking questions between every bite of food. “I haven’t seen anything,” Solana said.

Wood scraped against wood as Jacobi pushed back in his chair and rounded the bar top. He came back with a large piece of parchment in one hand. King Killian, Savior of Supay was written in bold black letters across the top. Underneath was the profile of the king in the center of an eye, and farther down, the words Enemies of Supay will pay in blood.

“Please tell me no one is falling for any of this.”

“Mostly no one,” Celeste reassured her. “The people of Qhilli are warier than ever. More than anyone, we understand the danger of the quiet before the storm.”

With a sigh of relief, Solana sat back in her chair and considered what to say next, and how much to tell. The whole story was so much of a burden, and bleak, if she was being honest. There was a large chance that none of them would make it out alive.

“Tell them,” Cora encouraged her, as if reading her mind.

Tell them. Like it was the easiest thing in the world. Perhaps it could be.

“I met my father,” she started, and then she told them the rest.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

They slept in the tavern near the hearth on piles of pillows and blankets brought down from Jacobi’s upstairs home. Solana was awake before everyone else, sitting with her knees curled to her chest and staring into the murky room. She sat, and she stared, and she thought about her dream.

It was similar to one she had before, where she was on a rock in the middle of the sea surrounded by bodies, but this time they weren’t faceless.

One had Suri’s black hair, most of it matted with blood and scraps of flesh that floated around her like seaweed.

Nikolas’s neck had been torn almost all the way through so that his head drifted at an angle from his body.

Oskar’s abdomen was splayed open and left a trail of guts in its wake.

Cora had been torn into pieces and one of her eyeballs had bumped Solana’s foot, carried on a rogue wave.

Reyes wasn’t in the water. He had watched her from the shore, the gray of his eyes matching the gleaming collar around his neck, a mass of muki spread out among the familiar trees behind him.

Solana scrambled to her knees and crawled to Cora, careful not to wake Suri pressed against her back, dark hair spread over her face. Solana saw a flash of her in her dream and shook it away.

“Cora,” she whispered frantically. “Wake up.”

Her eyes popped wide open. It would’ve been comical were it not for the situation. “You know where Reyes is.”

“Yes,” Solana said, and then added, “Your gift is strange.”

“No stranger than yours. Let’s go.” Cora slowly rolled away from Suri and crawled to the door behind Solana. They were both still in full uniform, boots and all, prepared to go at a moment’s notice. Solana swiped the bag of himaya from the table and led Cora outside the tavern.

It was dark again. The dawn bells hadn’t rung yet, but they meant nothing now that the muki could walk the streets in broad daylight. The collars around their necks gave them the kind of strength that only the king would celebrate. She imagined the mass of them sweeping through the unsuspecting lands of Auquis, unfeeling and unkillable and unfulfilled like their master. They would ravage and tear apart the world one person at a time, with Reyes at their side.

Solana couldn’t allow it. She carefully guided Cora through the callejon in silence, haunted by memories. There was where she had killed her first muki. There was where Sami had first kissed her. She remembered it fondly, even though she had been devastated at the time. Not because she didn’t love him back, but because she was so scared to lose him. She had let her greatest fear dictate her life instead of enjoying the small bits of happiness while she had them.

Curtains fluttered in windows and one door opened. A small face peeked out, and Solana waved. Another door opened, and another, and soon the street was lined with her people, hands extended, strength in each of their touches, love in all their eyes. No one dared to say a word or breathe too loud, but they came out despite the danger.

Her home.