Page 9 of Daughter of the Dark

Fingers touched the back of her head and Solana flinched away. “Stay still. I’m only removing the gag. We don’t want you dying just yet.”

The rope fell away from her mouth and she sucked in a sputtering, greedy breath. Rough hands grabbed her bindings to straighten her, and then she was airborne, thrown over a sharp shoulder as if she were nothing more than a sack of flour.

Solana screamed, the pain in her side searing, radiating through her body until it took her breath away. The world went in and out of focus. Voices spoke, first quietly and then more intensely, until she was on her back on a hard surface, her hands trapped beneath her, the sky replaced with a low stone ceiling that seemed to press in closer with every beat of her throbbing pulse.

“She’s injured.” The voice wasn’t Reyes’s. It was softer and somewhat accusatory. Solana wanted to say, you should have seen the other guy, but nothing came out. There was a tug and the cool air rushed over her stomach and chest.

“Shit.” That was Reyes. She assumed it was his fingers that prodded the skin around the wound. Solana tried to wriggle away from his touch, but he steadied her with that same unforgiving hand. “Is this from a muki?” Gray eyes appeared above her. His hair caught the light and shimmered as it dangled from his forehead. Solana must have lost her mind, because she had the strangest urge to run her fingers through it and see if it was as silky as it looked.

“It has to be,” said the second voice. “Three parallel wounds. It looks like she was punctured and then tore free.”

That’s exactly what happened.

She must have said the words out loud, because Reyes was in her face again, his hands on either cheek, forcing her eyes to open and meet his stare. “Say the words. Tell me this was from a muki.”

Solana swallowed. She felt less like she was going to die and more like she wanted to punch Reyes in his stupid face. An improvement.

“It was from a muki,” she finally said, throat scratchy from screaming.

“There’s no reaction to the poison. How are you perfectly fine?” Reyes snatched his hands from her cheeks and leaned over to further inspect her side.

“I wouldn’t say she’s perfectly fine.” Remembering there was a second person in the room, Solana looked to her left and found a woman in a black cloak, her short brown hair slicked behind her ears and her bright green eyes pinned to Solana. “You’ll have to heal her before you start asking any questions.” Though she said the word heal, a foreboding feeling crawled over Solana.

“Close the door on your way out, Cora.”

“Reyes, I don’t think—”

“Let the king know we’re back. This won’t take long.”

“Wait.” Solana leaned forward, but Reyes pressed a hand against the center of her chest, pushing her back down to the stone table.

His skin was as cold as his eyes as he said, “This is going to hurt.”

Solana didn’t have time to consider his words before she felt the bite of something icy and foreign in the pit of her stomach.

It wasn’t awful, at first. She was used to pain, both physical and mental, as the muki’s emotions unleashed inside of her, but then it shifted. An unnatural sensation that crawled beneath her skin, dug into the marrow of her bones, and sliced her open one thin line at a time. She was pinned beneath it, trapped in her own body and scrambling to get away from it. Her body stretched to its limits. Her back arched until she was sure it would snap in half. All the while, Reyes’s hands pressed into her, his healing relentlessly burning her alive.

The pain disappeared, and Solana fell back to the table, gasping and gulping down air, her whole body shaking without Reyes’s hand to steady her. Whatever was left in her stomach surged into her mouth, and she leaned over to vomit all over the floor. Reyes jumped back with a hiss as she coughed and gagged and tried to breathe through it.

Finally, her stomach settled. She stayed on her side to give her blood the chance to return to her hands. Reyes watched her from several paces away, his arms crossed over his chest. A speck of vomit marred one of his shiny black boots. Serves him right.

“That’s a useful gift,” Solana said thickly.

“So is immunity to muki poison.”

Solana had never thought of it as a gift. More like an unexpected benefit that meant she could take more risks and had earned her more scars than was normal.

“Is that why you’re keeping me here?” she asked. The room was dingy and small, with tables like the one she was lying on placed at odd intervals against the wall. A cabinet stood farther to the side, but the door opened and a boy dressed in all black entered the room, stealing her attention. Reyes nodded his head toward the floor and the boy followed his gesture. He closed his eyes, but not before Solana saw a grimace flash across his face.

“What is he—”

“Shhh,” Reyes interrupted her, a finger pressed against his lips. The gloves he had used to inspect the muki were gone, and she could see the same dark ink that was on his neck on the backs of his hands. She wondered what he had deemed worthy enough to mar his skin forever, and if she could use it against him.

A flash of movement forced Solana’s eyes back to the floor. The splash of her vomit disappeared as if it had never been there to begin with.

“Thank you, Andres.”

The boy dipped into a shallow bow and then breezed out of the room. Solana knew that gifted people existed, but seeing the actual act of it was an entirely different matter. She glanced down at her side to where the twinges of pain had faded into a dull ache. What skin she could see was closed and smeared with dried blood. No shredded flesh in sight.