As Sol walks away from his bedroom door, all he can think of is how, when he lies down to sleep tonight, his bed will smell of the fiery girasol who already occupies his mind.
Moira.
The sunflower who bloomed without the sun.
8
Moira sits in bed, staring at the door Sol walked through, trying to decide her next move.
Just as she stands from the bed, her grimy feet hitting the floor, someone enters the room.
“Come with me,” the man says, just near the door, his face emotionless and his voice stern.
He has the same coloring as Sol does, the same coloring, it seems, as everyone else here. She is a drop of milk in a sea of caramel.
“To bathe?” she asks, rubbing her arms. She’s starting to feel the dirt of death on her body, wishing to be rid of the remnants of the night before.
“Come with me,” he tells her again, not answering her.
She eyes the weapon he holds, one that could easily blast her through the walls from the looks of it. And she wishes for her bow and arrows.
They may not be the most modern of weapons, but she welcomes what she knows. All the years of shooting arrows until the sun had gone to sleep had prepared her for a battle she never knew she’d have to fight.
She walks toward the man and they leave the room together, while another man with the same type of gun joins them and walks behind her.
Free to leave?
It doesn’t seem that way.
She itches to question. To defy. To leave.
But seeing Sol at the bottom of the steps has her holding her tongue and her fortitude. He’s in all black again, his hair dry now. It shines in the muted light, like some kind of crown. He hardly offers a glance before walking away.
No one speaks as they step outside. When she glances around, one of the men nudges her forward. She nearly trips over herself and Sol turns at the sound of her grunt, his arms out to steady her.
“Déjala,” he snaps, shoving dark sunglasses over his eyes.
He climbs into the car before them and she winces at the squish of the mud between her toes.
“I’m going to get mud everywhere,” she mutters before climbing in.
“I won’t kill you for it,” Sol says, and she nearly laughs.
It isn’t quite a joke, but something along those lines. Enough for her to relax in the seat. He stares at her as he clicks his seatbelt into place, and she sighs as she does the same. Only once it’s in place does he look away.
“Where are we going?”
“Your questions annoy me,” is all he says as the car drives away.
Belatedly, she looks at the home she’d just been in.
On the outside, it’s uninviting. The stone siding looks old and the ivy covering it is unruly.
Moira leans forward to see more as they pull away, but the farther they go, the harder it is to make out the house.
Let alone the man beside me, she thinks to herself.
“There’ve been rumors of a MacQuarrie boy two towns over,” Sol starts, causing her attention to snap right to him. “We’re going to lure him, with you as bait.”
He doesn’t know they don’t love me.
If anything, they’d leave her as desolate and broken as she is, happy to be free of her.
“What makes you think he’ll come?” she asks, her hands in her lap.
“I’d think you would be hellbent on proving your worth.”
“Aye, but I’m not a liar.”
Sol’s chuckle has her frowning. “You’d better learn how to be one soon, girasol.”
Spain hadn’t been good to Sol. He’d scavenged for meals, been beaten half to death, and after his mother’s death, he’d been so skinny that he could feel each of his ribs.
He reflects on that life as he sneaks a glance at the woman beside him from the corner of his eye.
Sol had seen the worst of his days. He’d become well-acquainted with desperation. And while he was certain this girl was at her worst, he couldn’t see the signs he usually did in the others he was surrounded by.
Desperation isn’t something most can hide well.
Either this young woman isn’t like most or…she isn’t desperate to live.
Her hair is bedraggled, her dress torn and stained.
But every time Sol sets his eyes on her, those details fall away. And Sol doesn’t see anything other than a woman who looks like she should be afraid of her own shadow.
The sight of her in his mind’s eye, killing her mother, makes him pause. And every time he thinks of getting rid of her, it stops him.
More than that, it makes his blood run hot.
The image of it causes him to hesitate, take a deep breath, and shake his head. As if that would get rid of the offending woman’s grip on his already unsteady desire.
“And if he doesn’t come?” she asks, her voice only holding curiosity.
She hasn’t tried to run, hasn’t attempted to harm anyone here.
Moira is the most peculiar prisoner he’s ever met.
And in this moment, regarding her as a prisoner makes him uncomfortable.
“You will help me find them, Moira,” he informs her, his eyes forward. Looking at her makes his plan harder to execute.
“And if I fail?”
Sol closes his eyes for a moment, knowing his men are listening, knowing they’re wondering what the hell is going on here.
He can’t answer her.
Because keeping her had never been part of his plan.
“Estamos aquí,” the man driving announces.
“Bueno,” Sol tells him, before removing his sunglasses to look at Moira. “Julio is going to drop you off just outside town, at the bridge. You will have a mobile phone with my number programmed in it. If, in twenty-four hours, we hear nothing, we will come back.”
Julio clears his throat and Sol glares in his direction for a moment before looking back at Moira.
“It is important you succeed. I’m a man who packs lightly. Excess baggage is of no use to me,” Sol says.
All while he speaks to her, her lips are parted and those wide doe eyes of hers don’t blink.
Sol leans over and grips the handgun tucked under his seat, sliding it forward and taking ahold of it before straightening. “You look confused. This is what awaits your failure.”
She doesn’t react to the threat of death and it creates a buzz within him. One of anxiousness at the idea of not knowing how to use her as a pawn without proper incentive.
Moira doesn’t give a shit about her own life.
Why would she help him?
“Do you understand?” he asks, shoving the gun in the back of his waistband, then taking the small mobile phone from his pocket. He places it in her hands, noting the way they shake as she nods.
“How do you know I’ll come back here to meet you?” she asks him.
It takes everything in him not to grab her. Not to tell her that she will come back because he demands it. Because his men—men specifically chosen to blend in—will be following her closely.
But he can’t tell her the truth.
So he lies instead and tells her, “Because you aren’t worth anything to anyone else.”
The words taste like ash on his tongue.
9