Page 11 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)

Lorel

I’m still trying to make sense of it all hours later. Sila had set me down, and helped me back into bed and I had turned my back to her. Hidden my face in my pillows until she had left. Childish, maybe, but there were too many thoughts in my head and not enough ways to say them.

I’ve let the room fall dark, not bothering to relight my lantern. My sigils always faded quickly when I lit them. I was used to it. Used to so many things.

Always trying so desperately to be overlooked. To disappear into the shadows. I had no desire for greater attention.

But something about Sila’s attention is different, because no matter how mortifying I thought it was to be carried to my own room, I cannot deny that I had felt safe. That at this moment, I need that more than I can say.

The coming-and-going of footsteps and voices dies down in the hall. I hope that means that everyone is settled for the night, because now would be the perfect time to visit the scriptorium.

No one should be there at this hour. Even I have never stayed there this late.

It would be empty and quiet, and I could search in peace.

I couldn’t stay lying here wide awake in the dark forever.

I would surely go mad. I needed to be doing something.

I still wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for, but it all led back to the scriptorium. The book, the knife, the poison.

I sit up on the side of the bed and set my glasses on my nose before I slide my feet into my boots and tie them up.

My last attempts to walk hadn’t really worked out, but I was determined.

I was going to get to the bottom of this, one way or another.

I just hoped I wouldn’t have to drag myself there.

I manage to shuffle to the door and crack it open. It’s a start, but it’s going to be slow going. That’s fine, I have all night after all.

The hall is clear, just the hallway lanterns and the shadows they cast to keep me company. I keep close to the wall as I slip out into the hall and set off for the scriptorium. It is slow going, and I have to stop and rest more often than I would like.

That’s the problem when you spend six weeks abed, then follow that up by being poisoned and spending another week abed. All your strength deserts you. I’d always been weak, but it didn’t need to be so cursedly obvious.

I take the stairs carefully, the shadows thick around the edges.

I have walked this path at least twice daily for almost ten years now, thank the King.

It’s no hardship to find my way down the stairs in the dark and I reach the bottom without incident, only to have something run over my foot.

I stifle my scream unnecessarily. I can’t make a noise. And it’s just a rat.

I’ll tell myself that, anyway. I don’t dare investigate it any further.

The larger corridor towards the scriptorium is unlit, as if to remind me that I shouldn’t be here.

In the Keep, it wasn’t all that uncommon for someone to find a body, or blood, as they went about their morning.

The occupants of the Library were usually more circumspect, but I really didn’t want to come across one now. Or become one.

I shuffle along, and the mountain creaks and groans.

Usually relegated to background noise, the sounds are amplified in the quiet.

The snap of a door shutting has me pressing myself against the wall for a moment, but no footsteps follow it.

Perhaps I should not have done this in the dark alone.

If only I had asked— No. Don’t be stupid.

The arched entryway to the scriptorium looms out of the darkness. There are very few places that are locked in the Library, because the true deterrent was invoking the wrath of a Librarian. Which, as Striger had found out, is exactly as horrible as it sounds.

I rest for a moment under the arch. It’s different to see it in the dark, with little more than my weak lantern light.

All the arches and lines of the carving cast long, deep shadows.

There’s a shift in them, for a moment, that sets my heart racing in the dark.

I’m certain if anyone were near, they’d be able to hear it, it’s beating so loudly.

I press myself into the shadows, but nothing comes.

I continue on past the Librarian’s office, and the spot where Maxim had been warned not to run. I hope he had heeded the warning. You only really got one, after all.

My desk sits on the first level of the scriptorium, on the nearest side.

Our section has been roped off, the paints and brushes removed.

The map had been taken away somewhere. I hoped we could finish it, one day, though it would always be missing the piece that Trefor had died over. What an awful way to go.

I set my weak lantern down inside the rope and crawl under it, because I lack the dexterity to duck under it in my current state.

I drag myself up, holding onto the sturdy bookcase, and look around.

Now that I’m here, I’m not sure where to start.

The red paint responsible for the poisoning is gone and, they had likely found Striger’s supply contaminated.

Except that I hadn’t topped mine up recently, and I had used it only a couple of days earlier for the washes on the Book of Faetales. So it must have been added after that.

And if I’m correct, not just to mine. I doubt that Striger or whoever it was that had done this would have risked contaminating the paint masters’ supply before the poisoning.

It would have been done after. It was meant to look like an accident.

That was why it had been added to Elris, Trefor and Sybri’s paint.

That was why it was in the paint at all.

There are far easier ways to take out a room full of scribes.

Fuck. Someone had tried to poison me, and they’d killed Trefor.

They would have killed the others, too. Just collateral to cover up their target.

And maybe I’m delusional and Elris truly has a secret worth killing for, but with my recent track record, that is not likely.

The truth sits in my chest, cold and hard.

I remember my sister sitting, contrite, on my desk.

Something falls at the far end of the scriptorium, hitting the ground with a sharp metallic ring. It could be just another rat, but the hiss of cursing follows and I’m certain that rats have not yet mastered the art of swearing. Not yet, anyway.

There are people here, and I need to get out.

Now. There are more noises. The sounds of a scuffle trying to be kept quiet.

Meaning there was more than one of them, and they were not on speaking terms. The noises echo off the walls, and I can’t be certain where they come from, only that I need to move now.

Before they block the only exit out of here.

I kill the sigil in the lantern and sit to peer around the bookshelves before I crawl back out from under the rope.

There are shadows on the wall at the end of the hall, moving closer.

One shadow breaks free of the others and they give up on being quiet entirely.

I duck back behind the shelves, holding my breath even though there isn’t a chance it’ll give me away. Footsteps ring out down the hall.

“Enough fucking around! Just stop him and we’ll clean it up after,” says a man's voice.

“ Fine. ” There’s a noise, something sinking into flesh, a strangled cry, and then a body hits the ground next to me.

Thank the King I can’t cry out. His face grinds along the stones.

I don’t know his name, but I recognise him as a fellow scribe.

I stare too long as blood pools under him. He stares back, unblinking.

I need to move— no, hide. Fuck . Other footsteps echo down the hall. His attackers see me as soon as they stop to check the body. I shuffle back and the scribe on the floor moves. Throwing an arm out toward me. He starts to drag himself across the floor. Fuck.

Lantern light blooms across my face as his assailants appear in the gap between the shelves.

The taller of the two, with dark hair, sets his boot on the scribe’s neck.

He puts his weight into it with a sickening crunch.

The scribe stills, but he’s already given me away.

The second man, with brown hair, is holding his lantern up and smiling at me.

I am not surprised to see they both wear the Lightkeeper insignia.

“Davos,” he says, sounding pleased. “It’s her.” The man that I can only assume is Davos looks up from the dead scribe and his grin matches the brown-haired man’s. They know who I am.

“Aren’t we in luck then?” he says.

Move Lorel . I try to push myself up from the floor, push myself away towards the open arches of the courtyard that sits in the centre of the scriptorium.

My limbs fail me, and all I manage is to scramble pathetically across the floor.

One of them grabs my hair, dragging me up and back towards the light.

Fuck this. I don’t need to be able to scream to cause a racket. I kick out at whatever I can. My wooden desk screams for me as it is shoved aside, grating against the stone. A glass jar topples from a desk and shatters. I reach up to dig my nails into his hands.

“You little b—” His sentence ends with a wet gurgle. His hand loosens and I stumble to the floor. His body lands at my feet as I push myself out of his way. Blood wells from his mouth, his neck cut open. Fingernail marks gouge down the side of his face. A dark shadowy figure stands over his corpse.

“Hello, little mouse,” Sila says, low and dangerous. I try to remember to breathe as I look up at her, standing between the two dead Lightkeepers. I hadn’t even heard her dispatch the first. I hadn’t even heard her arrive.

She’s not wearing her robes. Instead, she stands there in skin-tight trousers and her old-fashioned billowing-sleeved blouse. Her fingers are extended with long, bloody, talon-like nails. Her eyes are black from edge to edge, and a dark ichor runs down her cheeks.

Her mouth moves in a smile that doesn’t reach her fathomless eyes.

Bright red blood is splattered across her face.

In her hand is the long, cruel blade from my memory, dripping with thin red blood.

Something sensible, like fear, seizes my lungs.

Traps the air in my chest. I freeze in place.

She’s far more dangerous than any Lightkeeper. I could never hope to outrun her.

Sila pushes the Lightkeeper away with her boot and all I can think is that I’ve seen people move dead rats with more care. She kneels, and the blade disappears in a wisp of dark shadow. Her talons retract as she reaches out to take my face.

“Did they hurt you?”

I flinch at the unexpected gentleness in her voice. My scalp feels tender. If anything, her face turns darker. She tips my head forward, running her fingers through my hair with alarming tenderness.

“Perhaps I was too merciful,” she murmurs. Blood sticks to my face as she takes her hand away.

She’s too soft. Too gentle. So dark. So lovely.

My hands shake as I try to form the signs I need.

I’ve seen your blade before.

“Ah, you did see me that night,” she says. She purses her lips, looking regretful. “Just know that I could not do it, little mouse.”

You were going to kill me.

“Yes.”

Just like they were.

“Yes.”

Then why did you stop them?

Sila looks me in the eye, steady. The shadows deepen around her, her eyes darkening again. Her features stretch unnaturally, and she is even taller. A looming shadow.

My heart races. My lungs release. The curse in my chest stirs, as if trying to make itself comfortable. I should try to run. She had tried to kill me.

I don’t know what it is I’ve done that so many people want me dead.

Sila holds out her hand to me, in a gesture that reminds me of valiant knights in old faetales.

“Because I could not do it,” she says. “But you clearly cannot be trusted with your own safety. Come with me.”

It’s not a question.

Or what?

“Or I will take you anyway,” she whispers.

I don’t know where she wants me to go, but I want answers, and Lune is right. Every time I stumble, Sila is there. Rescuing me. She needn’t have made her threat, because I want to go and I can’t face this all on my own.

I take her hand, resting my pale fingers against her long, bloody ones. She smiles. It is a thing of nightmares and rips the air from my lungs.

“Hold your breath,” she says.

The shadows whisper as she pulls me against her. I take a deep breath, and jam my eyes shut, and let the darkness take me.