Page 12 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)

Lorel

Sila holds me tightly and, even with my eyes closed, I can feel the darkness pressing in, trying to smother me. My lungs burn, threatening to burst from my chest if I have to hold my breath for a moment longer. I can’t hold it much longer. It’s stifling and oppressive?—

And then the darkness is receding. Sila’s arms loosen, resting softly around me in a protective circle as I gasp for air, the action entirely void of any sound.

I rest my forehead against Sila’s shoulder as my chest shudders.

The room spins and her solid form is grounding.

It had only been that morning that Sila had carried me to my rooms. Left me to rest. How had it only been mere hours ago?

There’s a plush carpet under my knees, and dull light from a sigil-lit hearth.

I haven’t seen one of those in years . Wherever I am, this isn’t a place for scribes.

I tip my head to the side, taking in the room.

It’s almost like some kind of storage closet, though it’s far too large for that.

The furniture too fine. There are books and papers piled on almost every available surface, including the armchairs and the lone footstool.

The only truly bare spaces are the gap on the rug that we are currently occupying, and the chair behind the desk that dominates the space.

Through the double doors to my left I catch sight of a bedpost, a robe slung over the end. Sila’s robe.

Dawn King help me. Sila’s rooms .

Sila laughs softly as I look up at her. It softens her expression, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

My hands are still wound tight into her blouse and I let go as if burned.

My glasses sit askew on my face, and I set them to rights.

There are specks of blood across them that I’ll have to clean off later.

“Are you alright?” she asks. Her eyes are back to normal now, though her face is still tracked with those blood-like tears. They’re pooled at the corner of her mouth, stuck in her teeth as she speaks. She should be terrifying, splattered with the Lightkeepers blood too. She isn’t.

Are these your rooms?

Sila nods. “It’s the safest place for you, since I cannot seem to keep an eye on you else wise.”

You’ve been watching me.

“Of course I have. In case you haven’t noticed little mouse, people keep trying to kill you.”

You amongst them.

Her face grows sombre. “I suppose you will want an explanation.”

I think I deserve one.

“Do you not trust me?”

Not at all.

“Then why did you come with me?”

My hands hesitate in their reply. She had freely admitted to holding a blade over my heart with every intent to still it.

Because you didn’t.

Because if anything, it seemed she kept preventing my death.

Why didn’t you?

There is a fracture in her face, a glimpse of something sharp and aching, there and gone.

She pulls her arms away from me now and takes my hands as she stands.

She’s gentle as she tries to tug me up and so she doesn’t expect the way I settle all my weight into the ground, refusing to be pulled up.

I try to tug my hands back, but her grip is firm.

Sila sets her mouth in a wry smile, running her thumb over the back of my hand and this time I could be as leaden as the stone around us and I would still go to my feet. As soon as her grip loosens, I tug my hands back.

You’re going to have to answer my questions .

“I will.”

But not this one.

“No.”

Then you cannot expect me to stay here ?—

“Scribe—”

Don’t scribe me ? —

Sila’s sigh is loud in the chamber. “Lorel. There are some things I cannot answer for you.”

I don’t understand.

“You wouldn’t understand— No, it is not because I doubt your intelligence. You would think me a liar.”

Now I certainly do.

That wry twist of her mouth again. “Are you always this mouthy? Usually you’re so circumspect.”

Those men recognised me. They were going to kill me. They killed that other scribe. You were going to kill me— what am I supposed to make of that? Who will protect me from you if you change your mind?

“Oh, little mouse, it is far too late to change my mind,” Sila says. “But let us make a bargain, if that will put you at ease.”

A bargain? That is a faetale.

“Hmm, is it? Let’s see, shall we?” Sila holds out her hand, clenching it into a fist and then opening it again, her palm fills with shadowy smoke. It drips from her palm. Curls in the eddies of the air.

This is absurd. You are not —

“While you bear the curse mark, I will not harm you. You will have my protection, and you will stay where I can do so,” she says.

The shadow curls, as if listening to her words. It is impossible. A bargain is a fae thing, and there is only one true fae left— the Dawn King. There is no one else in the Citadel that could make such a bond.

Sila has fae blood, that much is obvious, but how much of her power comes from being a Librarian?

A Librarian cannot walk through walls, or move through shadows.

They do not summon blades, and while they can be horrific nightmares, I had never seen anything like Sila when she had wrapped me in her darkness.

“What is there to lose if it’s not real? Take my hand again.” I wanted to trust her. I wanted to feel safe here, because where else could I even go? There was nowhere else I wanted to go.

I reach out and grasp her hand and the shadow twists, suddenly sharp, cutting a clean line into each of our palms. I feel the warmth of my own blood, thin and red as it pools in our hands.

Sila’s is a deep, dark red that is almost black.

It’s cold and thicker than I would have expected.

The shadow wraps around our hands like a handfasting ribbon, soft as silk.

Sila clasps my hand, and her features lengthen, the light dancing across her face, her hair bleeding into the room's many shadows.

“While you are marked,” Sila says, with a strange echo in her voice. Inky darkness drips down her cheeks. “I promise you my protection. Your turn, little mouse.”

I can’t speak aloud, and I have only one hand. It isn’t like this is really happening, anyway. Though the blood pooling in our hands suggests otherwise.

I will stay where you can protect me, I mouth. The shadowy ribbons constrict tightly around our clasped hands until it almost hurts. I gasp, a sharp intake of breath as the shadow melts into my skin, sealing the promise as it heals the wounds it left.

Sila stares at me. It is a full minute until she lets go of my hand. Her fingers brush against mine as she goes. I inspect my palm and there is a shiny stripe of freshly healed skin. The only evidence on me of the bargain struck. It hadn’t left another open wound across my writing hand, but?—

It shouldn’t have worked.

I look up at Sila, and she’s smiling softly.

How?

“I am fae,” she says, shrugging.

That isn’t possible.

“I warned you that you would not believe me,” Sila says.

And she’s right. She did. I’m still not sure I do, but there is a surety from the bargain that settles over me.

Some part of the magic of it that leaves no room in my mind for doubt.

Sila will protect me. I will stay where she can do so. Sila is a true fae.

I rub the scar tissue. Now there will be scars on both my hands. I look up at her, and she’s watching me intently, face impassive.

How can you be fae?

I don’t expect an answer, but this time she gives one. “I am old,” she says.

You would have to be ancient .

Another shrug. “As pleased as I am that you are taking an interest in me, these are not the most interesting questions you could be asking.” She’s smiling again, just a soft curve of her lips and a gentle sparkle in her eyes, as if I amuse her. She’s right. There are more pressing matters.

The poisoning wasn’t an accident, was it?

My hands shake at the thought of it. I had almost died. Others had . Those men, the dead Lightkeepers, had recognised me.

I think of my sister sitting on my desk.

An unpleasant suspicion grows in me. He couldn’t be bothering with me now after so long, could he?

Surely not. I redirect my thoughts— I can’t think of Orielle or the court right now.

My relationship with her is fraught, but I can’t fathom that she might try to kill me.

It doesn’t seem right, but how well do I really know who she has become? How well does she know me?

“I do not think so. I think the men I killed this evening were tidying up loose ends. The scribe they killed must have been tangled up in it.” Sila pauses, frowning.

“I’ll need to go and clean that up before the day starts, or Mercias will have a fit.

Not, of course, that he has any grounds for it after his most recent behaviour. ”

I don’t understand how you fit into it.

I still don’t quite understand how I fit into it.

There is nothing special about me. The Dawn King had confirmed as much when he let me leave the Keep.

Only an incident with a book. And a space of memory, wiped clean.

Fuck. I should have been more curious about what else was missing.

I’d been so focused on the book, I hadn’t even considered what might have happened in the vacant space in between.

Had I done something to cause this mess?

The dreadful mass of the curse shifts in my chest. Or is this the past finally coming back to haunt me?

I flinch as Sila’s cool fingers brush my skin. The light catches on the scar across her palm. She cradles my face in her hands as if it is a precious thing.

“Little mouse,” she says, softly. I had gotten caught up in my thoughts. “There you are.”

Sorry .

“You have nothing to apologise for,” she says.

“If anything, perhaps I do. I was tasked with watching the scriptorium. I was told I would know my mark when they appeared. I know no more than that. I do not know why you are considered a threat, and when it came to it, for the first time in my long life, I did not want to do it. I could not do it.”

My stomach churns and my skin goes cold. The curse mark feels ice cold, and the chill of it prickles across my skin.

Someone gave you an order? The Library?

“No, not the Library,” says Sila, hesitating. My silent breath catches. Surely she is not an agent of the Keep, too. “My queen.”

I stare at her.

What? A queen? There is no queen.

Sila shakes her head. “For as long as there have been sacrifices, there has always been a queen, too.”

That doesn’t make any sense .

I have bound myself to a woman who thought a queen had ordered her to kill me.

Sila has surely taken leave of her senses.

And yet, she had made a bargain with me with horrific shadowy powers the likes of which belonged in myth and faetales.

My horror must show in my expression, because her face closes off to me and her hands slide away.

“There is more to the world than your understanding, scribe,” she says, her tone cold. It’s all too much, all at once. There is only the King. None of this makes any sense.

“I need to go clean up the mess and find you something to eat. There is a washroom off the bedroom if you wish to use it,” she says, turning away from me. “You can sleep in the bed. I never use it these days.”

I don’t want her to go. I don’t want to be left alone here. I reach out to stop her and the fabric of her shirt slips through my fingers as shadows wrap around her. When they dissipate, she is gone and I am alone with only my whirling thoughts for company.