Page 21 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)
Lorel
It takes some time for the tears to stop, for the overwhelming pain of it all to recede. Sila just holds me, as patient and still as the statues around us. It doesn’t really go away, the dull ache resting alongside the curse. How can it when neither of them have anywhere to go because of me?
Because it is clear as a well-lit light sigil that the reason the curse is still curled up in the cavity of my chest is because I trapped it there. Trapped it along with my voice, my sighs, my whispers. All of it locked away.
I’ve soaked through Sila’s blouse and it clings to my cheek as I sit there, pressed to her chest. How miserable to be so useless that when you finally manage to use magic, you use it to take away your own voice.
To be so afraid of something, everything.
To make myself as small, and plain, and unremarkable as I have always been.
As I have always told myself I wanted to be.
“Lorel?” Sila says. Her voice is wound through with concern and sorrow. That must be nice. To have the ability to say one word, and have it mean so much.
Irritation prickles under my skin and her fingers tense as I pull back from her, as if she is afraid to let me go. I am not worthy of it, this misplaced affection of hers. Of these feelings that neither of us should be feeling. Feelings that I will crush down with the rest of it.
I sit back on my thighs and wipe my eyes.
The labyrinth is silent and still. I take a deep, silent breath.
Sila’s face is shadowed, tracked with blood.
Something has cut through her sleeve, gouging up her arm.
I clench my fist, feeling the fresh scar tissue of the bargain on my hand.
I had been foolish to bind her to me. I am nothing but misfortune.
Sila reaches out a hand, touching my jaw, and I wrench myself away from her.
I’m fine.
“Lorel—”
Don’t. Don’t pretend that I am anything other than what I am.
Sila drops her hand back to her lap. “And what is that?” she says, voice flat. Eyes dark and unreadable.
Useless and foolish. I was worth nothing in the Keep. I am worth even less now. Who does this to themselves? To finally do something of worth, and make themselves into nothing.
My hands are all sharp, jerky movements and I know she sees every one of them. I want to shout the words into the dark, and I can’t, and I think I might cry from the frustration.
Sila sits silently, a long dark shadow. Then she sighs heavily. “It is a shame I will never get to tear the limbs from those who have made you believe this of yourself,” she says, low and regretful. “Come, scribe, we must keep moving.”
The way she says scribe carves through me and leaves all my buried feelings bleeding out of me.
I was the one who had put distance between us first. That Sila should call me that should not hit me so hard.
It’s what I had wanted, after all. For her to treat me as a Librarian should treat a scribe. It should not hurt so keenly.
I let her walk on, wondering if the Heart will take me here. Turn me to stone so that I don’t have to feel anything anymore. But the heaviness in my limbs does not come. And I do not wish to be left alone here, after all. I do not want to lose her to the darkness.
I stand, and with each step that I take, something settles in me. I want to blame it on the curse, with its cold, dreadful weight, but worse than that dread is the regret. It tangles and snarls on itself. Sinks a sickly feeling into my stomach. Something is horribly wrong.
Light catches the edges of Sila’s figure up ahead, her image reflected in the massive ornamental mirrors that line the corridor. A thousand Silas in a hundred mirrors.
The labyrinth has arranged itself in a perfect replica of the Court’s long mirrored hall of reflection, right down to the wallpaper and the scuffs in the tiles.
The painted ceiling rising high overhead appears accurate until I look too long and catch the subtle changes that turn it from the tale of the Dawn King’s Ascension to something much darker. Something that might be called treason.
It shows the Dawn King standing between two women. Then, one woman is in chains, and the second is crowned with starlight. Later, the crowned one lies dead over the altar, blood as black as ink staining the rest of the painting as the corridor continues.
“Scribe, you are falling behind,” Sila says, her voice drifting back to me down the long hall.
I tear my eyes from the ceiling and back to her.
She’s still walking on, as if she knows exactly where she is headed.
And she must, because she has walked it centuries ago.
The hall of reflection has only one destination— the chapel. The altar.
The click of her boots is fading, and I am seized by a desperate fear not to lose her. To not let her go on alone. Certain that if I do, I will not see her again. Not alive. I feel sick with the knowledge and I am moving, running as quickly as my tired legs can carry me.
My own boots beat out a harsh rhythm against the tiles as I race to catch her up. I cannot lose her. I cannot . Dawn King strike me! Why am I so afraid of everything?
The darkness presses in, crowding me as I strain my ears for a sign of her presence.
A strip of bright light up ahead is the only thing that illuminates the darkness.
It casts her in golden light, and my breath catches, silent as every other breath tearing through my lungs, to think that she might go through without me.