Page 25 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)

Lorel

Shards of glass catch against my exposed skin, opening a hundred tiny cuts, each bright red against the chapel’s gloom.

I have barely a moment to fear before shadows swirl around me, catching the glass and scattering it to the far corners of the nave.

As the shadows fall back, Sila coalesces at their centre, a wretched figure standing among heaped bodies and rivulets of pooling blood.

There is nothing but the sound of her ragged breathing and the clink of glass as it clatters across the marble floor.

I can barely focus on any of it with how the words of the book run through my mind.

They dance across my tongue as if in waiting.

A curse— of a kind. A prophecy that will become true once spoken.

I now know why I had been so afraid that night.

The Heart is tired of bowing to the Dawn King.

It had chosen me as the vessel to bear its message out into the world, only it had chosen poorly.

It had not known what I was capable of doing to myself out of fear.

Even I hadn’t known. The words of the prophecy fade, settling into my chest. Pooling back into that ever-present creature that has lived there since I first opened the book.

The glass cuts are tiny things that sting and dry quickly. I stare at them as I sit up, weary down to the bone, and as I flip my hand, I see that the scar from Sila’s bargain is gone. Only the still-healing wound of my foolish slip with the knife remains.

Sila shifts in a flicker of shadow, comes to stand in front of me, tall and impassive.

I don’t hesitate to collapse against her.

Rest my ear against the soft swell of her breasts.

There is the quietest, slowest sound of a gentle heart beat.

This must be how it sounds when it races, for surely it is lucky to beat even once a year.

No wonder her blood runs so slow, her temperature so cold.

Sila tips my head back and I do not begrudge her for checking that my throat is still intact.

I do not think I would have handled watching such a thing happen to her quite so well.

Her fingers brush gently from my jaw to my collar, and she makes a small, mournful sound.

It is something ancient and sorrowful, a keening note of grief that rings out through the dim chamber.

“When— fuck —” Sila says, voice raw and catching in her throat. She brings her hand around to cup my cheek. “I thought I had lost you.”

I reach out and wind my fingers in the soft silk of her blouse, craving that point of connection.

She’s so very close like this. I search her face.

Those dark eyes, half lidded as she looks down at me.

The soft contours of her cheekbones splattered with my dried blood, and her dark tears.

How could I have ever thought her terrifying?

Her eyes flick to my mouth as I swallow, my silent breath parting my lips as it rattles through me.

A slumbering warmth in my body that has nothing to do with the curse that slumbers within me, and has everything to do with how she’s looking at me.

Sila’s fingers move to cradle the back of my neck as she leans down?—

The Heart’s presence surges back to life within the imitation of the chapel. A wave of fear and panic and righteous anger washes over us. Sila’s face turns into a lovely picture of alarm and frustration at her patron’s sudden reappearance.

You must go. You must go now!

A gilded door appears at the back of the sanctuary, as if it has always been there. The Heart’s warning clamours around us, urging us to move, to go, to leave.

Sila gives me a look that I can barely begin to understand. It is the heartache of a missed chance, and a fear that chance might never come again, both wrapped up in the Heart’s urgency. I promise myself there will be another chance. I cannot think it will be otherwise.

Sila loops an arm about my waist, lifting me easily from the altar and setting me on my feet. This close, her sweet flower scent mixes with the copper scent of blood, and I grip her blouse tighter.

“Are you able to walk?” she asks, her arm still firm around me. I test my legs and nod. I don’t know how much further my legs will carry me. I don’t know how much further Sila’s legs can carry me if mine fail. I hope this door is a shortcut, given the urgency and the rude interruption.

The door leads to a stairwell that looks similar to the one leading from the entrance.

Sila takes my hand, her grip vice tight, and leads me up into the dark.

It’s a toothless kind of dark now, and no longer clouds our minds.

Sila’s pace is almost as quick as it had been when we walked through the Greater Library and none dared stand in her way.

The Heart's fear makes my heart race and drives me on after Sila.

We exit far more quickly, and the disorientation as I leave hits me as badly as it did when I entered.

Only this time, it feels like I am being reassembled.

Like the labyrinth has pulled me apart and made me into something new. Maybe it has. Maybe it already did.

I don’t even have the chance to take a breath of air before Sila’s shadows wrap around me and pull my body sharply up against the wall.

They pin my arms and legs in place with a grip as implacable as she is.

I struggle weakly as my sight adjusts to the light, showing me what exactly had caused Sila to hide me in her shadows.

Mercias stands almost where we had left him— but he is not alone.

Three Lightkeepers stand before him. Another lies lifeless on the floor, and near the feet of one Lightkeeper, lies the unmistakable form of a Librarian, deathly still, her dark blonde hair spilling across the floor.

My heart feels like it stops. Not another one .

I struggle against my bindings, but they only hold me tighter.

Mercias blows out a breath of air. “There you are,” he says, before he drops to his knees and activates the sigil to close the Heart of the Library.

“Here I am,” Sila says, taking up her position beside him.

Mercias glances at her as he stands again. “Fuck, you look awful.”

“Charming,” she says, turning her attention to the Lightkeepers. “To what do we owe the displeasure?”

Their leader smiles lopsidedly at them both. I recognise his face. Once it belonged to a boy that had grown up alongside my sister. Now it belongs to a man leading an incursion into the Library. Jaime. His hair is shaved close to the scalp, his features sharp and his brown eyes are calculating.

“As we informed the Librarian here, we are following the trail of the scribe known as Lorel,” he says.

His hand rests on the pommel of his blade.

There’s no leather binding on it. I remember that too.

There wouldn’t be— it wouldn’t last because he’s a fire mage.

I have a distinct memory of him threatening to set my hair on fire when I was younger.

He’d been whipped for it. Back then they’d still thought the hair on my head was worth more than his flesh. I suppose he was relishing the opportunity to track me down and drag me back to the Keep as prey.

“Following a trail,” says Sila thoughtfully.

She’s shifted to face them fully and I can no longer see her face, only the way she holds her body tense, as if ready to pounce.

“Ah, of course. Blood magic. I suppose her sister is cooperating? How upsetting. Fortunately, you will not find that same cooperation here.” Shadow snakes around her fingertips.

Mercias shifts his stance, mirroring Sila’s.

I search the faces of the other two Lightkeepers.

One of them, light-haired and green-eyed, smirks, his eyes bloodshot.

A blood mage. I can’t imagine my sister cooperating with these people, but she is one of the King’s inner circle.

Deception and contrivance are a matter of life and death.

If my death ensured her own life? Well…loyalty is rare to come by in the pit of snakes that is the Keep.

“We only intend to take the scribe into custody. Ask her a few questions,” Jaime says, trying to sound amiable. Trying to sound like he’s being reasonable after he’s clearly used the dead Librarian as a cover to sneak into places he has no right to be.

“On what grounds?” growls Mercias.

“That’s privileged information, I’m afraid,” Jaime replies.

“Hardly a convincing line,” Sila says darkly.

“Look, if you insist on resisting?—”

“What I insist on is you leaving,” snaps Sila. My little scribe heart quails. I even catch Mercias flinching. “You have no authority here?—”

“I have the authority invested in the Lightkeepers by the Dawn King himself,” Jaime cuts in.

The blood mage shoots him an alarmed look. Interesting.

“No, you don’t. Because if you did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation over the dead bodies of our peers,” Sila says.

Jaime rolls his eyes, turning away from Sila to the blood mage. “Is she still here?” he demands.

“Yes,” the blood mage whispers. “So close I can practically taste her.”

“Your own blood will coat your tongue before I allow you near her,” Sila snarls.

“Librarian tricks.” Jaime spits on the ground.

I stare at him, aghast. Even Orielle hasn’t done something that disrespectful before. The absolute nerve of him. “There’s only one way to deal with this. Bar the door, get rid of them.”

No . Fear scratches at my heart, a fluttering bat trying to get free. The third Lightkeeper moves to close the door, her hands already forming the sigil to lock it fast.

The door closes itself before she can finish, and the Lightkeeper barely has a chance to look around before a dagger is burying itself in her throat. She falls to the floor, blood bubbling from the wound as the blade dissolves into shadow.