Page 28 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)

Lorel

It is dark in Sila’s rooms with no lanterns lit and the sigil hearth is quiet.

The shadows relinquish us upon the rug and I gasp silently, desperate for the stale air of the room.

We must have been in the Library's Heart for at least a week with how the air tastes against my tongue.

Sila leans like a dead weight against me, almost crushing me.

She is so cursedly tall. I need all that muscle to come back to me so that it can move itself.

I push her up, cradling her head carefully as I lower her to the ground.

I have no idea how long Mercias will take to find help, and I have no real natural ability for healing.

She’s still bleeding, and all I have going for me is that I’ve had to copy many medical tomes.

There is a cushion on the nearby armchair and I grab it.

I have to shift her again to stuff it underneath her.

I try not to worry that she isn’t breathing.

Try to remind myself that she doesn’t need to.

I ball up my skirts against the wound and lean my body weight against it, willing the bleeding to stop.

If I can just get it to stop, everything will be alright.

Mercias will bring help, and Sila will heal, and she’ll kiss me properly this time.

Dawn King have mercy on me, I want it so badly.

I can hear my heart thumping in my ears. I lose count of them as time slides by, the time spent in the labyrinth catching up with me. My eyes are growing heavy. Where is Mercias? I need to keep my eyes open, keep the pressure on her, keep?—

The door rattles open, and so do my eyelids. Shit, how long had I been asleep?

“Sila! Fuck, this is a mess—” Mercias says as light blooms. His companion is holding a lantern aloft. Lune.

“Lorel!” Lune pushes the door shut and abandons Mercias, leaving him to find his way through stacks of books and debris to light the sigil in the hearth.

He should be able to move easily through the dark, but even then I’m not sure what kind of value that has in Sila’s warren.

Lune drops her case to the floor and sets her lantern down near Sila’s face.

I look away. She looks on the edge of death and if I have lost her, I don’t want to know it yet.

I don’t want to see her face stilled. I grip the fabric of Sila’s shirt tight.

“Come Lorel, let me have a look,” Lune says.

She’s gentle as she tries to shift me. I move reluctantly.

Mercias grumbles his way through Sila’s stacks, lighting every lantern he finds.

I sit back and I feel as bad as I had that first time I woke in the infirmary weeks ago.

My muscles cramping and my bones aching, and everything creaking like the scriptorium doors on a bad day. Only this is so much worse.

I watch Lune’s hands as she gingerly pulls back the cloth of my skirts with a grimace. They were already soaked in blood, now they are heavy and dripping with it.

“It’s clean, and the bleeding has stopped,” says Lune.

She hisses as she lightly presses her fingers to the skin around the wound.

Lune’s eyes go faint and distant as she checks Sila’s state with her magic, then they widen.

“Her pulse—” She frowns as she and her magic try to make sense of Sila. “It’s so slow.”

“As would yours be if you were as old as she is,” says Mercias from across the room. “As long as it still beats, she’ll recover.”

“A Librarian thing then, is it?” Lune says, giving Mercias a sceptical look. “Very well. We need to get this cleaned up, then I’ll deal with the wound as best I can. I don’t think there’s much I can do for her other than that.”

I clench my fists in my skirt, staring at Sila’s hand lying limp against the rug. I wish she was awake. I want her to tell us what we need to know and what we can do to help her. Though mostly, I don’t want to need her to do any of that at all.

“Lorel?” Lune asks, carefully easing my hands out of their fists. “Can you fetch hot water? Mercias can help me move her to the bed.”

I finally glance at Sila’s deathly pale face. The dark shadows under her eyes are darker than usual. There’s blood everywhere. I stare at her profile, the gentle light catching the soft edges of her face, her lovely full mouth. Mercias thinks she will live. Her heart still beats.

I nod and push myself stiffly up from the rug. Lune is watching me, sharp eyes missing nothing, clever mouth holding her questions because of Mercias’ presence.

In the washroom, I activate the sigil for the hot water and wash my hands in a daze.

It takes some time for the water to run even close to clear.

With all the excitement gone, I’m more tired than I’ve ever been, but I refuse to sleep until Sila is tended to.

I find clean cloth and a shallow wash basin under a pile of old clothes.

I top the basin up with hot water and carry it through.

In the bedroom, they’ve made Sila comfortable, and Lune is fussing through her case. Mercias is sprawled in an armchair, looking exhausted, head resting in his hand.

“Thank you,” Lune says, taking the basin from me.

She’s pushed Sila’s things aside on the bedside table to make room for it.

I hang back awkwardly, unsure what to do with myself.

I watch as Lune carefully tends to the wound and then have to look away when she stitches it up.

It had been bad enough to have her stitch up my own flesh.

Mercias appears at my shoulder, an alarming shadow.

He’s watching Lune, his eyes startlingly clear when I look up at him.

“Sit, scribe, and get some rest,” he says, keeping his voice low. “Sila will need you well rested.” He puts his hands on my shoulders and squeezes them, raising his voice for Lune’s ears this time. “Cupbearer, do you have everything you need? I should inform the Head Librarian of the breach.”

Lune is silent for a moment as she finishes what she’s doing. “I’m as well equipped as I can be. Go, I can take care of them.” She sets herself back to her task.

“Very well,” Mercias says. “I’ll take my leave.” His fingers tap nervously on my shoulders, and then he is gone in the blink of an eye, the door closing behind him in the other room.

Lune breathes a deep sigh. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I know it’ll be better if you wash and get out of that dress.”

She looks tired. She must have been near the end of her shift when Mercias fetched her. I let out a bone deep rush of air, with not a sound to accompany it. It doesn’t startle me so much anymore. I nod at Lune, who seems satisfied enough to continue tending to Sila’s wounds.

I hope that what Mercias had said is right.

That as long as her heart still beats, she’ll recover.

My fingers ache as I stand watching the bath fill with water.

I wash my face and hair in the washroom basin because I know once I enter the water, it’ll turn to muck from the bloody filth that covers me.

I scrub myself pink and my nails raw, trying to get it all off.

I need Sila alive. Without her, I wouldn’t survive.

Without her, I think my heart would die first anyway, mourning every lost chance and missed opportunity.

Because it had hurt enough to think the Library would keep her from me.

It hurt more to think that a reckless strike of a sword might do it instead.

“What in the name of the King is going on here?” Lune says, trying to keep her voice down.

I am wearing one of Sila’s ridiculous blouses and nothing else because there was little else to fit me.

Its large sleeves are awkward as I try to write a reply to Lune.

She has done what she can for Sila, and removed us from the bedroom to the living area.

I can see the silent shape of Sila in the bed, through the open door from where I sit.

I don’t want her out of my sight if I can help it.

Lune is giving me an assessing look, and I try not to fidget under it. She’s used her magic to check me over, and though I am covered in bruises and tiny cuts, there is nothing immediately threatening my well being. It makes a pleasant change.

“I thought she was returning you to your rooms,” Lune follows up. “Not her own rooms.”

She did. Only ? —

“You’re here willingly, aren’t you? If you’re not, I can get you out. We can leave,” she says, eyes darting in the direction of the bedroom. I fumble my borrowed pen in alarm.

I won’t leave her.

Lune stares at the words I’ve written, and my heart thumps in my chest.

“What’s happening here, Lorel? I don’t like this Librarian’s interest in you.

No good ever comes of that. I see the scribes and the researchers when they visit the infirmary.

” Lune’s face is set in a dark scowl. I knew that, as well as any other scribe, as surely as I knew Sila would not harm me. Could not harm me.

I returned to my own room. I thought ? —

I’d thought that I needed to go to the scriptorium, that I’d needed to try and find out why someone had tried to poison me.

It doesn’t matter. I’ve been trying to find the cursed book. Sila has been helping me. We found it in the Heart of the Library.

Lune stares at me, her mouth hanging open. “And I suppose the Heart of the Library decided to run her through then?”

My eyes dart to the doorway, making sure Sila is still there.

No. When we left, there were Lightkeepers. They’d killed a Librarian.

Now Lune is deathly still. “What were— How were they—?” she stutters. “Why?”

They were looking for me.

“You? So they have determined to return you to them? Or they have decided you are a risk,” Lune says.

I hiss silently through my teeth, gesturing at her to keep her outraged voice down.

Surely that’s not why.

“Why else though?” she insists. I pause.

It’s been ten years since I left the Keep.

Left the place that had been my home, to join the Library.

I had thought they might have forgotten me, like a piece of unremarkable paper.

Other scribes have easily been forgotten by the Keep.

I knew that of Sybri’s sisters, only Anora visited her— never Lenore.

Not since Lenore had joined the Keep and the Lightkeepers.

But Orielle has always visited me, even when she shouldn’t.

The image of her sitting on my desk gnaws at the back of my mind.

As does the blood mage, as his body is torn asunder, who could only have tracked me with my sister's blood.