Page 30 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)

Lorel

I rummage through the kitchenette and find some pickles, stale bread and some of the salty powder that makes a clear soup that makes the bread edible.

It’s a world away from that first meal from the Librarian’s mess hall, but since the last thing I ate was that awful bread in the Library, it tastes almost the same.

It’s quiet with Sila resting. Sila isn’t usually loud by any means, but when I’ve curled up to sleep in her bed, it’s usually to the scratch of her pen, or the dull soft sound of the blotter.

The quiet rustle of turning pages. The smell of old paper and damp earth.

The scent of blood still clings in the air, still marks the rug by the hearth.

There’s no sound from the bedroom. Everything is still, and it makes me anxious. The curse stirs, restless.

I stand to go and check on Sila, when there is a gentle knock at the door. I still, my heartbeat kicking up.

“Lorel? May I come in?” Lune calls softly through the door.

Relieved, I open my mouth to call back a reply, close it with a grimace, and then turn myself reluctantly away from the bedroom door.

Lune’s face is a picture of anxiety that eases only slightly when she looks at me.

Sila’s mirror earlier had shown the way dark shadows are pooling under my eyes.

How I am starting to look a little worn and thin around the edges.

The curse eating away at me to sustain itself, just as Sila had said. I step back to give Lune room to enter.

Lune lets out a relieved sigh as I close the door behind her.

“I hate the Librarian’s quarters. I always feel like I shouldn’t be here, despite my special dispensation.

” She drops her case to the floor and pushes a bundle of clothes into my hands, before she grabs my face with both hands, the tingle of her magic tickling my skin.

Her frown deepens. “I can see something is wrong,” she says, clearly frustrated. “But it won’t show me anything.”

She lets me pull away to find something to write with in reply. I set the clothes aside, grateful for them, and also not. I’d liked what Sila had said before she’d kissed me, but I also can’t very well wander around in only a shirt and nothing else.

I’m fine.

Lune looks to the ceiling as if asking for patience. “You’re not, but if you’re not going to tell me, then I can only hope you know what you’re doing,” she says. Her eyes flick to the bedroom door. “And that it isn’t her doing.”

“I can hear you, you know.” Sila’s voice is weak, but clear as she calls out. I follow Lune into the bedroom, where Sila is propped against the pillows, almost exactly as I had left her. She looks worn still, but improving.

“Librarian Sila, you’re awake,” Lune says. It is as cold as I have ever heard her, any pretence at bedside manner entirely gone.

Sila smiles, and it’s one of her sharp toothed ones. “Cupbearer,” Sila says, greeting Lune with her title with equal ice. The use of Lune’s title is a clear warning.

Once there would have been a Cupbearer to tip the poison into Sila’s willing mouth before she stepped towards the altar.

In all the years since its inception, the ritual of the sacrifice has remained the same.

Now, Lune was the Cupbearer to others like Sila.

To each sacrifice that had walked to the altar in the past decade.

Lune’s jaw stiffens. “I’ll need to check your wounds,” she says, as if she’d rather crawl through the corpse of a cave mole.

“I know your tone is only because of your care for Lorel, and so I will let it pass,” Sila says. “You may inspect your handiwork.”

Neither of them thaw much. Lune’s jaw is set in a stubborn line and Sila observes her as she might watch the scriptorium on a dull morning. I perch on the end of the bed and watch on anxiously.

“You’re healing remarkably well,” Lune mutters, already able to pull out the thread she’d used to stitch Sila’s skin back together.

“The Library takes care of its own,” says Sila blandly. Lune has her roll onto her side so that she can inspect the whole of the wound. Lune’s frown persists.

“Does it now?” Lune says sharply. A chill prickles over my skin and I go very still.

“You are lucky to even be in this room, Cupbearer,” Sila says. The tone of her voice makes me want to hide in a closet until she’s gone.

Lune straightens, relinquishing Sila so that she can settle back against the pillows. Lune’s eyes pass over the room, littered with the debris of Sila’s long life. “You’re lucky I haven’t reported you for holding a scribe,” Lune snaps back. Sila narrows her eyes.

“How about we call a truce,” Sila says, watching Lune intently. “For Lorel’s sake.”

Lune sets her jaw. “Fine.”

“Besides, I have other concerns.” Sila’s eyes turn to me. “Like why the Lightkeepers are pursuing a scribe that happens to be a Dawnchild.”

Lune looks at me as well. “So you have told her,” she says. She looks conflicted. I wish she’d trust me in this.

Yes. I thought it had become relevant.

Sila reads my hand signs aloud for Lune’s benefit. Lune sighs deeply, rubbing her face with her hands.

“I know we don’t talk about this, but you know my thoughts on this. And with this last incident? You’re not safe here,” Lune says.

I catch the very slight upward tip of Sila’s eyebrows. “And what are your thoughts on this matter?” Sila asks.

I grit my teeth.

“That Lorel should leave,” Lune says. She’s set her jaw again, like she’s ready to settle in for a fight.

Sila narrows her eyes at Lune. “Leave the Library?”

“Leave the Citadel,” Lune says. “A scion of the Dawn King with no magic? These actions prove that he clearly had no intention of letting you go?—”

“Lorel isn’t without magic,” Sila says.

Lune looks quickly between the two of us. “ What ?”

But they don’t know that.

“No,” says Sila. “Which only adds more weight to the Cupbearer’s theory. To the Dawn King, you are a weakness.”

I stare at them both and think of what the Heart had said. That the words I would speak would mark the traitor’s downfall. There was only one being of equal standing to the Heart. Only the Dawn King. He is the traitor.

“No, what do you mean Lorel isn’t without magic?” Lune demands.

This is a mess.

“Have you never wondered at Lorel’s fevers?” Sila asks her.

Lune purses her lips. “I have, of course I have. I can feel the magic in them, but I’ve never been able to figure out how they happen. You’re saying her magic does it?”

“I believe so. We are still trying to understand it, because I have never seen its like before, either,” Sila says.

“And for what it is worth, I agree. Lorel needs to leave the Citadel. Magic or not, the Lightkeepers are going to great lengths to take you back, or kill you.” I look at Sila, alarm chasing my blood through my veins. “And I will not let them do either.”

I’m not going anywhere without you.

“I did not say you would,” Sila replies, holding my gaze. It burns through me.

I heard you tell the Heart it was your only tether. That means you’ll die without it, doesn’t it?

“What’s Lorel saying?” Lune asks, wary.

“Lovely things,” Sila says softly. I purse my lips.

There is a flutter of a laugh from Lune. “I’m sure,” she says, coming to stand by me. “I can arrange it.”

“Such interesting connections you have, Cupbearer.”

Lune is silent for a long moment, her dislike of Sila warring with her honest heart.

“I see the effects of the night cough. I send people to their death in the hopes it will end it. These plagues and problems have a root, but I don’t believe in the dark anymore,” says Lune.

She has a faraway look. I reach for her hand, gripping it tightly.

She looks down at me. “I won’t send you to your death, Lorel. I can’t let that happen again.”

It works exactly as she had intended, even if it doesn’t make her hurt any less real. And it doesn’t change that I would be risking Sila’s life, to take her from the very thing I was sure was keeping her alive. I couldn’t take Sila from this place with me.

But outside the Citadel? I hardly knew how I would survive on my own.

Magic or not, the outside world was a dark and cruel place, bereft of sunlight and ruled by blood and violence.

It was no place for a scribe, and as my eyes meet Sila’s, I know without a doubt that now she has me she will never let me go again.

That she will doom herself all over again to keep me, and that I can never let that happen.