Page 37 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)

Lorel

In the hallway, Lightwarden Beryl stands with three other Lightkeepers, waiting to escort me to the King.

Inetta takes her leave without so much as a backwards glance.

If this is to go poorly, Inetta can’t be seen to be friendly with me.

Far easier to make amends later, if required, than to pick the wrong side.

How dare she warn me of bringing harm to Orielle of all people.

Orielle has far more to answer for than I do.

I would have been content to be forgotten by this place, but she held on to me.

She had been there when the poisoning had occurred, she had given them her blood to find me, and now here I am being pulled back into the Keep and the Court's games.

Beryl grabs my arm, dragging me along with her, and my entourage follows.

We go up again, and the plain stone walls and dull tapestries give way to marble and gold and painted murals.

Here, the King’s palace pierces through the mountainside, emerging out into the open air.

It is the only part of the Citadel to do so.

Where the rest of us exist in darkness, his palace is filled with the filtered light of the outside world.

Stepping into the palace has always felt like stepping out onto the open mountainside— dangerous and highly inadvisable.

I am pulled along hallway after hallway, and above, the ceilings are painted with swirling clouds.

We pass the closed doorway to the hall of mirrors, and my eyes catch on it for a moment before I am pulled onward.

I had walked these hallways so often as a child, in the wake of Orielle’s skirts.

Even then, the hallways were cold, dead, echoing things and there had been no welcome in them.

It is no wonder terror has always come easily to me. I was raised on it.

Finally, Beryl pulls us up short in front of a door with two Lightkeepers posted either side. A gentle chatter comes from inside, and both guards tap their foreheads in a salute. One turns to knock on the door, sharp and loud in the empty hall. The chatter on the other side ceases immediately.

There is a pause, and I can imagine the performance going on inside. It is always the same. The guards will look to the Dawn King, who will give them leave to open the door— or not. It is too much to hope that he might change his mind this time.

The doors open with a whisper and Beryl pushes me into the room. Her footsteps follow behind me, loud in the chamber's silence.

The Dawn King accepts audiences three times a day, first in the morning when he wakes and is dressed, second when he takes his morning meal, and third at the midday meal.

I have trespassed on the midday meal. The long room has the same extraordinary scale as the rest of the palace and is occupied by a table set out with the finest of foods.

At the far end sits the Dawn King, presiding over his chosen few.

He’s a tall man, almost as tall as Sila, his hair once black now bleached white by the centuries.

His eyes, a pale blue, intent upon his conversation partner.

There are twelve of his chosen at the table.

I’m surprised to recognise some of them.

It is a table of ghosts from my past. Edrian, who had sat beside me in our history lessons as children, and has grown into a dangerous-looking man.

Asther, who had once braided ribbons through my hair for a ball, and now sits at the end of the table in a gown that rivals any that we might have daydreamed of together.

Cadence, who had excelled at everything she did and was constantly trying to outpace us all, sitting at the Dawn King’s right hand.

One by one, they each turn to look at me.

Each trying to hide their confusion, muttering and staring, until the last of them at the King’s left turns.

Orielle cannot hide her shock, or the way the colour drains from her face.

The King watches my sister with a faint air of amusement.

I cannot help but see there is an empty chair at the closest end of the table.

Orielle’s chair scrapes across the floor as she rises. “What is the meaning of this?” she demands. “Lorel, why have you come here?”

“I haven’t come here. I was dragged here,” I snap back. “Don’t pretend ignorance.”

“Pretend ignorance? Lorel, this is the last place I would want to see you,” says Orielle.

To her credit, her fear seems genuine. Doubt creeps in, the kind of cold trickle that quickly becomes a drowning flood. Inetta had said she didn’t know I was here, but that doesn’t mean she hadn’t been involved. I clench my fists and wince at the pain of my broken finger.

“The blood mage. He used your blood,” I say. It has no conviction to it though. No backbone. The assembled courtiers mutter amongst themselves.

“No,” says the Dawn King. Silence falls as he turns his gaze on me. “They used mine.”

The world stops. The table turns to stare at the Dawn King now. As well they should, since each and every one of them had called me a foundling. Each one of them had turned their back on me when I had been found to have no magic.

I was happier when they thought of me like that. My desire to be in the same room as any of them is non-existent.

“Come, child of my blood. Won’t you dine with us?

” the Dawn King says, motioning to the empty chair.

Beryl behind me makes a bored sound and shoves me forward.

I stumble, unwilling to walk into the trap the Dawn King is setting for me.

It’s hard to breathe and my chest is on fire.

As if something is trying to tear its way out.

I stumble into the end of the table, gripping at my chest— my throat— and know this is no usual panic.

I know this feeling. Remember it. I grab for the edge of the table to hold myself upright, pulling at the tablecloth.

This time, I can barely feel the pain in my hand as I clench the fabric tightly.

The curse is stirring, furious and angry, and my body is no longer my own. Finally, I give it over to the curse. I cannot hold it back. Something else looks through me, looks at the Dawn King, who is suddenly sharp and attentive.

The words fall from my tongue in a strange voice. Each word burns through me as it is spoken. I can no longer see my sister, or the room, just the King’s pale blue eyes.

“Shadows cling to gilded lies.

Five stars fall from shadowed grace.

Through death’s dark gate, a path unwinds.

To rend the veil of blood and bone.

A crown of dust, an empty throne.”

And then I am suddenly and entirely empty.

My ears ring, and I feel hollowed out. No one moves as I cling to the table, breathing heavily.

I look down and thin, bright red blood drips from my nose, staining the soft blue fabric of the tablecloth.

I taste it on my tongue. It’s the only warning I get before my body heaves and blood pours from my mouth and nose, bleeding across the end of the table.

Asther, the nearest to me, leans away. The weight in my chest is gone.

It had once felt like unyielding dread, and then had come to feel like comfort— and now, I was startlingly, terrifyingly, alone.

I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand. It comes away bloody.

The Dawn King stands from his place at the head of the table and the silence of the room is heavy as a shroud.

It is broken by the sound of his clapping.

Despite his slow, mocking applause, dark anger burns in his eyes.

His courtiers are unsettled, shifting in their seats and trying not to look at me or him.

Orielle sits down, hard. She looks as bloodless as I feel. She stares at nothing as if for once in her life, she’d prefer the quiet of the scriptorium.

“Oh, well done,” the Dawn King says. “These are the tidings you bring to my court? Then come, my child. Sit at my table.” He motions me forward once again.

Beryl comes up behind me and grabs my arm. “You heard the King,” she hisses, shoving me down into the chair. I go without a fight. My throat is dry and raw. I wet my lips and taste blood still.

The King sits, turning his attention back to Cadence and drawing her into conversation, as if nothing had happened.

Orielle is staring at me, one ghost to another.

The other courtiers begin to laugh and chatter again.

It is as if I had merely performed a parlour trick.

Something to be remarked upon in the same way as an acrobat or a musician.

It doesn’t feel quite real, sitting here, but it never has.

My blood seeps down the tablecloth until it drips to the floor.

It pools on the plate in front of me, like some kind of macabre garnish.

I might as well be dining at the sacrificial altar itself.

I clench my hands in my skirts, ignoring the pain in my finger.

A spot of blood falls into my lap, slowly followed by another.

Perhaps at least my bleeding nose is slowing.

I’m light headed, nothing but a phantom sitting at the end of the table.

I feel eyes on me and I meet the Dawn King’s cold and ruthless gaze.

Whatever he has understood from the words I had spoken, he is afraid. He believes them to be true.

I blink and the look is gone, replaced by the same pleasant and unreadable mask that I have always known. He returns to his meal, laughing at something the courtier to his left has said and I don’t know what to make of it. This place has always confused me.

I look down at my hands. The shadows that cling to the gathers of my skirt shift and move, and my breath catches. Another drop of blood drips from my chin into my lap. A moment later, the guards in the hallway scream.

And relief and agony sweeps through me all at once, because she has come for me.