Page 38 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)

Lorel

I twist in my chair, turning to see. It isn’t horror I feel as the shadows stretch, reaching out to wrap around the guards stationed by the door.

They don’t have a chance to take a step back.

Don’t have a moment to know that the danger is upon them.

Darkness bleeds across the doors like a misplaced ink blot and the guards shout, trying to twist out of the silky shadows that hold them fast. And then they can’t scream because the shadow is in their throats, dragging them, shuddering and flailing, into the growing darkness.

For a moment, all is silent. Then next to me, Asther screams. In an instant, the most powerful mages in the Suntide Court are scrambling, making an awful noise as they try to escape through the back of the chamber.

A loyal few stay, Cadence and Edrian among them.

At the head of the table, Orielle is staring at me.

Nothing that has happened yet has helped her to regain the colour in her face.

“Lorel!”

She pushes out of her chair. The Dawn King moves, as quick as light, to grab her arm, holding her fast. His expression is smug, eager even.

“I will deal with this,” he says to her. “Sit, child. And do not move.” He rises, releasing Orielle, and stalks towards me. I stumble up from my chair. I need to run. If I can get to Sila, then we can leave— I hit a solid body standing behind me. Beryl.

“Hold her,” he calls to the Lightwarden. “You two, stop the wraith.” Cadence and another courtier follow the King as Beryl grabs me, dragging me back against her.

“What did I say about being good?” says Beryl, grabbing my hand and putting pressure on my broken finger. She tries to get purchase to break another finger.

The shadows are pooling now, spreading across the wall.

Consuming it. A figure forms in the shadows, far taller and more horrific than I have ever seen her.

I struggle against the Lightwarden’s implacable grip, as she puts pressure on my fingers, pushing them in a direction my fingers should never go.

I stamp on her foot, and attempt to kick out at her, but my skirts get in the way.

Cadence and the courtier pass us. They hardly spare me a glance. I’m reminded of Jaime in the Library. At the beginning, when he thought he was going to make it out alive. Arrogant fools, the lot of them.

“Let. Me. Go.” I twist in Beryl’s grasp, try to find anywhere for my nails to get purchase.

“Fuck, you’re like a feral cat,” she snarls.

“Good,” I hiss, teeth grit against the pain. There’s that same numbing sensation as earlier, and then my limbs go limp again and I collapse against her.

“There’s a good girl,” Beryl says, patting my cheek. I bare my teeth at her as she turns to the Dawn King. He stands between us and darkness, watching two of his favoured mages go to their death.

The shadows reach out and Sila stalks out from the darkness, a beautiful, horrific spectre. She creates a jagged, vaguely human shaped void in the light-filled dining room. This is not Sila the Librarian anymore. This is Sila, the wraith.

Her long, talon-like nails click as she stands before us all.

She is a constantly shifting shadow drenched in blood.

It drips from her eyes, her mouth, her hands, and coats the floor with each step she takes.

Her limbs are stretched out like a shadow before a lantern.

Her pale face is a blur of moonlight pierced by black, jewel-bright eyes.

The two courtiers hesitate, no longer grinning.

Sila doesn’t give them a chance to even consider their options.

Her shadows stretch out, ensnaring them.

The two cry out, casting formless, frantic spells at her.

The shadows drag them to the ground, cutting through them, crushing them.

Leaving them gasping as they choke on their own blood.

Sila steps over them and it is so much like that first time in the scriptorium that my heart feels like it is screaming within me.

To think she had been nearly a stranger then.

She stands before the Dawn King, and in this form she towers over him.

“Ah,” says the Dawn King, sounding pleased.

“One of hers.” He throws a look over his shoulder at me, smirking.

“You know, I waited so patiently to have you done away with. There’s so many ways to die in the Library, and yet you kept evading my attempts.

It surprised me that you were so resourceful, but this makes far more sense.

You had help. After all, you were never particularly useful on your own, were you, Lorel? ”

“You—” says Orielle, coming to a stop beside Beryl.

“Ah Orielle. Still poor at taking directions, I see. No matter.”

It is the way he says ‘no matter’ that has me finally understanding.

There is nothing the Dawn King does without reason.

Everything he does is to maintain his control of the Citadel and its people.

Right down to allowing them to bathe and dress him each and every morning.

He doesn't collect up the most powerful mages to use them, he collects them to keep them docile.

Turns them into pampered creatures that depend upon him for their comfort.

Keeps them snapping at each other, to prevent them from snapping at him.

Keeps them loyal, keeps them expendable.

And to the Dawn King, this entire room is expendable.

The perfect audience that will never talk of what I have spoken.

“You, hold her,” says the Dawn King to Edrian. Edrian grabs Orielle and Orielle doesn’t resist. She goes as still and quiet as a cavern lake, the kind that will swallow you whole if you step wrong. The clicking of Sila’s talons continues in the background, impatient.

“Enough. I believe you have something of mine, Usurper,” Sila says. Her voice hisses, echoing through the room like a chorus of hungry ghosts. “I have come to take her back.”

“I’m afraid I do not give audiences to the uninvited,” the Dawn King says.

He claps his hands once and throws his hand forward, palm out.

I barely have a moment to understand what he’s doing before Sila is engulfed in white fiery light.

My breath catches, and I let out a strangled cry.

It is the best I can manage under Beryl’s sedation.

I can’t do anything to stop this. I think of Jaime’s sanctified blade digging into her side. Feel sick to my stomach at the thought of her falling to the ground. How does my lovely creature of darkness survive this kind of onslaught?

The light holds, burning bright enough to force me to tip my head away.

The heat of it presses against my cheek, and then, in the corner of my eye, I see a tendril of shadow flick through the wall of light.

It pushes through the crack it makes and is followed by another.

And then more. A tendril whips out towards the Dawn King and he ducks with a laugh, hunger written all over his face.

The shadows smother the light and Sila stands unharmed amongst them and I think perhaps the night can win out against the day.

Sila is in her full power. She may not have her queen’s blessings, but she has the Library’s Heart.

And the Dawn King is waning. That’s why there was night cough in the Citadel. He was using it to encourage the Citadel to sacrifice its own people.

The Dawn King laughs. “Oh, you are old, aren’t you? Tell me, when did I send you to the queen, wraith? I would dearly love to know,” he says. He follows the question with a strike of light, called down upon Sila’s figure. She flickers in shadow, evading him easily.

“If you can’t remember my name, then I will not be reminding you,” she says.

She throws herself forward, shadows surging.

The Dawn King calls up a wall of shimmering light and the shadows batter themselves on it and roll back and away.

“Give me what is mine.” She throws herself against the wall of light again and I can see it flickering under her assault. It will not hold against her.

Beside me, Edrian screams and I glance at Orielle.

She holds her hand over his eyes as light radiates from her palm, burning at his skin and adding the smell of burned flesh to the copper-soaked blood scent of the room.

Edrian lets her free, and she kicks him viciously in the knee, sending him to the ground.

The Dawn King ignores them both, instead looking over his shoulder at me.

“The girl? No, I don’t think I will. Though you will be far more useful to me than your predecessor,” he says, and this time when he waves a hand, a ring lights up across the floor.

Light blue, like the doorway to the Heart of the Library.

The light snakes in on itself, and Sila hisses as it ensnares her, the light snaking over her limbs and binding her in place.

The trappings try to pull her to the ground and her snarls echo throughout the chamber.

“Lightwarden, secure the wraith,” he says.

The Lightwarden strides towards Sila. Sila, who is pushing up against her restraints, snarling and clawing at them where they dig into her flesh.

Despite the sedative effect, my heart is racing.

I can’t let him take her, but I can’t move.

I can barely hold myself up. Beryl pushes me towards Orielle, who catches me.

She clings to me as the Dawn King turns back to us, ignoring the courtiers cowering under the table behind us. The back doors, it seems, were locked.

“Now, what do I do with two unruly children?” he says mildly.

“It really is a pity your personality is so defiant, Orielle, since you show such talent otherwise.” He frowns at Edrian lying screaming on the ground.

“Oh do shut up.” He marks a swift line through the air and a shard of light pierces Edrian’s heart.

He gasps, his face constricting before it relaxes into death.

Orielle grips my arms, and there is a faint tingle of her magic against my skin. The sedative effect drains away from me, slowly giving me back control of my limbs and tongue.

“Let my sister go back to the Library,” says Orielle. “Like you promised. And I’ll stay here, like I promised.”

“Orielle?” I get my feet under me, and Orielle doesn’t let go. So there had been more to my freedom than a simple rumour about my parentage. I had thought so, but I also hadn’t ever considered that Orielle might have had the ability, or the courage, to bargain with the Dawn King.

“I could, I suppose, but I rather find I don’t feel like it,” the Dawn King says with a pleasant smile. “And why would I?”

He thinks he has won. I flex my fingers as feeling returns to them. I don’t know if it will work— the Dawn King is ancient, and his magic equally so. But so was the Heart’s, and I had stopped that before. And the Dawn King was not at his full power.

I don’t even quite know how to do it, I just know that at both times I had wanted something badly enough to make it happen.

All I can do is try.

I take a deep breath, trying to remember that feeling in the dark chamber when faced with the Heart’s horrific beast. I look the Dawn King in the eye and take another deep breath before I spread my fingers wide and push my mind against the current of time in the room.

It comes easier than it ever has, flowing out from me, and I am powerless to stop it.

Control of it slips through my fingers. There is the faintest, swiftest moment of alarm in his face, and then everything begins to slow and the Dawn King is caught.

I hang on to the thought that I cannot let him win.

Cling to thoughts of Sila. Promise that I will leave here with her.

I leave no room for doubt. If there is one person in this world I do not doubt, it is my terrifying and lovely nightmare of a Librarian.

All the sounds in the room, the screams, and the crying, the hum of the Dawn King’s magic, and Beryl’s footsteps as she crosses the marble floor, come together as one high pitched ringing. It rises higher until everything stills. Even Orielle behind me, caught in the moment.

The blue light of the snare holding Sila flickers.

Once.

Twice.

And then out.

Everything is plunged into darkness.

The Lightwarden screams.