Page 4 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)

Lorel

The Librarian stalks down the corridors like a night terror.

I have to take at least two steps to her one to keep up.

I clutch my injured hand to my chest. The infirmary is not far, situated where the edges of the Library meet the Glade— another of the Citadel’s factions.

The Citadel has five factions, all of them burrowed into the side of a mountain and stacked in together, except for the Dawn King’s palace— the Suntide Court that pierces through the mountainside into the open air.

Lune, the closest person I have to a friend, is stationed in the infirmary today.

She’s sitting at the desk that marks the entrance to the room full of rows of beds and illness that I had spent the last few weeks in.

I am rather loath at the idea of returning.

Not in the least because I cannot speak and have a curse living inside of me and I think this must actually be some kind of divine punishment.

“Lorel— Librarian Sila,” Lune says, brown eyes widening where they peer out from under nut-brown hair bound back by a scarf. The Librarian stands behind me and places her hands on my shoulders. The press of them is cool even through the wool of my clothes and I suppress a shiver.

“Cupbearer. I did not expect you would be working in the infirmary,” says the Librarian.

“I am not the Cupbearer every day of the year,” says Lune, frowning. “What have you done to Lorel?”

The Librarian scoffs. “I have done nothing except allow her to work when I ought to have sent her back to her bed. She is clearly not recovered from her ordeal.”

No, I’m not, because my ordeal is ongoing and ever present and exactly the size and shape of one overbearing nightmare of a Librarian. I hold out my hand to Lune, who comes forward to take it.

“She has cut herself on a pencil sharpening knife.”

Lune’s expression makes me want to hide away in the shadows, never to be seen again. “ Lorel , how were you even holding it?” she says, exasperated.

“As I said. She is not well today,” says the Librarian. I fear she is right. I am not clumsy by nature, but I had almost thrown myself to the floor today, and now I had cut my hand open. Perhaps I should have followed my first instinct to run and hide in my bed.

“I will see to it,” Lune says.

“And then send her to rest,” instructs the Librarian.

“I need to return to the scriptorium. I do not want to see you back there, scribe.” Her fingers dig into my shoulders for a moment, and then she is gone.

The absence of her presence is like the lifting of a blanket.

It was smothering me, but I’m disappointed nonetheless at its loss.

“Well, let’s get you stitched up,” says Lune with a wry twist of her mouth.

The barely painted walls of the reception area turn into wildly colourful murals depicting plants of healing and the Dawn King’s benevolence.

They cradle the infirmary within them, rows of beds partitioned by folding screens, though Lune doesn’t lead me there today.

Instead, she takes me off to a small room to the side.

It is decorated in a style similar to the infirmary, and the lamp Lune lights with a quick sigil is much brighter than the low light in the space we had come from.

Lune is adept at her sigils, as most with fae blood are, but her true talent is as a healer of magical ailments. She cannot heal a cut, but she can see the magical pathways of the body. Alas, for me, my injury is merely a physical one.

The cut, anyway.

A bench lines the wall in a neat impression of disarray, topped by shelves of little jars and bottles, tools and bandages. There’s a bed in here too, an armchair and a tall stool.

Lune drags the stool over to the chair. “This will be much more private,” says Lune. “Sit.”

She indicates the armchair, and for once I do as I am told. I know it's going to need to be sewn up and I am already dreading it. Anyone who could easily heal a wound of the flesh such as this is kept for the use of the courtiers. I really should have been more careful.

In a way, Librarian Sila is right. I’m not well.

I just didn’t think a curse was really an ailment.

Thus far, Lune had not been able to sense it, but I can feel that cold sense of dread resting in my chest. The curse slumbering.

I can almost imagine it like a cat, curled up and waiting for something.

Lune stops in her muttering and gives me a puzzled look. “Are you quite well? You’re being awfully obliging,” she says.

This is what I was afraid of. Lune is far too observant. I cannot sign properly with one hand and Lune won’t understand the shorthand I could passably use otherwise. What signs she does know are mostly to do with her profession. Not with, you know, horrific curses. I just shake my head at her.

Lune sits beside me and takes my cut hand. It is as bad as I feared and as clean as expected.

“Well,” says Lune, cheerfully. “It could be worse. You know you can speak in here. I won’t tell your Librarian.”

I give her an alarmed look. She is not my Librarian. I just shake my head and keep my mouth clamped shut.

“Very well,” says Lune. “You’ll just have to listen to me prattle on then.”

Lune makes good on her promise, while she sews me back together.

I grit my teeth, unable to make a noise.

Not even a hiss at the pain, which somehow makes it all the more agonising.

Lune’s careful gaze misses nothing, even as she talks.

I’m grateful she does— at least one of us should make noise over this and her chatter is distracting enough.

Just. Nothing seems irreparably damaged, and I can only thank the Dawn King for that.

Lune wraps my hand to finish, and it is painfully obvious that even if I wanted to I could not return to the scriptorium. My hand is useless in this state. I go to stand when Lune is done, but a gentle pressure on my shoulder sets me back in my seat.

“No,” says Lune, stern. “I’ve patched up the most grizzled of the Dawnguard, for much smaller injuries, with far more protestation and drama. Even if you didn’t want to talk, I expect you to make some sound. Your face was certainly trying .”

It was foolish of me to think such a thing would go unnoticed.

Scribes may not speak during work hours— it was simply how it was done— but very rarely are they truly silent.

Even if my throat had been scoured out— which had happened to another scribe once— I could not have stopped myself from trying to cry out through it.

I look around for something to write with, miming for a pen.

I should tell her. Maybe she will know something, have at least one helpful thought tucked away in that head of hers.

I haven’t been told much about what had happened to me.

I’d hardly been able to ask many questions, after all. I didn’t even know who had found me.

Lune passes me a pen and a board with paper clipped to it.

But when I have it, I don’t quite know what to write.

How do I put it into words? It’s not a type of self-inflicted madness, I don’t think.

One can’t prevent themselves from making a sound when they make an involuntary gasp of air through sheer will. Can one?

The look I give Lune when I look up must be desperate, because her face softens into something like pity. I hate it.

“So you can’t make a noise. Since when?” Lune is using her healer voice.

Since I woke up here, I scrawl across the paper.

Lune frowns, which is preferable to pity. “When they brought you here you had broken ribs, broken fingers, dark angry bruises and little cuts dug deep into your sides,” she says.

This, at least, I knew. The cuts had been from my own fingernails. I just couldn’t understand why I would have done that to myself.

“Plus an awful fever.”

Do you know where they found me?

I hadn’t asked much when I had woken here.

The fever had still been clinging, and I was lucky I could remember my own name.

It was like something had taken a torch to my memories.

They’d come back for the most part. Only one part was still missing.

The gap between opening the book and waking in the infirmary.

“In your room,” Lune says. “You were found pressed against the wall, jammed into the corner. Or so I was told. I wasn’t on the roster that day. If it hadn’t been for the fever burning you up, I think they would have thought you dead.”

I stare at her. How in the King’s name had I gone from the scriptorium to my room? I push my glasses up my nose and set to writing again.

And they didn’t find me with a book?

The writing is painfully slow with my off-hand, my bound hand trying to balance the writing board.

Lune shakes her head. “If she did, then it wasn’t passed on.” Cold dread rises up from the stones, chilling me from my toes and raising the hair along my arms.

She?

I already know the answer, even as Lune gives me a resigned look

“Librarian Sila is the one who found you. If you want answers, you should ask her.”