Page 44 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)

Lorel

I wake with my head resting against Sila’s shoulder.

Whatever happened back there has drained me further again.

I do not think there is much left to lose.

My limbs are shaking and in all the places where I am pressed against Sila, her skin is as cold as the marble of the Dawn King’s halls in winter.

Vika and the bloody hallway are long gone.

There are cuts raked down Sila’s face, slowly closing even as I watch.

“Sila?” I ask, shifting.

“Not much further, little mouse,” Sila says.

“What happened?” I ask.

“You did,” she replies.

“I—”

“Hush. All is well,” Sila murmurs.

“You’re bleeding.”

Sila shrugs. “I have left conversations with Vika in a worse state. I will be fine. You, on the other hand, keep terrifying me.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“I know. We can discuss it when we are free of this place,” Sila says.

I fall into silence and bury my face in her hair. She still smells of blood and sweat, but under it all there is the scent of her, as sure and inevitable as the grave.

Sila takes a set of stairs, and the smell of damp earth and decay rises from the stone in the hallway. Here the walls drip, running with water from the natural cave system. Moss clings to the untamed stone, and I know we are at the edge of the catacombs.

There is a main entrance to the catacombs, of course. All wrought in stonework by masters of their craft millennia ago and protected from moisture and plant life by their magic even all these years later. That is not where we are going.

Here, where the crypts meet the Citadel, everything is laid out in long, dark passages. This area belongs to the Barracks and their foragers and metalworkers, but most will not dare to delve so close to the catacombs for fear of disturbing the dead interred there.

Sila pauses, her eyes catching in the darkness, seeing what mine can’t. And then, as we move closer, I can.

A deep crack breaks through the wall and floor ahead. It must continue down for many levels, forgotten or ignored as unfixable. It has pulled the floor of the hallway apart, and a gentle mist drifts from within it, damp and earth-warm.

“Here?” I whisper.

“If we are not too late,” Sila says, setting me down carefully.

I peel Lune’s cloak away from where it has stuck to her bloodied shoulder. The wounds are already closing and her blouse is blood-soaked and torn. I reach out, resting my fingers there. It makes me uneasy, even if it doesn’t seem to phase her.

“They will heal,” Sila says softly. “This isn’t like last time.” She threads her fingers through my hair to cradle the back of my neck and leans down to press a kiss to my forehead.

A thump echoes out from the fissure and I flinch, heart hammering in my throat, sure that the floor is about to open and swallow me whole. A lantern light appears, floating above the fissure and a figure soon follows it. A set of footsteps echoes across a plank thrown down over the crack.

“You the Librarian?” asks a rough voice.

He appears from the gently curling mist, walking over the makeshift bridge.

He’s an older man, with rounded human ears and sandy blond hair.

His figure is sturdy, the kind of person you’d ask for help hauling books back and forth, and right now his unruly eyebrows are pulled together in a deep-set frown that might be permanent.

“Yes,” Sila says. “We are friends of the moon in the glade.”

“Right,” he says. “I’ll take you where the moonlight hides.”

“Thank you—?” I ask.

“Corus, but let’s not get comfortable here. I don’t like standing still for too long if I can help it. Come on.” Corus walks back across the plank, and I look at the swollen, damp wood with a deep well of uncertainty.

“I think I best carry you across, little mouse,” Sila says.

I don’t want to admit she’s right, but my legs are already shaking and the fissure runs deep. I let her scoop me up again and I can barely hold on, my arms are so weak. Once we’re across, Corus peers at me before he pulls up the plank behind us, stashing it back against the wall.

“You sure she’s up for this?”

“We have no choice,” Sila replies. “If I have to carry her out of here, I will, but it must be now.”

Corus frowns, looking troubled. I watch his eyes flick from blood-stained garments to our faces.

“Right,” he says. “If it’s as you say. Can she walk?”

“She can talk,” I grumble.

“When necessary, and after some rest,” says Sila, squeezing me gently.

Corus nods and turns, walking on down the hallway. Sila follows his bobbing lantern light.

It’s dark, and I am warm, leaching cold from where I’m pressed against Sila. I press my face against the cool skin of her neck for just a moment.

When I wake again, we are in one of the burial chambers of the catacombs, the room lined with carved out hollows for the dead.

It might be slightly warm if everything didn’t feel so cold against my skin.

The scent of decay lingers, and those who had been interred here so long ago are little more than dust waiting to be swept away and replaced.

Death is simple in the Citadel. A body laid out with no jewellery or adornment, and wrapped in fine linen or silk, embroidered or painted to tell the dead one’s story. Lovingly, sometimes, ordinary others. Then the keepers of the catacombs find you a place to rest.

Somewhere down here my parents’ bodies rest wrapped in cloth painted by their children. I had been six, and mine had been a clumsy attempt, finessed by Orielle, who had been twice my age then.

“Go to your rest,” I murmur, having no desire to wake the dead by thinking of them. Corus and Sila echo it, though Sila says it in a tongue I have not heard before. Likely as archaic as her handwriting.

Corus leads us through the chamber into another, and from there they blur together.

Many of the corpses are recent and there are no empty alcoves here.

We move from hallway to chamber with no discernible pattern, with only Corus’ sure footsteps to guide us.

He takes us down further again, deeper into the catacombs.

The earth groans and creaks and there is the ever present sound of trickling water.

The scent of death and crushed moss fades after a while, from familiarity more than anything else.

Corus doesn’t speak as we go, and we follow his lead. It does not do well to speak here.

I lay my head against Sila’s shoulder, tucking my face under the curtain of her hair and breathing in deeply.

There is the metallic tang of blood that is becoming too familiar, earth and salt, star flower and ash.

She is cold and bloodied, but her body is still strong and her stride doesn’t falter.

I feel safe, shrouded by her hair and held so tightly and so I drift off again, unable to keep my eyes open against the fever any longer.