Page 46 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)

Lorel

There is the faint sound of rushing water when I wake. The gentle sway of Sila’s footsteps is gone and I feel her body shift beneath mine as I rub sleep from my eyes.

“Are you awake, little mouse?” Sila asks, gentle hands finding my face. She sits against the wall of a cave. I am settled against her, my face pillowed on her chest. She watches me and her face is soft and fond, and I would dearly love to kiss her.

“Where are we?” I ask, instead. The air is damp with the taste of earth and salt that I would expect from bathwater.

“Corus found us somewhere to stop, so you could rest,” Sila says.

Corus crouches beside Sila, holding out a flask. “It’s as she says. Here.”

I take it and sit myself up with Sila’s help.

“I can refill it, so don’t hold back,” he says.

I stay settled in Sila’s lap and look her over.

She does not seem weary. Whatever Vika had done to her, it didn’t carry the weight of the sanctified sword Jaime had used.

The wounds are now nothing more than faint marks across her skin.

I brush my fingers over them, just to reassure myself.

She must be able to tolerate an incredible amount of pain to fight so.

Seeing her fight is equal parts exhilarating and terrifying.

She’s a magnificent force of shadow and darkness.

Entirely reckless. Breathtakingly beautiful.

I’m still baffled to have caught her attention at all.

“Lorel?” Sila says.

“Was I out for long?” I ask.

“Not so long, but you were exhausted,” Sila says, taking my face in her hands to inspect me further. “Your eyes are clearer already.”

I smile at her. “I don’t quite feel it yet.”

“Because you need to eat,” Sila says, entirely sure of it. The rough piece of bread that Lune had shoved at me while I was being dressed seems a world away now.

“That’s easy fixed,” says Corus, rummaging in his pack before holding out a cloth-wrapped parcel. “You too,” he says to Sila.

“I do not need it,” she says. “Give it to Lorel, unless you think it is better kept by.”

“Suit yourself,” he says, swapping the empty flask for the bundle. Two soft buns roll into my lap as I open it. Sila watches me as I eat.

“What is it?” I ask. I take another bite and watch as her eyes track it.

There is amusement playing at the corners of her mouth. “I don’t feed you nearly enough,” she says.

I make a disbelieving noise. “You’re always trying to feed me.”

“Because you need it,” Sila insists. “And there is something rather sweet about you when you eat.”

I stare at her as I shove the last of the bun into my mouth. Sila’s eyes flick to my mouth. Corus clears his throat.

“We need to be getting on,” he says hesitantly

“Alright,” I say, dusting my hands off on my borrowed clothes. I still feel a slight bit too warm. Still feel that ache that will take an age to sleep off. I use Sila’s shoulders to pull myself up to standing. My legs protest, but it is only the protest of the unused.

“You sure you’ll be right?” Corus asks as Sila unfolds herself to stand up behind me.

I grimace, testing my legs. “I think I’ll be okay. Maybe let me know if there is an edge I might fall off? I’d like to avoid that.”

Corus stares at me for a moment, until it’s Sila clearing her throat.

“Ah, yes,” Corus mumbles. “Good idea.”

Strange, he looks like he’s seen a ghost.

“Come, little mouse, and tell me if you get tired. The caves are dangerous.”

“I know,” I say, more on instinct than anything else. Because I do know— theoretically.

Corus leads us back out into the caves, and the stale, decaying scent of the catacombs has given way to something earthy and damp.

The air is thick with water here too, mixing with a strange murky warmth.

The water pools in ever-increasing amounts.

First puddles and trickling creeks. It isn’t long before they become wide, still lakes and rivers.

I had never thought I would traverse the caves that Lune so often frequented, but I had also thought I would spend the rest of my life coming and going from my desk in the scriptorium.

I had been so foolish to think the Dawn King would forget me.

Even now, the smallest noise makes my heart kick up, worried that we are being followed.

It’s easier to bear the loss of it all with Sila at my side.

I hadn’t thought of my desk much in the days since I last sat at it.

It hits me like a blow, now, to realise those ordinary days are gone.

The scriptorium, with its dull light and dusty shelves.

I won’t ever see the faces of my peers again.

Not Elris, or Sybri. Not Lune or Orielle.

I will never sit down to start the day and check my paints— Dawn King have mercy on me, my paints .

My brushes. All of that is gone now. I might never paint again.

Never hear Elris’ gentle praise. Never again hold ancient parchment beneath my fingers.

My eyes blur and I taste salt on my tongue. I brush it away. It’s hard enough to see here without being blinded by tears. There will be a time for grief, but it isn’t now. I forge onwards.

Our footsteps echo into the darkness, mingling with the steady drip of water, the shifting sound of rock against rock. Creatures slide and skitter in the darkness.

Corus’ lantern doesn’t give much light, and it gives even less when I have to reignite the sigil when it goes out.

I had expected more light in the caverns, more life.

In the cultivated caves there are glowing silk worms, the vines that grow my favourite berry, and the small luminous fish that attract the eels.

Here there is nothing but the dark and quiet, the lantern light glancing off the water slick rock, and the occasional wide, still lake.

We squeeze through narrow cracks in the rock, and Corus leads us along the edge of a lake, with the warning that to step wrong is to slip into the dark forever.

Sila’s eyes, dark and fathomless in the sigil light, tell me that the dark would have to fight her if it wanted to claim me.

I shuffle along the edge and see the water break in places, glimpse the wet skin of an eel as it crests the water.

I press myself back against the rock, determined not to find out who would win between Sila and a rock eel larger than any I have ever seen in the Library’s kitchens.

We make it to the other side without incident, and the path levels.

I do not want to think of what else might live within the cold, dark earth.

These deep dark lakes. It makes my skin crawl to know that Lune sometimes explores these tunnels on her own.

She will soon have to do so again to prepare the poison for the sacrifice, and the thought makes me sick to my stomach.

I pull her cloak tighter around me. The herb scent is calming in the dark and oppressive expanse of the caverns.

Corus is taking us further away from everything I have ever known.

Taking us through a place both too small, and too big.

Too loud, and too quiet. It raises the hair on the back of my neck, and the unsettled feeling doesn’t leave me even as the air turns fresh.

I catch the barest hint of something woody and resinous.

Pine, that reminds me of the guards, when they return from their watchtower postings.

The scent does nothing to quell the rising dread and I almost miss the warm, shifting companionship of the curse. How grim.

The cave levels out, widening, and Sila entwines her fingers with mine. Firm. Grounding. It doesn’t steady the rapid pace of my heart, or the way my palms sweat, but I’m not alone. I have her. My fierce, dark, lovely shadow.

I don’t know how far her tether to the Library can reach. I can only hope it will hold long enough to find some way to stop the unravelling. I have no desire to lose her now that I have her.

She keeps a hold of my hand as I follow Corus through another narrow channel that goes on for so long, I start to worry that I might be trapped here, even if I were to turn back.

Fear grips at my lungs, and then the air stirs and I am tumbling out into the night.

Out into the open air for the first time in my life.

It’s warmer out here, and it’s thick with the scent of pine and woodland decay.

I look up at the trees surrounding us and have to look up again.

The trees are gigantic, thick around and reaching up high and it is clear that even if the sun shone, it would never kiss the earth here.

Fog threads thick as old paint water between them, eddying and pooling between the trunks.

It hangs through the treetops and over us like a blanket, ready to smother every living thing.

The dark earth is a graveyard of rotting pine needles.

They carpet the soil so thickly that the ground seems to collapse in, sinking under the weight of itself.

I shrink back from it all and Sila is at my back, a cool press of the familiar.

“You’re alright,” she whispers, her breath skating over my cheek.

“It’s all so big,” I say.

She squeezes my shoulders. Corus is kneeling in the pine needles, understanding something in them that I cannot begin to fathom.

“It’s not far to the road,” he says, voice quiet. “It’s a little way through the fog, but you’ll find it hardly matters. Keep your eyes in front of you, alright?” He stands, hefting his pack high on his broad shoulders, and gives Sila a long glance.

Sila looks like she was made for this place, just as surely as she was made to stalk the Library’s halls. A horrific apparition waiting in the woods for her next victim. She is surely far more terrifying than anything that can be found in the fog. I take a deep, steadying breath.

“Once we’re on the road,” says Corus, gesturing for us to follow. “It’s a few days to Atratos. My son waits for us there.”

The pine needles are soft underfoot, and it’s unusual compared to the steady, foot-worn rock that has borne me my entire life. Even the plush rugs of the Court have nothing on it. It makes my skin crawl and my hands itch. I shiver, even in the warm open air.

This is nothing like any illustration I had ever seen. It’s difficult to follow Corus’ instructions to keep my eyes ahead when everything is so new. So different.

The fog moves as we do, pushed and pulled by the edges of the lantern light so that we are never truly in it.

It doesn’t flee very far, not with the pitiful light from my sad sigil.

I stick close to Sila as we walk. The fog eddies and flows like a living thing.

Something darts through the fog nearby, setting my heart fluttering like a bat’s wings.

“Just a rabbit,” says Corus. “Probably.”

“Easy, little mouse,” Sila says, squeezing my hand. I take another deep breath. The towering trees are almost comforting, like the granite columns of the Library. I try to convince myself that it’s not so different from being underground. Surely the road isn’t too far away now.

My foot sinks into the pine needles, slipping in a treacherous hollow, and a light catches the corner of my eye. My ears start to ring. I shake my head to dislodge it. Sila’s fingers slip from mine.

“Sila—”

The light flickers and moves and I turn back to look for her.

And find myself entirely alone.

Would you like to know what Sila was thinking when she confronted the Dawn King?