Page 9 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)

Lorel

If I was going to be here alone for so long, someone might have thought to leave me a book to read. Not that I could really keep my eyes open. I think it might be late afternoon when I’m startled by another presence in the room, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Sila. I blink away the sleep from my eyes, looking for my glasses. I realise after a moment of searching that she is holding them in her hands.

“Good afternoon, little mouse,” she says. Her smile is soft, and yet somehow still menacing. There’s a gentle click as she moves, setting my glasses carefully on my nose. “There, you look slightly less vague.”

I can see her more clearly now. The permanent shadows under her eyes seem deeper, her skin paler. She almost looks tired , which can’t be possible. With her so close, I struggle to breathe. I can’t help but feel that something has gone terribly wrong.

Is everything alright?

Sila doesn’t respond immediately, staring at me for a long, drawn out moment.

Her eyes drop to my chest and I have to start the whole process of remembering how to use my lungs all over again as she reaches out.

Her fingers tug the tie of my shift undone, and push the fabric aside.

I am drowning and surely delirious. Without a doubt, this must be a dream. No, a nightmare.

Her fingers press against my skin. I have the vague sensation that this has happened before.

“You have a curse mark,” she says, as if she already knew this. “How?” She keeps her fingers pressed there as she looks back up. Her dark gaze is piercing. It allows no room for falsehood. Some very sensible part of me is telling me that I need to run.

You can see it?

No one else has been able to see it. Not any of the Librarians who saw to me after the incident with the book. Not even Lune with her magical touch.

“Yes,” she says, through gritted teeth. Her nails dig in a little before she pulls her hand away. “Someone has a claim on you. How? Do not make me repeat myself again, scribe.”

So, I am a scribe again.

The book. It appeared after I read the book .

“I didn’t see it when I brought you here,” she says, her lovely face grim as she frowns.

It wasn’t so very big to start with. And…it was hardly the only mark on my skin.

Somehow that turns her frown into a fully fledged scowl. It makes her face look like murder.

“No, it wasn’t.” The room feels darker for Sila’s presence. The shadows are deeper. The air is colder. “And now you have been poisoned.”

Surely it was an accident.

“If it was, we will never know,” Sila says.

My blood turns cold.

What happened to Paint Master Striger?

“Mercias tore his throat out. He’d had three days to explain himself and still refused, and Mercias was…upset.” Sila finally turns her gaze away from me. I swallow hard. My breath would be rattling through me if it could.

That was what Librarians did. Took what they were owed, gave with strings attached. Did not bother with things such as mercy.

Did he say it was an accident?

She catches the movement of my hands, and when she turns back to me, her face is perfectly composed again. “Mercias? No.”

I had hoped when I came to the Library that I would be so unremarkable, so incredibly ordinary that I would never have a Librarian’s eyes fall upon me.

I had chosen to study here, because it suited my temperament.

I have to remind myself now that the Keep would have been no different. Arguably, it might have been worse.

Not Librarian Mercias. Paint Master Striger .

Her face is perfectly still this time, and I realise she has such a lovely voice that makes her delivery all the more horrific.

“No, he said nothing at all. And now, he never will,” Sila says.

She lets out a long breath. “I did not intend to wake you. I will leave you to rest.” Her hand rests on my thigh, with only the wool blanket and my shift between us.

Sila goes to move and I grab her. I cannot have been thinking, otherwise I would not have dared to do it. I release her as if I have been burned.

“Scribe?”

I have far overstepped, but she has not answered all my questions. My heart races like it always does this close to her.

Do you think it was an accident?

Her face is inscrutable, her gaze opaque. “I do not know,” she says. “Rest now. I will watch over you.”

I settle back against the pillows, feeling anything but tired. My eyes drift closed anyway, and I do not hear the door as she leaves.

I can’t stop thinking of her fingers pressed against my chest. They had been so cool against the heat of my fever ravaged skin?—

I no longer have a fever, though.

Lune had said she had not seen Sila, but I had. She had been there, leaning over me. She had seen the curse mark. I had thought I had seen a blade.

But no, there hadn’t been one.

Had there?

“Lorel? Are you awake?” Lune whispers. It’s pitch dark in the room.

I hadn’t bothered to refresh the sigil on the lanterns, not that it would have done much good if I had tried.

It must be late, since there isn’t much light filtering in behind Lune either.

Without light, who could really tell how much time had passed since Sila was here.

My shift is still in disarray. I sit up, and the bed frame creaks as I retie my shift.

The noise of the movement must be enough for Lune, because she steps into the room and swiftly relights the lanterns.

“You’ll need the light,” she says, holding out a letter. The paper is lovely under my fingertips, the kind that someone who wears pretty dresses and attends parties in the grand hall of mirrors might use. I take up the pen and paper by the bed.

My sister?

Lune nods. “She caught me on a break, as the Librarians have been refusing her entry.”

She has no respect .

“No, but she never has. I wonder if the Lightkeepers know that?” muses Lune.

If they don’t know yet, then there is no helping them. Thank you. I hope she has something sensible to say.

Last I had seen her, she had been rather contrite. It had been uncomfortable. The letter doesn’t make me any more comfortable.

Dearest Lorel,

They’ve told me you are in the infirmary again, but they will not tell me why.

I hope Lune can deliver this letter to you.

I hope you can still read it. Is it a fever, again?

What are they doing to you in there? I’m terrified that they will not tell me if you were to die.

That I would not find out until long after the fact.

I don’t care that they think you belong to the Library— you are my sister, first and always, and they cannot expect me to abandon you.

I will never abandon you. I hope you know that.

Please write back to me, and tell me you are alright?

I know I ask much of Lune, but I doubt they would be willing to part with her services in the Library infirmary.

I am sure she would carry a note for you.

You are lucky to have her as a friend in that place.

I love you. Please be alright.

Orielle.

Dawn King and the stars above. Fuck . I rub my temples.

“Is it bad news?” Lune asks. I pass her the letter to read. There’s little private enough to try to hide it from her. Lune’s frown deepens as she reads. “Have they been preventing her from seeing you?”

Only when I am unwell. Though that is standard for the Library. Otherwise, she keeps turning up in the scriptorium.

Lune looks up from the letter, alarmed. “ How? You can’t just wander into the scriptorium.”

She has no respect.

Lune purses her lips. “I bet she speaks in there too, doesn’t she? King’s grace, she doesn’t help herself.” She passes me the letter back. “I’ll carry a note to her. That’s no hardship.”

It’s a hardship for me though, because I do not know what to write back.

I love my sister, but I had made my choice, and accepted all that it had entailed.

I can at least write back that I am alive.

The curse mark feels cold, chilling the skin over my heart.

The curse under my skin stirs. I can’t say how long I will be alive for, but for the moment I am.

I use the paper to scrawl a quick note back. I do not have my sister's talent for sentiment. I can only hope she remembers that and doesn’t feel too hurt by its brevity.

Lune takes the folded note. “I’ll pass this along to her, so she has more than just my word,” she says.

Thank you.

Lune reassures me that I can return to my own room tomorrow, and then leaves me to rest again.

I feel too rattled to sleep. The thought of returning to the scriptorium, returning to work as if nothing had happened, is uncomfortable.

Trefor’s empty desk sitting beside me as a reminder that will only be made worse when someone new comes to occupy it. An accident like this one is tragic.

But I don’t think it was an accident.

I think of Orielle, sitting at my desk and lying in wait for me. The loose paint lid. I had thought I’d been careless with my paints. The last weeks had rattled me and recovering had been hard. My hands had seen better days. But I wasn’t clumsy. I wasn’t careless.

I stare at my hands, the bruises and the swelling long since faded, just the cut and the stitches standing out against my palm.

I need to get to the scriptorium. I don’t know what I might find after a week away, but everything led back there in the end and I am determined that this time I will find answers.