Page 10 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely
She smiles at that, and it splits across her face like heartbreak. It turns her into something heartrendingly beautiful. It is a terrifying reminder of how dangerous she is. There are ghastly faetales of beautiful ghosts that exist only to steal souls, and that is what she reminds me of.
“Why don’t you just tell me what you’re looking for, little mouse,” she says.
I fold my arms, shoving my hands under my armpits. I’m restless because maybe she has the answer, and all I need to do is ask. I’m reluctant, because the whole point of this exercise was to avoid her. My mouth moves to shape the sound of frustration that I can’t utter, and then my hands are out, moving with the same irritated energy.
Fine. It’s an old book, slim, not much bigger than my hand. Red leather cover. It might have been returned some weeks ago.
Sila tips her head back the other way, like a curious bird. “After the incident?”
Yes.
“A red leather cover. With foil?”
Yes.
“Ancient and cracking along the spine?”
Yes—
“It is not here,” she says.
How can you know? You haven’t even looked.Curse this wretched bandage for making my signs clumsy in my frustration. A hot thread of anger lances through me. She’s playing with me with no intention of helping me at all.If you’re not going to be helpful?—
“I didn’t say I would not be helpful,” she says, pressing a finger to my lips. I blink at the touch, cold against the warmth of my skin. She frowns, holding her finger there even though it’s my hands that do the talking. “What is the connection between the incident and the book?. . .Ah, the bookisthe incident.”
I purse my lips against her finger.
“You were not found with a book,” Sila says. “But you were reading a book in the scriptorium earlier that evening, weren’t you?”
I stare at her, startled.How do you know that?
Sila smiles knowingly. “I was there, of course. How curious. You know, I had forgotten the book until now. I have not seen it since.” Her finger taps my mouth as she thinks.
Sila must have been watching the scriptorium that day. But I had been there after hours, and I’m sure I’d never seen her until after the incident. I would certainly have remembered her.
Books can’t just disappear.
“That’s not entirely true,” Sila says distractedly. “Books do all sorts of things when the fancy takes them.”
You must be joking.
“I am a Librarian, scribe, I do not joke.” She slides her finger across my lips, taking my chin between her fingertips. I swallow, mouth dry as she searches my face intently. “Something is missing here.”
I don’t know if she means in me, or in the story. Maybe both. It’s probably both.
I can’t remember that night.
That seems to catch her off guard. As if I have given her the wrong answer to a question she did not ask aloud.
“What do you remember?”
I opened the book, and then I woke up in the infirmary.
“Did they tell you how I found you?”
Yes.
There is the smallest fracture ofsomethingin Sila’s expression. There and gone again, too quick for me to know what it was. Her fingers flex again, grip tightening slightly before she drops her hand to take my injured one. She lifts it, holding it gently in one hand while her fingers run softly over the bandage. It makes my breath catch in my throat, silent as it always is now. She looks up at me sharply.
