Page 40 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely
Those times had been nothing like this. The Heart had called to her, permitted her entry on her own merit. It had tested her emotions to find the ones that it could best manipulate. Lorel comes to a stop beside me, and a cold wave of dread neutralises any warmth from the sunlight.
Her chest is heaving, her eyes panicked as she gasps down air. As silent as any corpse at rest. I must make it to the altar before her. The chapel door beckons, as if in welcome. I turn to step through and small, soft fingers clamp around my wrist, holding firm. I look down at her hand, white-knuckled, and make a soothing noise as I gently pry her fingers away.
“Stay here,” I tell her. “Whatever you do, little mouse, do not follow me.” My heart, slow and heavy, thumps in my chest. It will not do so for much longer, but hers will keep going. I cannot look at her face, with her salt-marked glasses, and her puffy red eyes.
“I will return shortly,” I promise, because unlike the Heart, I am not bound by my promises. I push through the chapel door and step into the blinding sunlight.
Chapter 23
Lorel
The metallic scentof blood washes over me along with the warmth, the sunlight blinding in its sudden intensity as Sila steps through. If she thinks I will let her go through there alone, then she has underestimated me. I step up and push through the gap in the chapel doors, and it is as if I am trying to move through honey. I push through until it gives, stumbling into the chapel.
I hold my arm up against the light as my eyes adjust. The chapel itself is exactly as it ever is. Exactly as it ever has been. White marble colonnades rise up high overhead, the domed ceiling rendered with a mural of the first sacrifice, entirely allegorical in nature. Gilt details catch the light that filters in through the tall glass windows that line the chapel. The light is brighter than I have ever known it. True warming sunlight, constructed by the labyrinth. It is not the only thing wrong with the picture.
Bodies lie strewn across the floor. The channels that run through the stone down from the altar are flowing with blood,warm and pooling over. Encroaching upon the toes of my boots. Accounting for the metallic taste that rests heavy on my tongue.
They are each dressed in sacrificial robes of white. All of them stained red. All of them staring, lifeless and discarded.
Sila is already halfway to the altar, where one of the dead stands, ceremonial knife in hand. I don’t like this. Everything about this feels wrong. The curse stirs in my chest, restless. The Heart’s strange presence brushes against my consciousness.
Are you going to let her do this again?
I feel the way my lips try to form her name. To call out to her. Entirely futile— she is going to do it again. The Heart has set out this horrific tableau for her because it is only intending to let one of us leave, and Sila has decided that it should be me. That I should stay outside this room while she enacts her first sacrifice, again. That in spite of everything, she is still trying to protect me. That she is pushing down her feelings with as much success as I am. I do not deserve her. I do not deserve this devotion.
I am fever-hot as I surge forward. I slip on the slick stone, falling hard on my knee, and blood soaks into the fabric of my skirt and leggings. I push back up, fingers grasping for purchase, the blood making it impossible to hold onto. Even if I had the energy left to do so, I cannot silence Sila or still the room in the way I had before. I can only try to reach her before they cut her throat again.
I push myself up, and the bodies near me start to shift.
To move.
To rise.
To reach.
Fear pushes me onward as they drag themselves towards me. The fingers of the closest grasping for my skirt, my legs— anything that it can grasp to hold me. The Heart is aprick.
I stomp down hard on the hand of one— bone and flesh crunching together. I stumble around the reaching arms ofanother. The bodies furthest away are rising now too, heads twisting strangely on their necks. The flesh of their throats cut open in wide, gaping wounds. I am not athletic by nature. I’m not sure I can outrun them.
I try to dodge one, and another grabs me from behind. Sila is getting further away from me, walking as if in a trance. The dead drag me to the ground, grabbing at my clothes and limbs. I use whatever I have to kick and hit. To tear at their flesh. To claw my way out of their grasping hands. I’ll use my teeth if I have to.
There is another crunch of bone and flesh, the ripping sound of a limb tearing from one of my assailants' bodies. I can feel the Heart watching, amused. I can’t scream with my voice, but if it can speak into my mind, maybe it will hear me scream back.
Is this all just a joke to you? Why don’t you do something useful and maybe you’ll get what you want.
There is a thoughtful shift in the Heart’s strange presence. Sila is nearing the altar and fear is all I know. I thought I knew what it was to be scared. I was wrong. Nothing will ever be like the fear of losing her.
I’m barely halfway across the room, trying to crawl my way across it as blood soaks into my dress, dragging me down with the weight of it. The dead try to pull me back under them. My silent screams of exertion are all I have. My bloodied fingers and broken nails.
I’m only making sure you truly want it.
Oh fuck you.
I kick back at the bodies, twisting to make sure it lands. I bring my foot down on another, and another. The fabric of my dress gives way under the hands of yet another, and I stumble back. My hand braces against the floor and I push off, free of them. I trip up the slippery set of stairs up to the raised platform.
I throw myself between Sila and the altar. The Dawn King only knows what I must look like. She blinks at me, unseeing,and then her eyes clear. Panic fills them. Fear twisting at her features.
“Lorel, no—” She grabs for me, but the hands of the altar maiden reach me first.
