Page 58 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely
“I love the scent of you. Like damp earth and funeral flowers,” she sighs, leaning into my hand. Searing heat tears through me again and I need her. My scribe. My little mouse.My Lorel.
I grip her hair and push her down. Her face, her mouth, is hot against my ice cold skin and she makes a desperate, wanting noise that I feel all the way through me. I feel the needy way she kisses me, open-mouthed and hungry andfuck. This willnot take long at all. I grind back against her, keep my fingers wound in her hair, as my breathing comes faster. Becomes more desperate. Every part of my body is alive from the sound and feel of her.
Because I had never thought of myself as dead, but I am coming to realise that I hadn’t been living, either. Even with my tethers at their strongest, I had been little more than a ghost of myself until Lorel had caught my eye. Had awoken me from the long, deep slumber that was my existence. And here? With her mouth on me, and my hips pressed against her, and her fingers digging into my thighs? I am alive again. Alive and hot and wanting. Unravelling and made anew, again, as pleasure claims me and tears through my body, dragging a desperate noise from within as I come entirely undone.
My breathing is rough as I release her and drag her back to me. Kiss her damp mouth, and taste what she tastes. Hold her sweet face with her slightly unfocused eyes and her small pants as she looks at me. I smile, a slow thing that creeps across my face, and push my thigh between hers. Lorel gasps and bites her lip as she presses herself against me.
“Do you want more, little mouse?” It is not as sultry as I would have liked, but it hardly seems to matter.
“Yes,” Lorel says, desperate. “I want more, I want you, I want?—”
I grasp her hips and press them down against my thigh as I grind it against her. She moans beautifully.
“Everything, I know, little mouse. I am yours, Lorel, and whatever you want from me, it is yours. Always.”
I kiss the next sound from her lips, because it is mine.
And I am hers.
Chapter 34
Lorel
Sometime during thenight there is a knock at the door, and the shift of the bed as the cold press of Sila’s body leaves me. From the other room, I hear the murmur of voices, and when Sila returns it’s not to bed, but to her closet.
“Sila?” I mumble. She stills.
“Hearing you speak is going to take some getting used to, little mouse,” she says. There is a soft smile in her voice, and a thread of iron, too. At odds with each other. Fingers appear from the dark, pushing their way through my hair. A brush of lips against mine.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“There has been an incident in the scriptorium. I won’t be long, I promise,” Sila says. She kisses away any further protestations.
“Alright.” It’s made up of more syllables than it requires as sleep closes over me again. She has rather exhausted me and I have not a single concern in my entirely content state.
The door closes with a click and as I drift off again, the curse stirs, and shifts, and starts to wake.
Something feels off when I wake. My chest feels tight, and there is a painful, burning ache in my throat. The room seems airless. Suddenly too small, too close. I might be choking on something. There is something on my tongue. Words.
I drag my consciousness to the surface, clawing my way through the darkness. The sheets fall away as I sit up and try to calm my racing heart and get control of my breathing.
Words burning on my tongue. The prophecy. A curse for the Dawn King.
Sila had upheld her part of the Heart’s bargain, now it is time to uphold mine. I open my mouth to speak, and there is the loud, telltale sound of an axe meeting wood. The dry, ancient wood of the door splinters under the blow, and I know that someone has broken down Sila’s door. If they are in the living area, it won’t be long before they find me here.
The curse shrinks back, like an uncertain cat. The words slip away from my thoughts, away from my tongue. I don’t have time to move before the axe strikes the wood again and the bedchamber door gives way to a pair of Lightkeepers, lanterns held high. There must be even more in the hallway behind them, the telltale flicker of battle magic flashing in a chaotic back light.
I am alone. Sila is gone. I have a vague recollection of her lips and her fingers. A promise.
A trap.
I try to kick back the sheets, and they tangle around my legs. Sila might be in danger. I need to get to her?—
“There!” shouts one of the Lightkeepers.
My blood turns cold, as if someone has walked over my grave. Sila is not the one in danger tonight. I am.
They charge through the space, Sila’s journals tumbling to the floor. I free my legs before the first of them reaches me. He grabs for me, seizing my bruised arm. I cry out as he twists it,dragging me closer to him. I kick out, and I scream, and I refuse to go quietly.
