Page 16 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely
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.
