Page 17 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely
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 willneverabandon 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 findafter a week away, but everything led back there in the end and I am determined that this time I will find answers.
Chapter 10
Lorel
Sometimes I wonderwhat it would be like to wake to daylight, instead of the cold dark of a room under a mountain. It does no good to think such thoughts, but they come anyway. I like the shape of my life that I have moulded for myself, but the sun does not shine outside the Citadel anymore than it does here. It had, once, but now the land was covered in a cursed fog that never lifted. A warning, the Dawn King would tell you, that there is no life to be had outside the Citadel.
I sit on the edge of the bed, testing my legs in the dark little infirmary room. I’d done a little moving about the room in the time since I had woken, and I hoped they wouldn’t fail me now.
Lune has left to bring me a change of clothes, since I couldn’t very well walk out in my undergarments. Otherwise I would have left already. I was tempted to do so anyway. I was sotiredof this room.
The door creaks open and I look up, but it isn’t Lune returning with a change of clothes. Instead, Sila stands like a long mark of darkness in the doorway. Stands there holdingmyclothes. I stare at her.
“I thought you might like your own clothes,” she says, closing the door behind her. It is unnervingly thoughtful.
Thank you.My hands fumble it a little.
Sila crosses the room to set my clothes down on the bed.
