Page 39 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely
The labyrinth has arranged itself in a perfect replica of the Court’s long mirrored hall of reflection, right down to the wallpaper and the scuffs in the tiles. The painted ceiling rising high overhead appears accurate until I look too long and catch the subtle changes that turn it from the tale of the Dawn King’s Ascension to something much darker. Something that might be called treason.
It shows the Dawn King standing between two women. Then, one woman is in chains, and the second is crowned with starlight. Later, the crowned one lies dead over the altar, blood as black as ink staining the rest of the painting as the corridor continues.
“Scribe, you are falling behind,” Sila says, her voice drifting back to me down the long hall. I tear my eyes from the ceiling and back to her. She’s still walking on, as if she knows exactly where she is headed. And she must, because she has walked it centuries ago. The hall of reflection has only one destination— the chapel. The altar.
The click of her boots is fading, and I am seized by a desperate fear not to lose her. To not let her go on alone. Certain that if I do, I will not see her again. Not alive. I feel sick with the knowledge and I am moving, running as quickly as my tired legs can carry me.
My own boots beat out a harsh rhythm against the tiles as I race to catch her up. I cannot lose her. Icannot. Dawn King strike me! Why am I so afraid of everything?
The darkness presses in, crowding me as I strain my ears for a sign of her presence. A strip of bright light up ahead is the only thing that illuminates the darkness. It casts her in golden light, and my breath catches, silent as every other breath tearing through my lungs, to think that she might go through without me.
Chapter 22
Sila
My heart feelsas if it is being crushed, only it is too fragile for it and it is shattering. Turning into tiny shards of white hot fury. I don’t know what to do with heartache, but I know what to do with anger. The all-consuming feeling of rage that there are people up there in the Citadel who will continue to live and breathe. People—vermin— that had held power over Lorel and used it to turn her into a creature of such self-loathing. She hides it so well, but the labyrinth is bringing all of her emotions to the surface. Peeling back the layers of skin and muscle to get to the heart of her.
I’m done with the Heart’s games. It can play with me, as it has always done, but I will not allow Lorel to suffer it any further. She had looked so wretched. So small and fractured, and I had held her as if she was mine.
She had clung to me as if I was hers. I fling a shadow from my hand, striking at a mirror and shattering it.
The Heart is playing with me, because the hall of reflection is not this long. My memories of my life before my death are threadbare. That life had been little more than a fleetingmoment compared to the age that I have lived since. Just a whisper through the world, rustling the pages, shifting the dust. The end of it, though, I remember that. A jagged wound cut across the end of one life and the beginning of another.
My shadows hit another mirror, and it is a reflection of myself, all the pieces I am breaking into. Enough is enough.
Speak to me, you wretch, I call out in my mind. Feel the way the shadow and space shifts as the labyrinth’s ancient sentient being turns its attention towards me. I can feel its presence in every stone and paint stroke and piece of shattering glass.
Hello, my dearest Librarian.
I feel a tug on the tether where it catches under my heart. That faint, tenuous line that is keeping me anchored here, preventing me from fading away. The Heart, reminding me that I have already broken one lifeline, and I cannot break another. Lorel’s footsteps echo in the dark behind me, her little boots clipping along the stone.
So, you will do the same as he, in the end, I tell the Heart. I feel its indifference in the shifting shadows.
Only one of you walks out of here,whispers the Heart.It is your choice.
Is that a promise?I ask.
Yes.
Then I have made my choice.
You will die again.
So be it.
It is silent for a long moment as I walk on. The door to the chapel finally gets closer, golden light spilling from within. Exactly the same as that day, back when the sun had still shone. Back when fae blood gave him his power to keep the dark at bay. Now the blood of the fae has faded through the generations and his power is waning. I doubt Lorel has ever seen the sun or felt the warmth of its light. And the light that spills out iswarm. Ihold my hand out to feel it against my skin, and the warmth of it is overwhelming and soothing all at once.
I have no wish to leave Lorel now. I would have made her mine, with time. I think of her face pressed against my skin as I carried her, and the way her fingers dug into my arms as she cried those deep, heart-wrenching sobs. She does not deserve the fate that lies at the centre of the labyrinth, and I will give my own blood to the Heart before I give it hers.
If it is between me or her, it will always be her.
She is just a scribe, Librarian.Nothing worthy of you, the Heart murmurs. Its ink dark presence lurks at the back of my mind.
Then why do you want her? If she is nothing?
I always want, Librarian.
No, thereissomething special about her, I reply. I believe it, too. More than just my own feelings and desire for her. Lorel had silenced something in herself so brutally, something that should have swallowed her whole. Whatever magic she possesses has the ability to stop the will of the Library’s Heart. I have lost many scribes or researchers to the Library. It is a known hazard of the labyrinth, and something all Librarians grow accustomed to.
