Page 38 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely
“The Heart prepared a rather nasty trap for us,” Sila says. “And I couldn’t keep them all back from you. As for you, I do not know. You told me you are not adept at magic. That was no simple magic, Lorel.”
I didn’t— I can’t— What do you mean?
Sila’s voice is steady and patient in the dark. “When you were recovering from the poison, you had a fever. When I found you, crushing yourself into the wall, you had a fever. Right now, you have a fever.” She reaches out a cool hand to press the back of it to my cheek. I can feel the way it soothes my skin still. Ice cold as my skin burns. I stare at her. “What magic did you do that night, Lorel?”
She is a ghost in the dark. The curse stirs, sharp as a hissing cat, and I remember. Vividly I remember.
I had tried to soothe it, the curse, to push it down. A memory of pain arcs through my chest, leaving me breathless and I double over, clutching at my sides.
I had gone back to my room. I had been afraid of something. No, not just afraid, terrified. The curse had been a feral thing, trying to scratch and claw its way out of my throat. I had choked on it, not wanting to let it out into the world. My fingers were coated with ash and ice cold. My lips were going numb. I am caught up in the memory now as I try to pull in air like I am drowning. I am back there, in my room as the curse tears and screams. I push it back. Push it down. I feel a rib crack, and then another, and hope that this is only in the memory, even if the pain of it feels real. I push it down again and there is blood on my tongue, running from my nose. I dig my fingers into my sides, nails gouging deep. Another rib. My fingers as I clench them, cracking as I try to hold the curse down.
Then there is darkness, and my ears begin to ring. The sound rises until it crowds all of my senses. And then it cuts out. Silence. My skin burns. My throat burns. I press myself against the cool of the wall. I press as hard as I can, desperate for the feel of it against my skin. It gives way, soft, as arms come tight around me. Fingers threading through my hair, clinging to me.
I open my eyes.
My bones are still intact. The taste of blood on my tongue recedes. The cut on my hand stings from the pressure I had placed upon it. My breath comes in silent gasps and I am pressed against Sila as if I had tried to crush myself against her body in place of the wall from my memory. My skin is still burning. Tears burn at the back of my throat. I sob silently into Sila’s chest, no longer caring about if I should. I let her hold me as if she cares. It’s painful to try and cry so wholeheartedly without being able to make a sound.
To be unable to put a voice to the miserable realisation that in the end, whatever this cursed silence was, I had done it to myself.
Chapter 21
Lorel
It takessome time for the tears to stop, for the overwhelming pain of it all to recede. Sila just holds me, as patient and still as the statues around us. It doesn’t really go away, the dull ache resting alongside the curse. How can it when neither of them have anywhere to go because of me?
Because it is clear as a well-lit light sigil that the reason the curse is still curled up in the cavity of my chest is because I trapped it there. Trapped it along with my voice, my sighs, my whispers. All of it locked away.
I’ve soaked through Sila’s blouse and it clings to my cheek as I sit there, pressed to her chest. How miserable to be so useless that when you finally manage to use magic, you use it to take away your own voice. To be so afraid of something, everything. To make myself as small, and plain, and unremarkable as I have always been. As I have always told myself I wanted to be.
“Lorel?” Sila says. Her voice is wound through with concern and sorrow. That must be nice. To have the ability to say one word, and have it mean so much.
Irritation prickles under my skin and her fingers tense as I pull back from her, as if she is afraid to let me go. I am not worthy of it, this misplaced affection of hers. Of these feelings that neither of us should be feeling. Feelings that I will crush down with the rest of it.
I sit back on my thighs and wipe my eyes. The labyrinth is silent and still. I take a deep, silent breath. Sila’s face is shadowed, tracked with blood. Something has cut through her sleeve, gouging up her arm. I clench my fist, feeling the fresh scar tissue of the bargain on my hand. I had been foolish to bind her to me. I am nothing but misfortune.
Sila reaches out a hand, touching my jaw, and I wrench myself away from her.
I’m fine.
“Lorel—”
Don’t. Don’t pretend that I am anything other than what I am.
Sila drops her hand back to her lap. “And what is that?” she says, voice flat. Eyes dark and unreadable.
Useless and foolish. I was worth nothing in the Keep. I am worth even less now. Who does this to themselves? To finally do something of worth, and make themselves into nothing.
My hands are all sharp, jerky movements and I know she sees every one of them. I want to shout the words into the dark, and I can’t, and I think I might cry from the frustration.
Sila sits silently, a long dark shadow. Then she sighs heavily. “It is a shame I will never get to tear the limbs from those who have made you believe this of yourself,” she says, low and regretful. “Come, scribe, we must keep moving.”
The way she saysscribecarves through me and leaves all my buried feelings bleeding out of me. I was the one who had put distance between us first. That Sila should call me that should not hit me so hard. It’s what I had wanted, after all. For her totreat me as a Librarian should treat a scribe. It should not hurt so keenly.
I let her walk on, wondering if the Heart will take me here. Turn me to stone so that I don’t have to feel anything anymore. But the heaviness in my limbs does not come. And I do not wish to be left alone here, after all. I do not want to lose her to the darkness.
I stand, and with each step that I take, something settles in me. I want to blame it on the curse, with its cold, dreadful weight, but worse than that dread is the regret. It tangles and snarls on itself. Sinks a sickly feeling into my stomach. Something is horribly wrong.
Light catches the edges of Sila’s figure up ahead, her image reflected in the massive ornamental mirrors that line the corridor. A thousand Silas in a hundred mirrors.
