Page 48 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely
Chapter 29
Lorel
Lune leavesme promising to return to check up on me tomorrow. I deflate against the closed door, my eyes going immediately to the dark shape that is Sila, resting. Lune doesn’t trust her, and I know she has good reasons not to. They were not so different from the reasons I had told myself, when Sila’s arm had first come around my shoulders. It was different now. The Heart of the Library had bound us to each other and I would not be parted from her.
I cross the room quietly, my legs still aching, and stop at the end of the bed. She’s still a mess. Lune had sewn and cleaned what was urgent, but she hadn’t seemed as hopeful as Mercias. I grip the footboard and my fingers protest. She’s so peaceful beneath the blood and dirt. Is this how they laid out her first body in the catacombs? Would I lay out her second the same?
I will the tremors trying to shake through my body to stop and fetch the basin and cloth from the bedside table. I return with more hot water, and a clean towel, and take up the space Lune had occupied earlier. I wring out the cloth and the water trickles over my hands and back into the basin with a gentlesound. My hands are steadier now as I press the cloth gently to her face, unearthing her from the week’s trials. Tracing her cheekbones with the cloth and carefully lifting the blood from her lips. Lips that I had kissed in a moment of panic. That I wanted to kiss again. That I wanted to hear my name from again. The curse stirs, as if it is trying to be a comforting weight. I rub the healing salve Lune had left me for my scrapes and bruises into the worst of the cuts and scrapes across her face.
That done, I turn my attention to her hands, and feel the way my mouth tries to smile, strained and painful. She has certainly not kept them to herself in the time that I’ve known her. Possessive since the very beginning. Even as weary as I am, I treat each finger, each nail with care. Cleaning each little cut or scrape on one hand, and massaging Lune’s healing salve into her skin, before moving around the bed to reach for her other hand to repeat the process. It’s not a wide bed, but there’s space for me there if I want it when I’m done.
And I do want it.
When her hands and face are clean, I set the basin aside and crawl onto the bed beside her. Underneath the harsh aroma of the salve and the tang of copper, there is still the scent of her— steady and earthy in spite of it all. I curl into her side and let my head rest on her shoulder.
“Little mouse?” Sila murmurs, her voice thick with sleep. Her fingers flex and I tangle mine with hers. She grips them back, implacable even at the edge of death. Sleep is trying to claim me already, but I manage to tip my head back and press my lips to her neck. An attempt to reassure her. She shifts, her lips pressing against my hair as she breathes in deeply. She makes a pleased sort of hum before her body relaxes again into sleep. It relaxes every muscle in my body to hear her speak, feel her move again. Sleep overcomes me, and at least this night, my dreams are quiet things.
I have never felt so keenly how many places a person can ache as I do when I wake. I must have slept deeply, because I’ve barely moved from where I fell asleep. My head is still resting on Sila’s shoulder, her fingers still tangled with mine. I groan silently as I shift, wincing as I stretch out my legs.
“That’s a lovely sight,” says Sila, her lips near my ear. I twist around quickly, pushing myself up so that I can see her better. She is awake, just. Exhaustion is clear in her face, even if there is a teasing light in her eyes. There is a tightness in her face, and her colour is all wrong still. I pull my hand free of her grip.
The Dawn King have mercy, you’re awake.
Sila’s mouth twists in a grimace. “Don’t thank the Dawn King. Thank the Library and my fae blood.”
If that’s who I need to give thanks to, to have you back, then so be it.
Sila opens her mouth to reply and stops, her gaze flicking over me. “Are you wearing my blouse?”
I needed something to wear… but I can find something else today.
“No,” Sila says, reaching out to tangle her hand in the blouse's fabric. “I like you in my things. Marking you exactly as you ought to be.”
My heart thumps in my chest.Marking me?
“As mine,” she says, pulling me to her. Her lips meet mine, and I gasp silently against her mouth, opening it to her. Her fingers tangle in my hair and it turns from a simple press of lips, like my chaste offering had been, to something that steals in as if it can take more than just my breath away. To something that quickens my blood and sets my skin alight. If this is how a fae steals a soul, then Sila can have mine. As long as she never stops kissing me like this.
She has to, after a long indulgent moment, to let me gasp silently for air. She nips softly at my lower lip, her eyes dark, hermouth kiss damp and she's so very beautiful like this. I try not to let my thoughts wander to how lovely she could be. She rests her forehead against mine, her fingers still locked in my borrowed blouse. She sighs wistfully.
“You do not know how much I long to hear you gasp. Hear you whimper for me,” Sila murmurs. “Hear you say my name.”
I can barely summon a thought because Sila has kissed me and all I can do is think of her lips over mine as my mind tries to catch up. She smiles softly at me and kisses my nose before letting go of my blouse and falling back against the pillows. She looks weary again. Tired right through.
How long?
She smiles softly and closes her eyes. “Truly? Since I first saw you. After the Ascension, I was tasked with watching the scriptorium to watch for you— for the target,” she says. “I fancied for a moment what it would mean if it were you, if I were to press my blade to your throat. Would you whimper? Would you beg?”
I stare at her, because the Ascension, the celebration of the Dawn King’s coronation, was months ago. She opens her eyes again and they’re clear as they look at me. I had not seen her before the day I returned to the scriptorium— but she had seen me. Watched me from her shadows. She had known when I had read the book, and she had known when I was in strife afterwards. When she had found me in my room.
“I never thought for a moment it would be you, but it did not stop me thinking of you,” Sila says. “It did not stop you from consuming my thoughts. And I have so very much time for thinking.”
I feel unmoored. Adrift. Not because Sila had been observing me and obsessing over me for months now. Once the thought might have sent me running, now it only makes me hungrier forher. I want her to devour me as wholly and completely as her kiss had promised.
No. I am unmoored because in the end my body, my blood, is still a gateway to the Dawn King. No matter what they had said when they allowed me to join the Library all those years ago. Only now, the Library had a claim on me too. I had become a bridge between the two. A bridge that the Library had exploited. A bridge perhaps that the Lightkeepers could exploit too.
It could only have been me.
Sila’s brow twitches in a frown. “What do you mean?”
