Page 71 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely
“I do like it when I bring out the worst in you,” Vika says, stepping forward. Tiny shards of darkness swarm around her, pieces of black broken glass that catch the lantern light and clink against each other. Her eyes go pitch black like Sila’s, from edge to edge, and that same thick, dark blood bleeds from her eyes. All the sharp, handsome planes of her face become lethal enough that if you hit her with your bare hand, you’d lose fingers and be grateful that it wasn’t worse. She curls her fingers into a fist and the dark shards embed themselves in her knuckles and shoulders, cutting through the metal and leather of her gauntlets. Pierce through her armour down her spine. She grins.
Sila’s shadows come around me, pulling me out of the way of the fight and anchoring me in place as Vika rushes in. Sila moves like smoke, dancing around Vika as Vika strikes out at her. Each time Vika makes a move towards me, Sila surrounds her, or takes the force of Vika’s strike with her body, as reckless as the last time I’d seen her fight. Only this time she is alone, and the Lightkeeper had nothing on the vicious, determined mass of muscle that is Vika. Vika grins manically with each dodge and hit as if she has been longing for this fight for a long time.
Sila’s long talons strike and glance off Vika’s mirror-like shadows, and Vika’s fists fail to make purchase as the two move in some grotesque imitation of a court dance. I sag against the wall and Sila’s shadows. I cannot do anything here, not in this condition. Just like the last time, all I can do is watch, fever-riddled and barely on the edge of consciousness. Somewhere in the swirl of shadow and darkness, Vika laughs and Sila snarls as Vika is hurled backwards down the hallway.
Sila’s monstrous figure stands alert between Vika and I. Vika sits up, wiping blood from her face and smiling widely.
“Finally,” Vika says. “A proper fight.”
“You are wasting my time,” Sila snarls. Vika hauls herself up from the ground.
“Orders are orders,” Vika says.
“Fuck your orders,” Sila replies.
“No, I think you already did that,” Vika says with a laugh. She throws herself forward again.
Sila rises to meet her and Vika dodges, surges, and dodges again. Her sharp eyes are locked on me as she throws herself at Sila, and Sila takes the full force of the blow to her shoulder with a crunch of metal and bone. She grinds her fist in cruelly as she stares at me and Sila pushes back against her. If Vika hit anyone else like that, they wouldn’t exist anymore.
Vika grins and pulls her fist back, and this time she sends a shard of shadowy glass at me. I shriek in my panic. Sila’s shadows pull me aside as the shard embeds itself in the stone where my head had been.
As if struck, Sila and Vika flinch away from each other in eerie unison. Sila’s talons retract as she grasps at her temples. Her shadows flicker and thrash as if in agony.
Vika winces, falling back and making a wretched attempt to shake off an unseen foe. As if the shard had lodged inherhead — sharp and high-pitched.
“Sila,” I gasp. I can feel something weighing on me. Draining me. There is a darkness at the edge of my vision that has nothing to do with Sila’s shadows.
“Little mouse,” Sila grinds out. “Whatever it is you’re doing,ah?—”
She flinches again and Vika falls to one knee, gripping her head, teeth gnashing, choking back a noise wrenched from deep within her.
“No—” My voice is brittle and sharp. “I’m not—” Surely this isn’t my doing. I can’t sto?—
Chapter 43
Sila
Lorel’ssmall form crumples as she loses consciousness, drained from the magic she has cast. My shadows catch and hold her and the sharp, mind-searing pain that had been lancing through my skull ceases. Vika gasps as it releases her, too. She doesn’t stand yet, her breathing coming rough and harsh as she pants. The glittering shards of her shadows move like embers, dark sparks bleeding away from her form and fading in a constant rhythm.
“What the fuck was that, Sila?” she snarls.
I grin at her, wide and sharp-toothed. “Struggling to handle a little pain, Vika?” I need her to stop thinking about my scribe. “Get up, or get out of the way.”
“You’re not leaving here, not with her alive,” Vika says. She spits to the side. Blood coats her teeth as she snarls at me and surges up from the ground. She throws her fist at me again, trying to force me to step around and away from Lorel. I block her and the sharp shadow shards sink into my skin.
“How sweet that you would let me live when I have betrayed our queen,” I hiss. Blood splatters her face and it hardly makes a difference.
“She’s not your queen any longer, Sila,” Vika says, twisting her knuckles cruelly.
I laugh without mirth. “No, I suppose not.” My shadows lash out, grappling Vika, and she twists and slips from them, ducking back before she comes at me— at Lorel— again. “Always so persistent, but you never learn, do you?” Vika breathes heavily, rolling her shoulders. Her shards cut away at my shadows, where they try to push her back.
“You know,” she says, spitting blood from her mouth again. “I never expected to see you fade.”
“You won’t,” I tell her.
“No?”
“No.”
