Page 73 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely
Vika hasn’t moved yet. She stands as still as a sentinel, jaw clenched and staring down the hall. I cradle Lorel close and grimace as my blood stains her clean clothing.
“Goodbye, Vika,” I say softly.
For a long while after I pass her, it is only my footsteps that echo down the hall.
I breathe a sigh of relief because Vika will not see me fade, and for that I am grateful.
Chapter 44
Lorel
I wakewith my head resting against Sila’s shoulder. Whatever happened back there has drained me further again. I do not think there is much left to lose. My limbs are shaking and in all the places where I am pressed against Sila, her skin is as cold as the marble of the Dawn King’s halls in winter. Vika and the bloody hallway are long gone. There are cuts raked down Sila’s face, slowly closing even as I watch.
“Sila?” I ask, shifting.
“Not much further, little mouse,” Sila says.
“What happened?” I ask.
“You did,” she replies.
“I—”
“Hush. All is well,” Sila murmurs.
“You’re bleeding.”
Sila shrugs. “I have left conversations with Vika in a worse state. I will be fine. You, on the other hand, keep terrifying me.”
“I don’t mean to.”
“I know. We can discuss it when we are free of this place,” Sila says.
I fall into silence and bury my face in her hair. She still smells of blood and sweat, but under it all there is the scent of her, as sure and inevitable as the grave.
Sila takes a set of stairs, and the smell of damp earth and decay rises from the stone in the hallway. Here the walls drip, running with water from the natural cave system. Moss clings to the untamed stone, and I know we are at the edge of the catacombs.
There is a main entrance to the catacombs, of course. All wrought in stonework by masters of their craft millennia ago and protected from moisture and plant life by their magic even all these years later. That is not where we are going.
Here, where the crypts meet the Citadel, everything is laid out in long, dark passages. This area belongs to the Barracks and their foragers and metalworkers, but most will not dare to delve so close to the catacombs for fear of disturbing the dead interred there.
Sila pauses, her eyes catching in the darkness, seeing what mine can’t. And then, as we move closer, I can.
A deep crack breaks through the wall and floor ahead. It must continue down for many levels, forgotten or ignored as unfixable. It has pulled the floor of the hallway apart, and a gentle mist drifts from within it, damp and earth-warm.
“Here?” I whisper.
“If we are not too late,” Sila says, setting me down carefully.
I peel Lune’s cloak away from where it has stuck to her bloodied shoulder. The wounds are already closing and her blouse is blood-soaked and torn. I reach out, resting my fingers there. It makes me uneasy, even if it doesn’t seem to phase her.
“They will heal,” Sila says softly. “This isn’t like last time.” She threads her fingers through my hair to cradle the back of my neck and leans down to press a kiss to my forehead.
A thump echoes out from the fissure and I flinch, heart hammering in my throat, sure that the floor is about to open and swallow me whole. A lantern light appears, floating above the fissure and a figure soon follows it. A set of footsteps echoes across a plank thrown down over the crack.
“You the Librarian?” asks a rough voice. He appears from the gently curling mist, walking over the makeshift bridge. He’s an older man, with rounded human ears and sandy blond hair. His figure is sturdy, the kind of person you’d ask for help hauling books back and forth, and right now his unruly eyebrows are pulled together in a deep-set frown that might be permanent.
“Yes,” Sila says. “We are friends of the moon in the glade.”
