Page 74 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely
“Right,” he says. “I’ll take you where the moonlight hides.”
“Thank you—?” I ask.
“Corus, but let’s not get comfortable here. I don’t like standing still for too long if I can help it. Come on.” Corus walks back across the plank, and I look at the swollen, damp wood with a deep well of uncertainty.
“I think I best carry you across, little mouse,” Sila says.
I don’t want to admit she’s right, but my legs are already shaking and the fissure runs deep. I let her scoop me up again and I can barely hold on, my arms are so weak. Once we’re across, Corus peers at me before he pulls up the plank behind us, stashing it back against the wall.
“You sure she’s up for this?”
“We have no choice,” Sila replies. “If I have to carry her out of here, I will, but it must be now.”
Corus frowns, looking troubled. I watch his eyes flick from blood-stained garments to our faces.
“Right,” he says. “If it’s as you say. Can she walk?”
“She can talk,” I grumble.
“When necessary, and after some rest,” says Sila, squeezing me gently.
Corus nods and turns, walking on down the hallway. Sila follows his bobbing lantern light.
It’s dark, and I am warm, leaching cold from where I’m pressed against Sila. I press my face against the cool skin of her neck for just a moment.
When I wake again, we are in one of the burial chambers of the catacombs, the room lined with carved out hollows for the dead. It might be slightly warm if everything didn’t feel so cold against my skin. The scent of decay lingers, and those who had been interred here so long ago are little more than dust waiting to be swept away and replaced.
Death is simple in the Citadel. A body laid out with no jewellery or adornment, and wrapped in fine linen or silk, embroidered or painted to tell the dead one’s story. Lovingly, sometimes, ordinary others. Then the keepers of the catacombs find you a place to rest.
Somewhere down here my parents’ bodies rest wrapped in cloth painted by their children. I had been six, and mine had been a clumsy attempt, finessed by Orielle, who had been twice my age then.
“Go to your rest,” I murmur, having no desire to wake the dead by thinking of them. Corus and Sila echo it, though Sila says it in a tongue I have not heard before. Likely as archaic as her handwriting.
Corus leads us through the chamber into another, and from there they blur together. Many of the corpses are recent and there are no empty alcoves here. We move from hallway to chamber with no discernible pattern, with only Corus’ sure footsteps to guide us. He takes us down further again, deeper into the catacombs. The earth groans and creaks and there is the ever present sound of trickling water. The scent of death and crushed moss fades after a while, from familiarity more than anything else.
Corus doesn’t speak as we go, and we follow his lead. It does not do well to speak here.
I lay my head against Sila’s shoulder, tucking my face under the curtain of her hair and breathing in deeply. There is the metallic tang of blood that is becoming too familiar, earth and salt, star flower and ash. She is cold and bloodied, but her body is still strong and her stride doesn’t falter. I feel safe, shrouded by her hair and held so tightly and so I drift off again, unable to keep my eyes open against the fever any longer.
Chapter 45
Sila
It has been a long,long time since I have feared death. I had gone to my own willingly. My lover had been dead. My friends and family were dying. It had been a simple choice. I had been entirely helpless against the onslaught of fever and cough. I was not a healer, and they would not allow me near my loved ones. My magic had always been that of decay and rot, and there was enough of that without me adding to it.
I had not feared dying. If anything, it had been a relief.
I had knelt, and the Cupbearer had poured her poison into my open mouth. After that, it was like a dream. Golden sunlight in the chapel. Someone screaming. The Dawn King’s hand in my hair as he tipped my head back. Then darkness.
They had brought the body here, to the catacombs. I do not remember where, anymore, though I visited once, when I was newly returned. I had wept to see the decoration on the shroud, because it meant that someone who loved me had survived. It had not been in vain. Regardless of what my queen had told me.
The sound of our footsteps echoes off the catacombs’ walls and Lorel is burning up again in my arms. And I fear death. I fearit deep in the marrow of my bones. In the depths of my shadows. In the wrenching ache of my heart that constricts my chest. I am only grateful that I have no need to breathe because I think I might be incapable of it.
Something like fear and grief claws at my throat, trying to tear its way free. It is as if I am carrying Lorel, shrouded, to her final rest. I clutch her slight form tightly. She is limp and soft cradled against me. Her heartbeat, like a fluttering batwing compared to mine, is steady and sure in her chest. I grip her and my nails dig in, longer than they should be. I pull them back sharply. There is the whisper of a voice at the edges of my mind. The tether to the Library is pulled taut, stretched to its limit. But that whisper…The Library is saying farewell. Soon, I will be on my own.
Corus leads us down further into the dark until the structure of the catacombs gives way. Water leaches stronger here, seeping through the stone. Stalactites forming on the ceiling, water pooling in shallow basins drip by drip. My vision flares, bright and wider, as it does when my eyes go dark. I blink and it returns to normal. I shake it off. It must just be this place, getting to me. My tether still holds. Faintly, but it holds.
“Here,” Corus whispers, before disappearing as he pushes through moss.
