Page 17 of Nightshade

Past

The monotonous clop of horse hooves marked a long and steady path up the mountainside, as Lustina sat across from Bishop Venable in the carriage. Early morning sunlight rose over the treetops, adding a lovely pink hue to the dawning sky. Silhouettes of thatched rooftops and the expanse of the valley below provided a breathtaking distraction from the silence that clung to the air. The bishop hadn’t said a word to her in the hour since they’d left the monastery. In the almost two years that she’d lived there, she’d never been asked to accompany him on his travels, until that day, and the nature of the trip remained a mystery.

“Your Excellency, I’ve heard the mountain is a very treacherous trek. May I ask why we’ve taken this particular path?”

“It leads to the Van Croix estate. The Earl of Praecepsia.”

“And why do we seek him out?”

“It is they who have called on us. Lady Praecepsia is quite ill, as is her son, Baron Van Croix. We must uphold the presence of The Holy Father so that they might heal and be well.”

“Both mother and son are ill? Is it plague?”

Bishop Venable grumbled, shifting on the carriage bench. “No, foolish child. It is not plague.”

“The son … is he very young?”

“A slight bit older than you. He is home from Cavendale now, due to his mother’s state.”

“Cavendale?”

“The university. Of course, you would not be familiar with it.”

Of course. Her mother had taught her to read and write, and although Lustina often dreamed of studying one day, it would never come to pass. She knew that. Where she came from, girls born into servitude rarely, if ever, left their station. And almost never learned to read, or write, which set her apart in that respect. Tending gardens at the cathedral would’ve likely been her fate, until she married, if such a thing were possible with her branding.

Or until she died.

The boy, on the other hand, had likely enjoyed the privilege of an education from the time he’d finished cathedral school. In which case, Lustina would guess him to be adolescent, perhaps no more than sixteen, or seventeen, as she had already reached her fifteenth year.

“What ails him?”

“His is a different kind of sickness. One that must be consistently exorcised, lest he becomes the very embodiment of evil.”

“Like my mother.”

“Yes. Precisely.”

“Would he burn as well?”

“He would have to. Evil cannot be left to fester, for it grows into the worst kind of beast. One that would destroy all of us, should it remain unaddressed.”

As difficult as it had been watching her mother burn, Lustina couldn’t possibly bear the sight of watching a child suffer the same fate.

“As you are ignorant of our ways,” Bishop Venable kept on. “You will address the elder Van Croix as The Lord Praecepsia.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.” Their titles still baffled Lustina, with all the rules and mannerisms. Why territory was more prestigious than family name was a mystery she didn’t bother to argue.

The carriage climbed the narrow road that wound around the black rock mountain. In the distance, the sea stretched toward the edge of the world, and she could just make out the birds that flew above its surface.

How free they looked in their graceful glides that made her wish she’d had her own set of wings. Her mother had always called her little raven child, after the Celtic stories from her mother’s native Ireland, of Morrighan, the goddess of war, who’d taken the form of the bird before battle. According to the stories, she’d had the ability to predict the outcome of war, a gift Lustina’s mother had always told her she, too, would one day possess. A messenger, just like the goddess, who would one day reveal the true evils of man. A prophecy she’d vowed never to speak aloud to Bishop Venable, for fear that she would be known as a witch, also. Of course, it wasn’t that Lustina actually believed that she was destined for such prophecies. She just liked the idea of having a greater purpose in the world.

Even if such a world looked upon her as nothing more than a cursed abomination.

Coupled with her long, black hair that once reached past her bottom, her eyes carried flecks of green, gold and red, which her mother had always referred to as stardust, as magical and mystical as the luminous gems that hung in the night sky.

Those outside of the monastery called her a product of devilry, while Bishop Venable thought of her as an inevitable consequence of a damned soul.

The church had cut her locks nearly to her skull when she’d first arrived, believing it carried infestations, but that wasn’t true. She and her mother had always bathed in the river and smelled of sweet jasmine. So different from the harsh, ash soap she was forced to use at the monastery. Her hair had since grown back, long enough to braid, which she often let the pentashes back at the monastery do, as they would frequently remark how her hair had felt like spun silk.