Page 59 of Nightshade

Was it? Had she become so complacent that she could not see past her own misery? The way the entire village had shunned her and cast her aside like discarded bones. Even then, there, with the baron, she would’ve faced immeasurable punishment for having run off to the woods with him.

“And what awaits me? Pain? Death? How is that better?”

“You believe in nothing. So much so, you cannot imagine that I might catch you.”

“Would you? Is that what this is about? My trust?”

“Do you trust me, Lustina? Or do you only trust the god who tells you good and innocent people must burn for their sins.”

Her breathing turned shallower as she contemplated the question. Of course she did not believe in all she had been made to think was sin. It went against her very core. Against her mother’s teachings of kindness and clemency. “Promise me you will catch me.”

“Always,” he whispered.

Eyes clamped shut, she shook her head at the thought of stepping off the cliff. “I am a fool. A complete and utter fool.”

“And you fear that most of all.”

Taking in a deep breath, Lustina steeled her nerves and released her grip of the baron’s arm. She kept her eyes closed, while her toes tingled. This is madness!

She thought of her mother and wondered if she would be disappointed in her foolishness for trusting him. How would he catch her, after all? How could he?

At the same time that she reached behind for his arm, she stepped forward, and on grasping nothing behind her, she gasped and lost her balance.

Horror seized her as she fell forward at a speed far too great to overcome. The fog parted for the rocks and dark turbulent water she could see clearer than moments before. Lustina opened her mouth to let out a scream and squeezed her eyes shut. She prayed her death would be quick and painless.

When she opened her eyes to face the inevitable impact, she stared in disbelief as the horizon stretched out before her.

Her feet firmly planted on the edge of the rock, just as before.

She looked down to where the water and death remained at a more comfortable distance than she was certain it had, and exhaling a shaky breath, she stepped back from the edge, her back hitting an immovable wall behind her.

She turned to find the baron there, her hand clutched tightly in his. “I … I swore I … I fell over that edge. And yet, it must’ve been a … dream?”

“Was it? Could you not feel the wind rushing past you? The breath escaping your lungs? The cold hand of death pulling at your fears?”

“I felt all those things.” Frowning, she recalled those seconds when her eyes had been closed, as if perhaps she’d passed out. Surely, she’d fallen, after having tumbled forward like that. But then, how could the baron have caught her when she was already bound for the rocks below?

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“I do not know what to believe.” Thoughts came rapidly and irrationally, taunting her with impossibility.

“What is it you find most troubling in all of this?”

“That it was real.”

“Why?”

“Because I should be dead.”

“Like that day in the woods, when the tree missed you.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what you refuse to tell anyone else about that day, Lustina.”

She bristled at the question, at the possibility that he would have any awareness of those unspoken thoughts. “I do not know what you are talking about, My Lord.”

“You do. It is a thought which has plagued you every day since. You know precisely why that tree failed to crush you. Now, tell me what you believe.”