Page 159 of Nightshade

She didn’t move. Didn’t so much as stir, or twitch in his arms.

Panicked, he held her face and forced breath into her mouth. “Wake for me, please.”

The baron refused to believe the truth that she wouldn’t do so. That someone so innocent, so good, could perish in such a cruel and merciless way. He lay her on the ground, breathing into her still body over and over, in hopes she might take one sip of air and rise.

“Please,” he begged. “Do not go into the light that beckons you. Come back to me. Listen for my voice, Lustina.” Clutching the crown of her head, he rested his cheek against hers and whispered in her ear, “Come back to me, and I will find you.”

He waited. Breathed into her again. And waited.

Still, she did not move.

Her eyes did not twitch, as in dreams, when he would sometimes watch her sleep while marveling at her beauty. The sweet scent of vitality had faded for something that burned the back of his throat. Her lips did not curve to the only smile that could ever fill his chest with longing. Instead, she lay still. So still.

He caressed her soft cheek, while his heart slowed to a deathly cadence. “Lustina,” he whispered.

He longed to hear her voice, that sweet melodic sound which calmed the violence inside of him. To feel the warmth of her skin, instead of the cold and stiff presence of death. He fought the tears that burned in his eyes and stroked a trembling hand down her wet hair, as reality came over him.

Gathering her up into his lap, he held her against him and tipped his head back. A distant sound hammered inside his skull, so full of misery and despair, and as it came into sharp clarity, Jericho realized it’d ripped from his own chest. With her silky, wet hair draped in his fingers, he rocked back and forth, holding her in his arms.

Lustina.

Everything he’d ever dreamed of, everything he’d ever wanted in that unforgiving world, lay unmoving against him and entirely out of reach. How cruel of fate to gift him with the warmth and sunlight, a mere breath of contentment in his otherwise cold and rayless world, only to steal it away.

For what seemed like an eternity, he let the pain drag him into abysmal depths. Deeper than he had ever ventured in his life. The darkness there crushed his insides, thickened his lungs.

He couldn’t breathe.

There would never be another Lustina. He would never again know the warmth of the sun, nor the taste of sweet berries. The scent of flowers that was as much a part of her as the smile that lit her face.

Her raven hair and stardust eyes.

Her generous and giving heart.

She slipped from his world like a fragile leaf on the wind. One he longed to chase until the end of time.

“This world never deserved you.” Lifting her to his face, he pressed his lips to hers. “I will look for you in the Nightshade. However long it takes, I will find you and bring you home. Remember me.”

He stared down at her and ran his finger over the Pentacrux branding, where silvery swirls lit up the mark of his sigil, still cloaked in her skin. Should he lay eyes upon it again, his soul would recognize her in an instant. The sigil, unbreakable and binding.

No matter what. In life. In death.

Eternally.

In the distance, the toll of the bell signaled a mocking death knell. The pain inside of him clawed at his chest, like a beast yearning for escape.

Do not seek vengeance, the voices said to him.

The baron shook his head, teeth grinding beneath the rage that simmered inside of him like a boiling cauldron. “I cannot let this go unredressed.”

You will suffer immeasurable consequences.

“I would burn in eternal flames for her.”

Do not seek revenge.

A loud, piercing ring shrieked in his ear, and the baron flinched, jaw slack with the agonizing sensation that vibrated inside his head. “I forsake all of you! All of Praecepsia will burn for what they did to her!”

A roll of thunder echoed in the sky above.