Page 29 of The False Vow

My pulse picked up. Why hadn’t I seen the opportunity earlier?

“There is always a third option,” I answered steadily. “You need only the willingness to pursue it.” Gesturing ahead of us, I went on. “Let’s keep going. Perhaps somewhere more private?”

Manon held my gaze for another second, her mouth pressed into a line as if debating something, but eventually turned away. “Yes,” she agreed quietly. Shrugging, she gathered herself, nodding to a break in the hall ahead of us. “This way?” she suggested. “There is a little balcony I know of—Miss Tremblay showed it to me during the competition.”

I nodded. Turning down a side corridor, we walked until we reached a weather-beaten door, set into the exterior wall. The structure on the other side of it was less of a balcony than an outcropping—a stone landing, the first in a series of rocky steps, carved directly into the cliffside abutting Fortblanche and winding down toward the sea. Around us, the sky extended, a clear, unblemished blue.

At the sight—the sheer space of it all—my muscles relaxed. Stepping out onto the landing, I inhaled, drawing in a breath of salted air.

“Manon.” I swallowed, then picked up again. “There’s something you should know—”

“I’m so sorry.” Manon’s voice interrupted me. Her words were hushed, little more than a whisper. “I turned him down at first.”

I looked over my shoulder. The other silkwitch’s hands were extended, reaching toward my back. Alarm plucked in me, too late, as she stepped forward—

And shoved me off the ledge.

Chapter Twelve

I heard the slam of the door as I fell, a distant thump like the echo of a cell being thrown shut above me, sealing my fate.

To my left, the stairs rushed by. I plunged helplessly through the open air alongside them, my arms still extended upward in a futile attempt to prevent Manon from pushing me away. Terror had hollowed out my mind like a wasp its host; for several seconds, I was all emptiness, my dress whipping around me like a discarded handkerchief.

I’m going to die. The thought broke through my thoughts with surprising clarity. In just a minute—less than a minute, more likely—my back would hit the waves, and my life would extinguish as surely as a dropped candle. There was nothing I could do to prevent it, no escape route I could grasp on to, no words clever enough to rescue me from the fate that lurked beneath.

Months ago, I’d come into Fortblanche in search of Ophelia Lear’s killer, and now I’d go out like her. It all felt so terribly unfair.

I opened my mouth, and salt assaulted me. The buffet of the wind made crying out difficult, but I refused to die silent.

If I were to go, I would go screaming.

I grunted as something hooked violently in my gut. For a moment, the world around me froze, my ribs clenching as though a rope had been tied around them and abruptly, gracelessly yanked.

Then: a contraction, like a line hurriedly being reeled in. My vision shuddered, my rage replaced by befuddlement, then panic as the world around me blurred to a furred, gray nothingness.

Time stitched. I shrieked.

And a second later, I found myself sitting on the other side of the weather-beaten door, the entrance lolling open behind me.

—

It was a long while before I could move.

For several minutes, I remained huddled on Fortblanche’s stone floor, my knees tucked under my chest and my rib cage pressed against them, my breaths coming hard.

The corridor ahead of me was deserted. Manon herself was nowhere to be seen—presumably having fled as soon as she’d pushed me. Drifting in from the stone landing, the muted crash of the sea haunted me, a reminder of the end which had almost claimed me moments ago, but aside from it and the panting heave of my breathing, the area was silent. Peaceful.

Two thoughts emerged in the stillness.

First, for some yet-to-be-determined reason, Manon Blanc had tried to murder me. Her shoving me off that ledge had been no accident, nor had the words she’d uttered just before she’d done so. I am so sorry, she’d said. I turned him down at first. Who, I wondered, was he?

But none of that mattered for now. Because, second—

I had survived.

How had I survived?

Without rising, I twisted over my shoulder to gaze behind me. The narrow outcropping where Manon and I had stood together appeared unchanged, the door standing open just as it had been when I passed through it earlier. The door. Could it be…?