Page 13 of Grave Flowers

Nighttime in Acus was beautiful.

In Radix, the moon was always a sliver of itself, a teardrop crescent blading its way through angry knots of clouds.

Even when it was a full moon, it was veiled with a cloak of gray.

Our moonmirrors were more moon than the moon itself.

As I made my way down the night-hung halls, the Acusan moon was a coin of pure silver in the windows, perfectly round, bright, and attended by stars.

I reached the ground floor and pushed out to the stairs leading down into the garden.

Everything was peaceful.

Except me.

Fear and strain set my nerves to strident heights.

My heart raced and my teeth clenched. Danger lurked. I was its originator, the one bringing it to the garden. But danger was a slippery thing. No one could truly possess it. It could easily entangle you as you laid traps for others. I might end up dead tonight, not Luthien. I fought against my own memories. The last time I’d tried to kill someone, I’d failed, and Mother had died.

The memories overcame me.

I could feel Mother’s arm around me, pressing me close as our family moved quickly and stealthily to escape through the garden after rebels had breached our palace.

The gates leading out of the garden appeared just ahead, and I thought we were safe.

Father twisted a key in the padlock and swung it open, just enough for us to slip out. He shoved Inessa through and then turned to beckon me and Mother forward.

A figure detached from the bushes near the gate and lunged forward.

Silvery-white light from the moonmirrors dashed over us, making it seem as though the garden were full of flashing knives.

The rebel misjudged the gate and slammed into it.

The night had been full of sounds—shouting and things breaking in the palace, Father yelling, the moonmirrors letting out their ghostly wail—but I’d heard only one: the click of the lock as the gate swung shut, sealing Father and Inessa on one side, and me and Mother into the garden with the rebel.

“Madalina?”

A voice reached me in the present, and for a moment, I was confused.

I was standing on the Acus palace steps, and someone lurked just ahead.

Aeric.

Panic chased away the memory of Mother’s death. Why was he here.

“Is that you?”

“Yes, but whatever are you doing out here?”

I rushed to question him before he questioned me, but my voice was as fragile as newly settled frost.

“Isn’t there a wine bottle somewhere you should be imbibing?”

Aeric climbed a step but stopped while still below, staring up at me.

Even at night, the light sought him.

Moonlight encompassed him like a shroud made from shiny silvery moth wings.

It bounced off his hair and highlighted his form with glossy brushstrokes. To my surprise, he let out a soft laugh and lifted his hand. He clutched a bottle of wine by its neck. Nothing about him should’ve been impressive as he stood on the lower step, dressed in a loose shirt and an equally loose pair of trousers—and without shoes—holding a wine bottle. Yet he seemed to rule his spot, as though the steps were his throne and the bottle his scepter.

“I’m glad it’s you, Madalina.”

I listened closely to him.

There was no waver or slur to his speech.

He was sober.

“When you first appeared on the steps, you looked like a …”

“Ghost?”

I supplied.

The word almost made me shiver.

Aeric swallowed hard and fought off a shiver of his own.

Liquid gurgled against glass as he took a deep drink from the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I wondered which ghosts he thought about. While a literal one plagued my life, metaphorical ghosts did as well. Strange spirits of Father, Mother, Inessa, and Radix and dancing shoes filled with blood and flowers barbing themselves into my flesh. Just as I had mine, I imagined Aeric had his too.

“Yes,”

he said, but didn’t elaborate.

Sudden guilt made me wish to look away from him.

I wondered if this image of him, as one with the night as a blue-winged moth or red-eyed bat, would haunt me forever after I killed him.

I sensed it would.

That when he lay dead by my hand in our marital bed, I’d still see him here on these steps, a prince of the moonlight, staring up at me.

“I can assure you I’m not a ghost,”

I said around the tightness in my throat.

Since I couldn’t look away, I wished he would.

The warm air turned hot between us.

Mercifully, he broke first. He took a drink, and when he lowered the bottle, the force was gone. I pressed.

“Where are you off to?”

“Up.”

“Up?”

“To prowl about the palace roof.

I … couldn’t sleep.

I thought maybe I’d sit in the memory garden, but it’s particularly macabre at night.

So up I’ll go. My father used to take me to the roof often when I was little.”

Panic stabbed me.

If he was up there, he would have a full view of the garden.

My plan was already underway.

If I had to revise it, Luthien would get suspicious.

“May I have a drink?”

Abruptly, I held out my hand.

“You’re quite confusing, Princess.”

Aeric considered me carefully.

His hands meditatively twisted about the wine bottle, wringing tighter and tighter as though it were an enemy to strangle.

“Half the time you’re decrying my drunkenness, and the other half you’re trying to get drunk yourself.”

“Allow me a little hypocrisy,”

I said.

“I’m Radixan, after all.

It’s one of our virtues.

And at least we embrace it, unlike you Acusans.”

“Oh? Does it seem like we try to hide our sins?”

“Not so much as hide them as burn them away with sunlight.”

“We’re to blame for our sun?”

“Yes,”

I said.

“Now, will you give me the wine or not?”

“How could I refuse such charm?”

Aeric climbed the next steps to hand me the bottle.

I thought he might stay near me, but he retreated to the one he’d left.

Lifting the bottle to my lips, I pretended to lose my grip.

Glass smashed against stone. Shards formed a chaotic constellation in opposition to the ones in the sky. Wine splattered across my skirt and slippers, as red as a pool of blood. It waterfalled down the steps in long thin drips, thickening into fat puddles on each step before running down to the next.

It reached all the way to Aeric.

“I’m terribly clumsy,”

I said.

“Would you get another bottle? Perhaps we should have a drink together, and you can regale me with details about how your play is coming along.

The big balcony on the second floor is lovely.

Would you forsake your parapets and meet me there? I’ll need to change.”

There was a pause.

I wondered if he might decline, if he suspected me too much to leave me to my own wiles.

Then he said nobly.

“As you command, Princess.”

“Thank you.”

Relief made me sound excited, and I didn’t mind.

This was even better than my original plan.

Aeric had seen me now and would see me later tonight.

He would never suspect I was going to confront a spy in the slim space of time between.

“I think you’ll prefer my company to the guardians.”

“You are certainly lovely, though just as fierce,”

Aeric said.

“I’ll fetch another bottle.”

Despite our newly confirmed plan, neither of us took the first step away.

Suddenly, I asked.

“Why can’t you sleep?”

Aeric fidgeted. He said.

“Weak wine.

Usually, it’s the perfect somnolent.

I’ll make certain to get us something stronger from the cellar.”

I nodded and briskly walked up the steps.

Aeric did as well, just behind me.

We stopped again at the entrance to the palace.

“I’ll see you shortly,” he said.

“I look forward to it,”

I replied, making myself sound cheery.

I headed down the hall in the direction of my chambers.

At the end, I stopped and turned.

Aeric was out of sight. I knew the wine cellar would be in the abdomen of the palace, far underground, where the conditions kept the wine cool and sheltered in humidity. Thankfully, Aeric had decided to get it himself instead of rousing a servant. It would take him a while to fetch it and make his way to the balcony on the second floor.

Which was just what I needed.

Desperately, I dashed back out.

I fled down the stairs, passing the oblong stain of wine and glass.

My mind raced.

Had I bought enough time? The pleasantness of the night was gone. The scent of flowers and menthol was too heady, and the moon was too bright. I ran parallel to the garden wall, which was stone for a good length before turning into iron fencing. Yorick stood close to the fence, nervously gnawing on the fingertip of his glove.

“You’re here,”

I said breathlessly.

“I am,”

he agreed.

“What exactly are we doing?”

I’d planned to ease Yorick into tonight’s plans.

To lay out exactly what was happening and why and draw him in slowly so he might acclimate to each horror bit by bit.

I realized there was no time.

I’d have to tell him outright and hope he was strong enough of spirit—and stomach—for what might come.

“There’s a spy, most likely from Radix,”

I said, speaking in a rush.

“I think he’ll come to the garden tonight.

If he does, he might attack me, and I’ll need to—to—”

“Need to what?”

“Kill him,”

I blurted.

Yorick sucked in his breath.

I understood why.

He was a jester and, before that, a stable hand turned attendant.

Politics and power plays didn’t populate his world in the way they did mine. I tried to speak commandingly in the way Father or Inessa would.

“No one will know.

I assure you.

And if you help me, I’ll certainly be grateful and will always consider you my closest ally.

Remember, I’ll be queen in less than a month.”

“Your plan is to kill someone?”

“No.

Yes.

Possibly.”

Yorick was silent.

I abandoned my guise of power and spoke from the heart.

“In helping me, you’ll lift no finger against Acus.

The spy comes from my own kingdom.

There’s a chance he killed Inessa, Yorick.

She was my sister. I must make it right. I must.”

Yorick lifted his head, and the doubt was gone.

Resolve and conviction emanated from him, so strongly that I could read it on his face despite the darkness.

“I understand.

What do you need me to do?”

With a strained laugh, I said.

“You’ll be hidden while I stand out in the open.

Make certain he doesn’t kill me, please.”

The Acusan flowers slept.

Their buds were tightly closed, and even in sleep, they were upright.

But not the young, weak starvelings.

In Radix, they’d slumber, but here they couldn’t find any rest. They tormented the nearby sleeping red flowers, ripping at them while crankily muttering. Several red petals lay on the grass.

I stood in front of the starvelings.

Yorick was obscured behind the nearby statuary.

I was relieved he was here.

If Luthien was an assassin, he would be a lethal opponent, and it might take two of us to subdue him. The added stress of limited time made my head spin. I felt like I was splitting apart from the pressure, torn in a myriad of directions. My eyes darted around the garden to see where Luthien was and then back to the palace, trying to track just how much time had passed and where Aeric might be.

Luthien wouldn’t approach while I was looking frantically about.

He thought I was here for a midnight stroll, nothing more.

I made myself face the starvelings and stay as still as the red flowers, with my back to the garden.

My poison ring seemed to replace my heart, my blood pumping through it, making my finger pulse. A strange sense of unwinding time overcame me, bringing Mother’s death with it once again. I saw the rebel standing before us.

“Run, Madalina!”

Mother had cried, her Fely accent, which she always carefully concealed, strong.

The man charged but tripped.

He fell atop Mother.

“Madalina.”

I heard Father’s voice and numbly stumbled toward it.

He’d tried to unlock the gate, but he’d dropped the key into the darkness.

He stuck his arm through the bars, holding out his dagger.

“Take it.

Now.

Stab him in the back of the neck, just below the skull.”

He pointed on himself to show me where.

His eyes were daggers of their own, slicing me to the bone and bleeding me of all thought.

He repeated himself.

“Take it.

Now.

Place the point against the back of his neck, just below the skull.

Drive it in.”

Roughly, he released me, only to grab my wrist.

He pressed the dagger into it.

Then he shoved me forward, toward Mother and the rebel.

I staggered to them. Father’s chant filled my ears as he kept repeating it, over and over.

My hand lifted the dagger.

All the weight was in the blade, but even then, it was light, a whisper of death.

“Both hands, Madalina,”

Father shouted.

“Use both hands to drive it in.”

I closed one hand atop the other on the handle.

My palms were moist, and the handle was dry.

Or maybe it was the other way around.

I couldn’t tell, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

My arms raised the dagger over my head.

I turned my head away.

“No!”

Father yelled.

I didn’t strike the open soft spot of the neck.

The dagger bit into the rebel’s shoulder, cutting through his shirt and slickly into his skin.

But no farther.

Uselessly, the dagger dropped onto the soil.

The rebel grabbed it.

Lifted it.

Just as he did, Mother’s hand flashed up.

It was too late.

She managed to prick him with her poison ring, but he stabbed her in the chest, as though death were a gift they handed to each other.

He choked on air as she choked on blood.

There was a high-pitched scream, but I didn’t know if it was from me or Inessa.

Mother’s hands fluttered at her neck like dying butterflies. In a gasping voice, she said.

“Left, right, up or down, let me use …”

It was a grave flower invocation, I realized, but one I’d never heard before.

Shouts rang out from the palace door leading into the garden.

The rebels were coming.

“Hide, Madalina,”

Father yelled from behind the gate.

Never had his voice sounded so thin.

Numbly, I looked at him.

The light from a moonmirror blanched his face white—or maybe it really was that white, as drained of blood as Mother. He’d grabbed Inessa’s hand and dragged her away into the night as the rebels poured out of the palace, and I’d run to hide behind the Daughter.

I blinked furiously, once again forcing the memory away.

But it had undone me.

Why did I have the audacity to think I could be different than what I’d become that night—the weak one, the guilty one, the lost one? If I couldn’t kill to save Mother, how would I kill to avenge Inessa? I was choking, my own shame and fear strangling me.

I thought I might crumple to the ground, but then I remembered it.

Father’s voice, saying just what he had the night I’d failed.

Take it.

Now.

Place the point against the back of his neck, just below the skull.

Drive it in. Take it. Now. Place the point against the back of his neck, just below the skull. Drive it in.

I forced myself to focus on the chant and nothing else.

I heard it forward and backward in my mind, the words overlapping and blurring together.

Father terrified me.

But I always listened to him.

I was reduced to the sharp parts of myself.

My teeth clenched, and down by my sides, my hands tensed into claws.

My arms were bony hinges of elbow preparing to thrust into Luthien’s nose or stomach.

I balanced on the balls of my feet so I might twist quickly or duck away, gifts from Rigby’s training. I needed everything from the people I feared tonight: Father. Rigby. Inessa.

A twig cracked.

Luthien.

He was here.

I spun around to see a figure duck low between the starvelings and a marble edifice.

I ran to plant myself before him.

There were only two choices for Luthien.

Through the starvelings—or around me. Luthien rose to his feet. His face, its ridges painted in light and its gulleys shadowed in darkness, looked like a stained-glass window, smaller pieces fitting together to make a bigger image.

“Us alone,”

he snarled.

“Radix alone, always.”

We stared at each other again, only this time there were no secrets between us.

Both of us knew exactly who the other was and what they wanted.

The whites of Luthien’s eyes flashed like a sword’s edge catching light.

My own glinting ring pierced the milkiness. With a single step, Luthien moved toward me, a knife suddenly in his hand. I ducked, flicked open my ring, and barely managed to press it against the underside of his arm.

Luthien dropped forward.

The knife tumbled away.

He caught me as he fell, dragging me to the ground.

I twisted beneath him and kicked free, my skirt trapped beneath his bulk. His fingers grappled at the fabric as though he wished to find something that might hold him to this world for just a second longer. Then he was still. Crescents rose on his fingernails, the only evidence of the poison.

Yorick ran to me and helped me to my feet.

“Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

“I’m fine.

We need to hurry.

Can you help me?”

“Help you what?”

“Get the body to the starvelings.

And the knife too.”

Together, we dragged Luthien to the starvelings.

Yorick tucked Luthien’s knife into his belt and then, with effort, helped me hoist Luthien’s corpse into the flower bed.

Immediately, the starvelings swarmed over it.

Their muttering grew, and their thorns extended, growing longer in anticipation of their meal.

Then they got to work.

First, the starvelings prepared themselves.

They tore off their heavy budded petals to make their stems agile and lighter.

The petals dropped without complaint to the dirt, where they immediately began to leak their corrosive poison into the soil.

It softened the earth and would break down the body once it was buried. The roots, visible only when devouring large prey, sprouted. Hundreds of wormlike white coils pushed up and crawled forward. They swarmed over Luthien. Small knobs bulged at intervals over the coils, and they latched on to his corpse. Inch by inch, they pulled it into the hovels created by the roots under the soil. Bones cracked and snapped as Luthien was contorted to fit. The leaves bent, sweeping the dirt over him until he was buried.

“May you swim in salt,”

I whispered, shaken.

Perhaps it was wrong to speak the blessing over Luthien’s grave after I’d been the one to murder him, but I couldn’t stop myself.

I turned to Yorick.

He was pale. I put my hand on his arm.

“Are you all right?”

“I am.

You did what you had to do.”

Despite his pallor, his voice was even.

“But will anyone suspect you played a role in Luthien’s death?”

“No one will suspect us.”

I put an emphasis on the last word.

Yorick needed to remember that he was as involved as me, and if I went down, so did he.

“Luthien came to my chambers this morning, but I told him to speak with Annia, the head botanist, afterward.

I was not the last person to see him and our exchange in my chambers was too brief to be of any significance.”

“You’re good at this,”

Yorick said.

The compliment startled me.

I wasn’t good at this—Father and Inessa were.

But then, maybe the Sinet ways were within me, guiding me through crimes I didn’t wish to commit. There was no time to dwell upon it.

“Please, cover any signs of a struggle,”

I said.

“I must take your leave.”

Yorick bowed quickly and nodded.

Our confrontation had been brief, and the only evidence of it was marks in the grass from where I’d fallen onto the ground.

I paused and glanced at Yorick.

His back was turned. I sidled up to the flower bed. There was a bulge where Luthien had been dragged underground, but by tomorrow, it would be evened out. Quickly, I reached into my pocket and took out Yorick’s jester pin. I tossed it. It landed noiselessly amid the starvelings. The dirt was loose where they’d hauled Luthien into their hovel. The pin sat for one second and then sank beneath the soil. I turned away and cut across the garden.

I’d killed a man, yet my guilt was over the pin.

Still, it had to be done.

If anyone somehow unearthed Luthien’s body before it was fully dissolved, they would find Yorick’s pin.

He would be blamed for the murder. Not me.

But, I assured myself, the starvelings would do good work.

There was nothing to fret about … at least, as far as Yorick’s pin was concerned.