Page 14 of Grave Flowers

I dashed back to my chambers.

Hastily, I changed into another dress and splashed water on my face and over my hands.

I had to meet Aeric and act as though I’d done nothing aside from change my clothes.

I sprinted down the halls and down the stairs to the balcony on the second floor.

Right before I reached it, I slowed and sucked in deep breaths, trying to steady my breathing.

I needed to enter calmly, but I also needed to hurry.

From what I could tell, I’d done everything quickly enough. I’d killed Luthien and disposed of his body in short order—hadn’t I? The events and their duration jumbled in my mind. Some instances seemed eternally long, like the moment when I’d waited for Luthien and when I’d seen the knife in his hand, but there was no way they could’ve been. Other instances, like tossing Yorick’s pin into the flower bed and changing my dress, seemed ridiculously short, so short that it was as though they hadn’t happened at all. It was bizarre to think of Aeric meandering down to the wine cellar and to the balcony while I poisoned Luthien. The experience had been so consuming and horrible, it was preposterous to think of ordinary things happening at the same time.

When my breath was finally measured, I opened the door to the balcony.

Aeric was sitting in a chair tipped onto its back legs with his feet up on the rail.

He’d been staring out at the view, but at my entrance, he turned.

The minute he saw me, terror contorted his face. He lost his balance, and the chair toppled onto its side with him in it.

Then I saw her.

Inessa.

She was right across the way in her red dress.

Facing me, staring right at me.

A strangled gasp choked its way from my throat, and I clamped my hands over my mouth.

Inessa mimicked me, doing the exact same gesture.

My mind dimly grasped what was happening.

I’d seen my own reflection in a mirror anchored to the wall and had mistaken myself for Inessa.

Looking down, I almost gasped again when I realized that, in my rush, I’d donned her dress, the red one.

I wished to tear it off.

I hadn’t even noticed it on my body, but now that I did, the fabric felt wet against my skin. When I gripped fistfuls of the silk, though, it was as dry and smooth as could be. I forced myself to release the dress.

“I—I thought you were your sister,”

Aeric said shakily, pushing himself to his feet and righting his chair.

“I’m not a ghost, if you’ll recall,”

I tried to jest.

My voice was as shaky as his.

“Though when I saw my reflection, I thought I was her as well.”

“Why?”

The abrupt, suddenly emotionless question shook me.

I should’ve never seen Inessa in this dress, so why would I think I was her? I met Aeric’s gaze.

He stared at me, waiting for my answer.

Why was I always making dangerous mistakes around him?

“Because I’m used to seeing her.”

I attempted to sound glib.

“I saw my reflection and just thought I was back home, with her standing across the way from me.”

“Oh.”

Aeric took a long breath.

“You may not know this, but your sister was wearing that red dress when she …”

“I apologize,”

I said.

“It must’ve given you quite the fright.”

“But how did you come to have it?”

He glanced from the dress to my face, brow furrowing.

“It was sent to your father.”

“Was it? There must’ve been some mistake because it was in my wardrobe when I arrived.”

I stared down at the dress.

It was easy to act perplexed now because I was.

A shudder worked its way over me.

My sister had died in this dress. The shudder gripped me and turned into shivers. They spread across me. I trembled, despite every effort not to.

“Are you unwell?”

Aeric came to my side.

“Or cold?”

“Cold.”

I forced out the word between clicking teeth.

Aeric wore no outer garments because the weather was so temperate.

He glanced helplessly around the balcony, yet there was nothing but chairs and tables.

In one smooth motion, he pulled his shirt over his head and wrapped it around me.

I didn’t know why I was shivering, whether it was from the fact I’d put on Inessa’s dress without realizing it or from remembering Luthien, the man I’d killed. I closed my eyes. You did what you had to do. Yorick’s words echoed in my mind, and I clung to them as tightly as Aeric’s shirt. Luthien would have killed me if I hadn’t killed him, and he’d probably killed Inessa too.

I’d had no choice.

None.

But why did I feel as though there were a thorn piercing my soul—one I’d give anything to extract, one that had been there for as long as I could remember—and why did I feel as though I’d just driven it deeper?

I thought of Luthien’s spindly face, the moment when the poison had taken effect and he’d learned he was going to die, only a second before he did.

He’d been so surprised.

I didn’t think it was wrong to kill him when he had wanted to kill me.

But I didn’t understand it. Any of it. What was this life that put me in a garden at midnight with poison in my ring and murder in my heart?

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

Aeric remained close to me, and his voice was low, a burr of a sound.

“Nothing.”

I gritted my teeth.

It was enough to stop them from chattering, but I couldn’t rid myself of the shaking.

Frenzy.

I was going into frenzy. I’d seen it before in people before they were executed and in guards who’d tortured someone for the first time.

“Here. Sit.”

Aeric motioned to the chair.

I sank into it.

Mercifully, he didn’t question me further.

The shaking slowly eased, leaving me boneless and empty, the shirt bundled tightly around me despite the balmy night.

“It’s a beautiful view,”

I said finally, determined to prove I was fine.

My throat was raw, as though I’d been screaming, and it made my voice scratchy.

I stared fixedly past Aeric and over the balcony.

It faced out to the city as opposed to inward at the palace grounds. Ornate stone and marble buildings and slate rooftops spread out beneath the stars. Thin peninsulas of streets curled around them, along with islands of parks. It seemed remote, faraway, even though it was right before me. I’d stopped shivering, but now I was numb. My ears were full of cotton, and my limbs and lips didn’t seem to be mine.

“It is,”

Aeric replied.

The sincerity in his tone startled me, and I looked at him despite the dullness.

He’d retreated several steps away and leaned against the railing, but he faced me, not the view beyond.

Me, I realized—he meant I was beautiful. Ordinarily, I would’ve said something interesting or coy, but I was too exhausted, and my heart was too heavy.

“Thank you,” I said.

My response discomfited him.

He shuffled in place, as though not knowing where to go or look.

He’d been braced for me to rebuff him.

The simple polite response upended him much more than any retort could.

“Is the shirt enough to keep you warm?”

he asked.

It was a silly question, considering the night wasn’t cold and the shirt was so skimpy, it was useless for heat.

I’d watched Aeric remove his shirt to hand it to me, but I hadn’t registered until now that he was shirtless, wearing nothing but moonlight from the waist up.

He still leaned against the railing, his back to it and his arms spread out on either side to rest atop it. He seemed made from the palace, from the stone, from all the Acusan perfection.

“No,” I lied.

“Would you like me to fetch you a blanket?”

“Body warmth is more effective, I think,”

I replied.

My words were bold, but my tone was still brittle.

I rose from the chair and closed the space between us.

His breath snagged, somewhere between in and out.

Still clutching the shirt around me, I leaned against him, pressing my cheek against his bare chest.

A ridge of metal met my cheek.

I’d noted he wore a pendant before but had always been distracted by King written across his chest to pay it much mind. Now I saw it was a pendant etched with the Primeval Family.

Gently, Aeric put his arms around me.

I closed my eyes.

If I just stood there and didn’t move and listened to his heartbeat, it would become the center of my world, not the thorn.

A heart instead of a briar.

This was part of my plan.

I wasn’t losing myself to him.

I was drawing him into trusting me so he wouldn’t suspect me later, when I needed to kill him—I wasn’t resting my head against his chest and melting into the strength of his arms because I longed for love.

Or peace. Or anything else I’d never been allowed.

Aeric’s hand moved gently up to the back of my neck, and his fingers found their way into my hair.

The movements were hesitant, as though he might stop at any moment.

I bent my head back into his palm.

I dropped the shirt. It fell to the ground, leaving only the thin fabric of Inessa’s dress between us. My numbness left with the shirt, as though my body found itself through the warmth of Aeric’s body. I lifted my chin. If I rose onto my toes, I could kiss him. And I should. On our wedding night, he’d think of nothing but the intimacy to come. It was a good plan. A good strategy.

The night had been filled with nothing but strategy, so what was one more act?

What was one kiss between enemies?

I slipped my hands up and around Aeric’s neck.

My fingers brushed his chain.

I followed the outline of the necklace to the front and closed my fingers around the pendant.

I pulled it forward, dragging him with it as though it were a collar. He came willingly, eagerly, hungrily. I dropped the pendant back onto his chest and lifted my lips to his.

We kissed.

Heat—no, not heat but something more like the cause of heat, like a spark, a strike, a combustion—burst through me.

The kiss built into another and then another.

I clung to him, and he clung to me, and suddenly he was the one shivering, only with desire instead of frenzy.

I’d thought the sparking heat was a lone fiery particle, but it wasn’t.

It was a cascade of particles, and they built until my skin sang.

It was too much.

The delineation between strategy and desire was eroding, slipping away, disappearing, and suddenly, I didn’t care.

Wet, gritty fingers closed around my ankle and yanked hard.

With a frightened cry, I stumbled back, torn from Aeric’s arms.

My vision was blurry and confused.

No one was behind me. I heard Inessa say, “Sister.”

No, that wasn’t right.

Confused thoughts fell through my mind like hailstones.

It couldn’t be Inessa.

I’d set her free after killing the Radixan. I looked wildly around. A flutter of a red skirt disappeared around the doorway. Had I gotten it wrong? Was she not free after all? A more pressing, panicked realization gripped me: What was I doing? If it was indeed her, she’d seen me kissing Aeric, reason abandoned to appetite, duty forfeited to passion.

I’d forgotten myself.

I’d forgotten my kingdom.

I’d forgotten my sister.

“Madalina?”

Aeric asked, his voice thick with yearning.

I could hardly hear him.

He said something else, but he might as well have spoken another language.

I ran from the balcony into the hall.

I had to find Inessa.

I had to reassure her that I would still find her killer and that the embrace had been a ploy, nothing more.

Because it had been. I would make it so. I would remake the night in my mind, in my every recounting of it, and I would never act in such a way again.

The dim candlelight of the hallway received me, but Inessa wasn’t there.

More horror set upon me.

What if Father learned of this and knew I’d kissed Aeric sincerely? He would punish me—maybe even kill me—for betraying my family, my home.

And I would deserve it, for failing us once again.

ACT II

In Media Res

“Rock me asleep,

Bring me the quiet rest;

Let pass my weary guiltless ghost.

”—poem from the Tudor period,

often attributed to Anne Boleyn

DRAGONSLIPS

Grave Flower Experiment Six

Appearance

Like the mythological creatures said to be made by the Primeval Family to curse the earth in the old years, these grave flowers are covered in iridescent and pearlescent scales.

The buds form snouts with long whiskery petals extending from the sides.

A distinct smell of charcoal hangs about them, and they cough little bits of fire every now and then.

Invocation

Cursed creature who once ate its own tail,

warmth, light, protection from night terrors,

melter of metals, renewal of earth,

perhaps your curse isn’t so terrible and it was us who bear the fail.

Come, ignite my hearth.

Results

They became dragons! I was not prepared for that.

But out of these tiny flowers morphed large dragons with wings and everything! By Family fortune, we were in a very spacious dungeon, so they had room to flap around.

It was like living in a fairy tale, albeit a very terrifying one.

They even spoke, which made me nearly fall over. I’ll remember their terrible and thunderous voices till I die.

Complications

I am very brave, but I must admit it was a bit scary because they said they hate humans and wish to destroy us.

They breathed great bouts of fire, and all who were near were incinerated.

The Fely prisoner was present after arriving yesterday, and I asked his thoughts on the matter.

He cursed me and was very rude. I threatened to feed him to one of the dragons, and he still wasn’t moved. I threatened to find his family and feed them to the dragons instead, and that at least made him compliant. Resentfully, he told me Felys have a few other invocations that differ from ours. I know their approach to the faith is blasphemous, but given that I wish to never die, I shouldn’t worry. I’ll never encounter the Primeval Family myself, and I soon plan on starting my own religion and replacing the Family entirely. I told the Fely of my plan, and I sensed there was something he was thinking but hiding from me. I would’ve pressed the issue, but we needed to escape due to the fire. By the Family fortune, the invocation wore off, and the dragonslips were grave flowers once again.

Applications

Needless to say, an army of dragons would be absolutely astounding.

However, given the fact they wish to kill all humans, I don’t wish to ever bring them back again.