Page 15 of Grave Flowers

As fast I could, I bolted to my chambers.

I tore off the red dress and put on a nightdress.

Then I stood in the middle of the bedroom, terrified.

My chambers were silent, yet a heavy presence hung in them, thick and waiting.

Someone or something was here with me.

“Once upon a terror tale …”

The strange, vile whisper twisted through the room.

I turned in a circle.

Nothing but shadows surrounded me.

“Inessa?”

I whispered.

“A girl kissed a boy on a balcony.”

The dreadful singsong voice was not Inessa’s.

“All the eyes saw, every pair, every pair.

I know because I was there.

She was silly and dumb, and her heart burst like a rotten plum.”

At the word plum, the voice gargled and choked, as though full of water.

A slosh came from the bathtub.

Trembling, I went to it.

It’d been empty when I left, but now it was filled.

Great sloshes spilled down the sides and onto the floor.

Whatever was in my chambers was inside the tub, beneath the water.

“Inessa, is it you?”

I whispered.

Cautiously, I bent over the tub.

A hand shot up from the water and grabbed me by the front of my nightdress.

It dragged me forward, hauling me half into the tub, submerging my head. I tried to jerk free, but the hand was too strong. Water filled my nose, eyes, and ears. It flooded my throat. I choked but only inhaled more. I was drowning. Flailing, I tried to grip the sides of the tub. My feet thrashed against the soaked marble floor. It was too slick. Hair matted over my face. Bright starbursts blinked across my vision, even though I couldn’t see anything.

Then, just when I thought darkness would overtake me, the hand let go.

I stumbled back, gasping, retching, choking.

I fell hard onto the marble and scuttled back in horror.

Inessa rose from the bathtub.

Water poured from her limbs in shimmering panes, as though she wore liquid glass.

It dripped from her fingers.

She stepped out of the tub and made her way to where I’d dropped the red dress. With a snooty huff, she pulled it over her head.

“There,” she said.

“Y-you—you almost drowned me!”

I coughed, shaking.

“Don’t be so dramatic,”

she said, as though she hadn’t risen from the depths of the tub with all the performative theatrics of an actress.

“I wanted my dress.

Little sisters always try to steal your clothes.”

“What was that terrible rhyme?” I choked.

“What rhyme?”

Inessa blinked at me as though I were addled.

“It was a strange voice saying … well, I couldn’t really tell.

It had the cadence of a terror tale,”

I said, trembling and soaking wet.

Coughs still racked me.

“If it was me, I don’t have any recollection of it.

Which is unfortunate because you look utterly terrified.

I would love to be able to elicit such fear with my voice alone.

Anyways, what have you been up to? Tell me everything.”

Guilt struck me speechless for a moment.

If she’d seen me kiss Aeric, she didn’t remember.

I’d gotten lucky.

I would never tell her, and I’d never ever act in such a way again.

“Well, I thought I’d freed you,”

I said, struggling to my feet.

“I discovered a Radixan working in the garden and I … I killed him.

But he wasn’t your murderer because you’re still haunting me.”

“It’s true, I haven’t been released,”

Inessa said.

She picked up a towel and began to dry her hair.

Black sludge oozed from her eyes and mouth.

Precisely, she wiped it as well and tossed the damp towel to me. It was hard to tell if she was giving it to me so I might dry myself too or simply wanted me to put it away.

“It wasn’t for nothing, though.

You did well.

I didn’t recall it until now—it seems my memory returns as you retrace my steps.

But I remember him. A Radixan posing as a Crusan handyman. I was on to him as well before I ate the flower berry. He might not have been my assassin, but he would’ve tried to kill me and had to be dealt with at some point. Good job, Sister.”

“So then … who in the name of the Family murdered you?”

“If I knew, I would tell you,”

Inessa said.

“But it had to be someone else.

Come now, let’s think.”

She made her way over to the bed and clambered onto it.

Impatiently, she motioned me to join her.

I went to the wardrobe and pulled the soaking nightdress over my head and replaced it with a dry one.

The nightdress clung to my wet legs, and my hair hung in a matted, sodden mess over my shoulders. I crawled onto the bed next to her.

“You killed Luthien,”

Inessa said, turning to face me.

A smile spread across her sludge-stained lips.

She leaned over onto her elbows.

“What was it like killing him?”

From her playful intonations, you’d think she was asking me what it was like to flirt with him.

“Not pleasant,”

I said distantly.

How strange that Luthien had been alive this morning.

And yesterday.

And last month. He hadn’t known the timeline of his life was burning down as quickly as an oiled wick. I slipped under the blankets on the bed, drawing them as close to me as possible.

“I’d rather dance.”

“But you hate dancing.”

“Exactly,” I sighed.

“You might hate killing even more than dancing, but you’ve done your duty.”

Shame filled me.

My lips tingled at the thought of kissing Aeric.

Viciously, I bit them.

“Perhaps that’s the Sinet curse,”

I said dully.

“To be good at the things we hate.”

“I don’t hate killing, and I’m good at it,”

Inessa protested, tone still cheery despite our macabre topic.

It was true.

She didn’t hate killing, and she was good at it.

I didn’t know the extent of her killings, just as I didn’t know the extent of Father’s killings.

I knew one for certain, and I wasn’t knowledgeable of the particulars because I’d only seen the aftermath. Inessa had entered her chambers with brisk steps. I’d been there, as usual, waiting to be the appointed audience for her exhausting daily practice in the mirror.

Dropping a bloody knife on the bed, she said.

“Throw that into the starvelings’ flower bed.”

“Is that blood?”

I cried.

“Inessa, what happened?”

“Nothing,”

she said.

“Lord Serreto was trying to do something, and I made it so he did nothing.”

“Does Father know? Are you all right?”

“When I tell Father the secrets Lord Serreto spewed along with his intestines, he will approve.

And I’m fine.

It was … invigorating.”

I moved to pick up the knife.

“Not now! After.”

She faced the mirror and began her practice as though there was no knife on the bed with a man’s blood on its blade.

Her first expression was a gleeful smile.

I watched, nodding approvingly, as she liked.

It was followed by a deeply sad expression and then, finally, a blank look. I was supposed to keep nodding, but I found myself staring and wondering which of the three expressions was real … or if none of them were.

I’d joined her now.

I’d killed someone too.

“I think I’ll always hate it,” I said.

“As long as you’re good at it, it doesn’t matter how you feel.

You’ll be offing people and looking beautiful as you do,”

Inessa said in a gracious tone.

I couldn’t help but smile.

My strange, cutthroat twin didn’t know how to comfort people, and it was humorous to watch her try.

“I’m not sure my appearance is a concern when I’m … murdering assassins.”

“Oh.”

She blinked.

“Well, it is for me.”

“You do always like to be beautiful,” I agreed.

“I don’t look beautiful anymore.”

Woe filled her tone.

“I’m just dreadful now.”

“Not at all.

The afterlife becomes you.

You are lovely in a ghastly way.

And besides, from what I’ve observed, most things are beautiful because of their flaws, not despite them.”

“What a dull and human thing to say.”

Inessa rolled onto her back.

She lifted her hand to the underside of the canopy, swaying her wrist back and forth as though through a breeze.

“It’s because you’ve never seen anything truly perfect.

Not once.

Let me tell you something; right after I died, I was going somewhere quickly.

I was moving through a vast emptiness toward something I can’t quite describe—only to say it was the opposite of empty, of nothing. I know nothingness well. It’s … inside me, you see, and always has been. As though I was born with a hollow heart or maybe no heart at all. The emptiness wasn’t too frightening, but where I was headed—that was terrifying, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it, though I tried to kick and twist away. Finally, at the end, I begged. And you know me, I never beg, but this wasn’t … a person I was begging. It was them. The Primeval Family. Then I ran into a screen, and it made fall straight into Bide. I was so relieved, I could’ve cried. That was, of course, until the horrors of it set in. The tedium. The silence. The cold. The hunger.”

I listened, riveted.

Inessa continued.

“But right before I dropped into Bide, I saw a single strand of light, as thin and tiny as a thread.

Everything was so quiet.

It’s strange to think of light as perfect or not perfect.

But it was. Truly perfect. The only perfect thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I see,”

I whispered.

Only I didn’t.

I wasn’t certain what she spoke of, and perhaps I couldn’t ever, not on this side of the afterlife.

“Anyways, now I’m either there in Bide or here with you.

Nowhere else.

But enough of that.

We need to figure out my murderer.”

She glided onto the next topic with carefree ease.

“It can’t be that complicated.

There are only so many possibilities.

There’s Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert, but they are our fellow conspirators.

They wouldn’t betroth us to Aeric to kill us, and they need Aeric dead, and we are the best way of doing it.”

“Maybe there’s another spy from one of the other kingdoms,”

I suggested.

“Someone we haven’t considered yet.

I’ve also thought it might be an Acusan noble who loathes the idea of a Radixan queen.”

I sighed.

“I wish you could come and go at will and appear to others, not just me.

With your ways, you’d learn everything about everyone in just a day or so.”

“Me too,”

Inessa said, so quickly that I withered.

She still thought I was ineffectual, as she always had.

“I would make quick work of everything.

Instead, we are joined, once again, just like we were as babies.

In fact, I think that’s how it works.

Our connection as twins is my bridge between here and Bide.”

“What sends you here?”

I asked, wanting to know more about Bide yet fearing everything I learned.

“Bide is nothingness,”

Inessa said.

“But then, every now and then, the crushing whiteness ebbs and flows in waves.

The waves grow and grow and then suddenly, I’m here.

With you.

It comes with me, though. The hunger … the loneliness.”

“It sounds terrible,”

I said with a shudder.

“It isn’t so bad.”

Pity was not something Inessa would abide.

“Hmm.

The more I ponder, the more I wonder …”

She turned to face me squarely.

“Perhaps it’s Aeric?”

“Aeric?”

Suddenly, I understood what she meant by nothingness.

For one moment, I felt nothingness.

I heard her say his name, yet my mind couldn’t accept it.

“Think about it,”

Inessa said.

“He was raised to be a noble king, yet he’s been sopping drunk at every turn.

It makes me wonder if it’s an act.”

“An act?”

The nothingness faded away, replaced by a tightening in my chest.

“Yes, an act to cover his uncertainty over things.”

An image rose in my mind.

Aeric, sitting at the bar outside the Oscura, shoulders hunched and confusion in his eyes, every defense peeled back, and his true fear laid bare.

“He suspects his mother’s plot but has no evidence and worries that, without undeniable proof, he won’t succeed in stopping it.”

Everything was too loud.

Or perhaps too quiet.

I swore I heard spiders in the corners, the dripping of wax from the candles, the trickle of sludge down Inessa’s cheeks.

“He sees how Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert have integrated themselves into court and gathered support.

It makes him waver.

In fact, if he accuses them of treason without proof, they can claim he is unstable and unfit for the throne.

Didn’t you mention he’s obsessed with a play? Maybe his plan hinges around it.”

“The play is merely a religious retelling,”

I protested, refusing to accept Inessa’s words.

“How could a night at the theater secure his rule?”

“Wait! I remember something else!”

Inessa gasped and clasped her hands over her mouth.

Slowly, she lowered them.

Her eyes no longer danced.

Instead, fury filled them.

“Mads, he handed me the flower berry.

He took it from Annia and gave it to me, telling me about how his father gave one to his mother when they were first betrothed.

The poison—it must’ve been on his palm.

Maybe he found a poison that imitates an allergic reaction and causes swelling in the throat.”

“But Annia gave you the flower berry.

She told me so,”

I said.

My chest grew tighter, and my breath caught in my lungs, my body compressing against the truth.

“My sweet sister, she lied to you.

Aeric probably bribed her with gardening tools or whatever such pastoral people desire.

Thinking upon it, I imagine she’s a strong supporter of the Capelian house, given that her family served them for generations as botanists.

Only Aeric and I were on the tour, and no one else was around, aside from Luthien knocking over watering cans.”

Annia, who seemed so straightforward, had lied to me? I shouldn’t be surprised.

None of it should surprise me at all.

Frenzy loomed over me again.

I’d just kissed Aeric, but if Inessa was right, the kiss had been as fake as the tin crown he’d placed in my lap. My own thoughts turned against me, racing, proving Inessa correct. Aeric had gone to the Oscura. He said he’d followed me there to make certain I was safe, but maybe he’d gone on his own. To get poison to kill me, just as he had Inessa. He was at ease on the swinging stairs. Perhaps he’d been several times before.

I didn’t dare speak the incriminations aloud.

I wasn’t ready, not yet.

Inessa mercilessly continued.

“Prince Aeric probably thought that if he killed me, Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert might grow more cautious, giving him time to accumulate evidence and gain his own support at court,”

she said.

“But then you were sent in short order, forcing him to continue his ruse.

It’s good, though.

He needs a solid case against Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert because she is the queen mother, and he is a Capelian prince.

It protects you. If it were merely you acting against him, the Acusan court would require far less evidence because you’re a Fely princess from an inferior kingdom.”

I felt as I did in the ballroom back home, with strange hands hot and sweaty around my waist as I was spun about.

Humiliation washed over me when I thought about how I’d clung to Aeric on the balcony, drinking in his lies just as much as his kisses.

No wonder Father and Inessa doubted me.

Weakness coursed through my veins, as irreplaceable as my blood.

“Should I kill him now?”

I asked.

Coldness rang through my voice, and I tried to form myself to it, to let it replace the lack within me.

“I understand the desire,”

Inessa said.

“But think.

Everything is in place for the wedding night, when you can make it look like you were poisoned too.

If you murder him now, there will be an investigation, and Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert will most certainly use it to their advantage.

They will say you pursued the quest alone, so you will take the blame, and they won’t have to pay Radix. You must kill him on the wedding night, as planned, to protect yourself. That way, everyone will think you were poisoned too.”

“But what if Aeric tries to kill me before then?”

My wet hair dripped down my back with the slick sensation of blood or tears, while my clammy skin pimpled with goose bumps.

The discomfort heightened my distress.

Pathetically, I drew the blanket around myself.

“Be careful around him,”

Inessa ordered.

“Don’t eat or drink anything he offers.

Don’t be alone with him.

Don’t touch him or let him touch you.

The wedding is next week. You must survive only until then.”

“It shall be easy,”

I declared.

“I don’t wish to do any of those things with him.”

“No?”

“Of course I don’t! Why would I?”

“Oh, simply because I saw you kissing him on the balcony earlier.

My dear sister, it was quite the passionate scene.”

She had seen.

Horror ran through me, constricting my throat and settling like a rock in my stomach.

I had to tell her it had meant nothing.

It was merely strategy. I’d kissed him to lower his guard, draw him near, weaken his will. If I said it forcefully enough, I might even believe it myself.

“Madalina, beware the line between lust and love.

You might find yourself on the wrong side of it.”

“Love?”

I sputtered, the defenses I’d planned undone by shock.

“I don’t love him!”

I reeled, bitterly marveling at the horridness of it all.

I had been sent to kill him, and he was planning on arresting or murdering me.

It was bizarrely fair.

The world never gave justice, yet, in this, it gave me perfect justice: my murderous intent versus Aeric’s murderous intent, a perfectly balanced scale, If I loved him, I would tip the scale in his favor, and he would exploit me. He already had.

“I don’t love him,”

I repeated harshly.

“I hate him.”

“Settle, Sister.”

Inessa was reassuring, but there was a brutal glint in her eyes.

She was glad to have gotten such a rise out of me.

It enraged me further.

She was acting as though everything I said merely proved her point and like she knew me better than I knew myself. How dare she say I loved Aeric when I’d come to avenge her? My anger grew, fevering through me. I embraced it. If I let it consume me, it would blaze in my ears, and I wouldn’t have to hear the quiet whisper under it all, the one deep inside me that said I was the weakest Sinet … and that I’d lost something tonight, something that had never been mine to begin with.

“Whether you love him or not doesn’t matter.”

“But I don’t.”

I thought she might say something cutting.

Instead, there was a slight give in her face, a softening around the rigid edges of her mouth and eyes.

She put her hand on top of mine.

An instant stab of panic overtook me. Last time she’d touched me, she’d revealed herself as a ghost. But this time, nothing happened. Her hand was hard, as though the skin were too thin and there was nothing between it and the bones. Black sludge curved beneath her fingernails and crusted her knuckles. But even though her hand belonged to a night terror, her touch was gentle.

“I’m not sure what love is, Mads, but I think I understand it best when I’m with you.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Her harshness had filled my girlhood.

Yet I wasn’t the only one who suffered.

She did as well. I knew her pain. She’d been born into her own isolation. She didn’t feel love yet knew it existed for others. The night had been long, but for all its darkness, I’d never seen things more clearly. I’d had a moment of weakness with Aeric, but it was over and done. Inessa might not be able to love as others could, but I did, and my love for her would make a bridge, one out of Bide.

Maybe, somewhere in the afterlife, there was a place for hollow hearts.

“I’ll set you free, Inessa.

I vow it.”

“I know you will,”

she said.

“And wherever I go after Bide, I’ll remember it.

For all eternity, I’ll know it.”

“But I don’t want you to go,”

I said suddenly.

“I wish you could stay.

You could be queen of Radix once Father passed, and I’d … I’d be there, somewhere.

Maybe teaching dancing lessons.”

“It’s all right, Mads,”

she said.

“It’s meant to be this way.

I’ve died, but you have a long life ahead.

You’ll be a wonderful queen of Radix when the time comes.”

“Don’t you see? It isn’t meant to be,”

I protested.

“I never wanted to be queen.”

“Then you’ll be good at it,”

Inessa said.

“Maybe you’re the hope for Radix.

I would’ve ruled like Father, and you—well, you cherish freedom, so you give it to others.

I think it’s why you love the grave flowers.

And I think it’s why they love you.”

Without warning, she disappeared.

It was a gentle going, unlike the others when I’d been in distress.

This time, she was there and then not, leaving as though she’d simply stepped through a door and closed it behind her.

Next to me, on the bed, was the red dress.

It was folded neatly. I stared at the red square of fabric. I touched my own hair. Dry. After getting up, I went to the tub and stared into it. It was also as dry as bone. So was the marble around it.

But the gentleness couldn’t continue.

Not when realms of here and there had been ripped to let Inessa through.

Pain rent my hand, making it feel as though my scar had been spiked in half.

I bent over. Something dislodged from the scar, tearing my skin and tumbling free.

Metal clinked against marble.

Weakly, I knelt.

Drops of blood spattered across my hand.

Was it more glass? I picked up the small object. It was slippery with blood. Shaking, I wiped it off on a towel and stared.

A silver knob sat in my palm.

The bottom of it scrolled into an ornate design.

The top part featured a jagged edge.

It was serrated, as though a monstrous bite had been taken from it. Touching it gently, I winced as one of the prongs nicked my fingertip.

I recognized it.

I went to my vanity.

Perfume bottles, including my Radixan one, sat in a row like jewels on a necklace next to ribbons and hairpins, the sinuous fluidity of the ribbons strange near the militantly straight ruby-tipped hairpins.

The tonics Sindony used in her daily war against my hair were to the right, almost empty since she always used too much.

My hairbrush was usually there as well, but its spot was vacant.

It couldn’t have simply disappeared.

I searched through my chambers, peering behind furniture and in corners.

Drawing back one of the drapes, I gasped.

At first, I wasn’t certain that the object I’d found was the hairbrush, but when I lifted it with two fingers, I saw it was.

Black sludge covered it.

Every bristle had been marauded.

Some bristles were entirely torn out, but others weren’t, leaving part of the paddle bald and other parts with short hair.

I took a shaky breath and lifted the metal part that’d been expelled from my scar to the bottom of the handle.

It was a perfect fit.

Inessa must have bitten it off to satiate her hunger.

I shuddered and dropped both pieces. I hadn’t seen Inessa bite the brush. She must’ve been here earlier when I was gone.

I picked up the remnants of the brush.

Like the mirror, I needed to hide it.

I swallowed hard, flexing my aching hand.

Neither Inessa nor I knew the true ramifications of her passing in and out of Bide, becoming a ghost in our world and a trapped soul in the other.

But those ramifications continued to impact me … and they were getting worse.