Page 2 of Grave Flowers

I had never wanted the throne.

But it seemed to want me.

The thought hung heavy in my mind as I entered our royal garden, ducking around the rusty signs with warnings like VICIOUS FLOWERS and BEWARE, HEAVY POLLEN—VISITORS MAY HAVE TROUBLE brEATHING.

For a moment, I was distracted from my misery.

Something was amiss.

The grave flowers were furious, which was odd because the day was perfect for them: weak, drained of sunlight, and laundered in heavy, dripping gloom so it was hard to see despite the daytime hour. Fat pockets of fog and floral vapor sat close to the ground, too dense to rise. This type of weather was usual for Radix, our kingdom, where grave flowers thrived

Warily, I stepped onto a low marble flower bed, one of the few empty ones.

When the grave flowers were angry, it was best not to walk along the paths, since those gave them easy access to cut at your ankles.

I swept across the marble with ease.

Endless years of dance lessons made spinning, sashaying, and springing as natural as walking to me—if not more so. Though most people enjoyed things they were good at, I loathed dancing with my entire being.

Reaching the end of the flower bed, I took a small leap onto the rim of the fountain.

A chunk of marble came away beneath my leather boots and clunked onto the ground.

I ignored it and twirled along the curve of the basin.

The brine in the air granulated my skin, overpowering the grave flowers’ scent. I got to the other side of the fountain and jumped off. The urge to curtsy and signify the end of my dance came over me.

I winced, even though I hadn’t been hurt.

“Are we angry as well as hungry today?”

I asked the starvelings.

They swiped at me, and their thorns caught on my dress.

Ms were embroidered in black pearls around the hem of my skirt for my name, Madalina.

The thorns severed one of the pearls. The beauties tried to reach it to bury—they always jealously buried pretty things—but they couldn’t quite grasp it.

“Look what you’ve done!”

Of course, the starvelings were pleased they’d caught me unawares.

I shook my head at them.

They muttered and clicked their thorns together.

They had purple blossoms, but those seemed to be an afterthought to their curved black thorns.

Something was agitating them. But what?

I frowned and scanned the other grave flowers.

They grew unrestrained over the marble beds and decorative columns intended to keep them contained.

Mirrors sat at various points in the garden.

Father had ordered them placed throughout the palace and its grounds so you could always see if someone snuck up behind you, but their decorative gold frames and surfaces were overlaid in grime. Despite the difficulty in seeing an actual reflection, the beauties used them obsessively. But they didn’t today. The entire garden writhed in fretful waves, except for the nocturnal moonmirrors, which slept, and one small barren patch of dirt. Immortalities were supposed to grow there, but, ironically, they had died out long ago.

“You aren’t the only unhappy ones, my loves.”

I sighed.

“Maybe you already heard? Inessa is engaged to Prince Aeric.

It means”—it was still hard for me to believe, much less say—“I’m Father’s heir and will one day be the queen of Radix.”

It was a shocking turn of events, especially because my twin sister, Inessa, had always bled queenship more than blood.

Conversely, if you cut me, I would bleed inferiority coupled with the intense desire for solitude and perhaps a good bath.

Of course, the true horror was the cost of the betrothal.

In accordance with its terms, Radix would become a vassal state to the much more powerful (and haughty and detestable) kingdom of Acus.

Everyone had always assumed Inessa and I would marry nobles from Radix.

Our motto, after all, was us alone, so much so that we even had bedtime terror tales involving outside monarchs dissolving into flower nectar if their gaze lingered too long upon our throne.

Betrothing Inessa to Prince Aeric was not very us alone of Father.

Displeasure filled the court.

I understood.

We didn’t have much aside from our independence. Once we became a vassal state, our freedom would be an illusion.

I tried to shake off my distress.

I couldn’t calm the Radixan court or myself, but I could calm the grave flowers.

I turned the wheel of the irrigation system.

It shrieked as I forced it to twist. Copper pipes, oxidized into a blue green, shook beneath the soil as water was released from the reservoir. Spouts of water shot up from the holes drilled in the pipes at a myriad of heights and angles.

Our grave flowers drank salt water, something visitors found particularly unnatural and alarming.

The flowers would drown themselves in it if we let them.

They were watered frequently, but they were never quenched.

I knew the feeling well.

I didn’t thirst for salt water like the grave flowers, but my soul always felt itchy and dry.

There was salt water to ease the grave flowers, but I didn’t think anything could settle my soul, especially now that I would someday be queen and inherit the throne on behalf of my family.

The one time I’d ever had to do anything significant for my family, I’d failed.

Mother had died.

“Since your cups aren’t filled with nectar,”

I said to the enmities.

“at least they can be filled with salt water.”

Enmities were a single stalk with two branching stems topped in blackish-blue blossoms, each forming a perfect, albeit empty, cup.

Whenever there was the merest drop of nectar in their basins, the other grave flowers slurped it up.

“Now, now—stop it!”

The starvelings, who cared not for their fellow flowers, slashed the others aside to guzzle from the largest spout.

“You’re being beastly! And right in front of the Daughter.”

I glanced at the statue positioned across the way.

Every kingdom on our small continent of Minima worshipped the Primeval Family, and it was common to have statues for the various figures: the Mother, the Daughter, the Son, and the Father.

Radix didn’t regard the faith with any sincerity.

One had only to see the deep cracks running through the Daughter’s plaster and the skeletal piles of dead grave flowers at her feet to see no one tended to her. In fact, one hand was missing after being carried off during a particularly raucous court revelry years ago.

If it wouldn’t cause an uproar, Father would have had her smashed to smithereens.

He hated having a statue of the Daughter and how Radix’s divine gifting was grave flowers, a long-ago mythology that followed us no matter how much time elapsed between us and the old stories.

He would’ve much preferred the gift of our enemy to the north, Crus.

Metalwork. According to the myths, they were supposed to use their forages for chalices, sensors, and sacred emblems, but they primarily used them for stocking their armories. That was the thing about the divine gifts: most could be used so well as weapons.

Though no other giftings were quite so … alive.

Our grave flowers prowled about with minds of their own.

Supposedly, combined with the right invocations from the holy writ handed down long ago, the grave flowers could be very powerful.

But the invocations had been lost, and even if they hadn’t been, the generally accepted wisdom was that using them would cause your own destruction and put you in a grave. Hence the grim name.

Leaving the irrigation system running, I made my way over to a bench.

My gardening supplies sat by it in a basket.

I loved gardening and sinking my hands deep into the soil until it coated them like regrown skin.

But I didn’t pick up the basket today. Instead, I took a wedding invitation out of my pocket.

It had come into my possession only this morning, and it was odiously beautiful.

One of the beauties drew close.

I tried to hide the invitation, but it was too late.

Immediately, the beauties turned inward to each other, shaking with envy.

“Oh, come on, now,”

I cajoled.

“It isn’t that pretty.”

I glanced at it again.

“Fine, I confess, it’s very pretty.”

The formal invitation had been sent to Father, but he’d handed it off to me.

It was particularly elaborate since it had been made for us, the royal family.

Embroidery formed a tapestry across the letter’s surface, noting the wedding details.

Acus’s gifting was vestures, and it was said their pens were sewing needles and their ink was thread.

Looking at the invitation, you’d never know that their monarch, King Claudius, had died only a month ago in his garden and had been buried for no more than a week before his widowed queen married his brother, Prince Lambert.

Radix loved gossip more than anything and had been feasting off the morsel.

Then the betrothal and vassal plans were announced.

The fun and frivolous gossip had ceased.

“Acus isn’t as perfect as it seems—only you are,”

I cooed to the beauties.

They persisted in ignoring me.

“But don’t worry.

I would never leave you. Ever.”

Acusan wedding invitations often had portraits painted onto them, enhanced with their embroidery thread.

But Radixans, steeped as we were in lore and superstitions, were forbidden from having portraits painted, so there were only names.

The writing across the top announced our soon-to-be overlord: His Royal Highness, Reigning Sovereign Aeric Capelian, Ruler Prevailing of Acus.

Next to it, Inessa’s name twisted across the invitation.

I still couldn’t fathom it.

How could Father give up our freedom? To make matters worse, he’d been tucked away within the palace’s secret passageways, inaccessible to any who might question him.

And, perhaps, any who might resort to more drastic measures to force a change of heart, such as stabbing it through.

I turned the invitation facedown.

The beauties nodded approvingly.

I wished to forget it all.

To simply lose myself in the garden until I became a statue overgrown with vines. But while the Sinet way was to take what you wanted, I wasn’t Sinet enough to do so. I would never have more than lost longings.

Toward the front of the garden, I heard footsteps come from behind the bushes.

Immediately, I stood.

My ladies-in-waiting knew I liked solitude in the garden and would always announce themselves if they needed to disturb me.

Either all four of them were suddenly neglecting their duties … or someone had secretly slipped inside.

On the middle finger of my left hand was a ring bearing our family’s royal crest: serpentines wrapped around dragonslips, our tiny fire-spitting grave flower, amid the words us alone.

The band was forged into a silver stem with miniature leaves sprouting from it.

I flicked open the crest.

A needle, as thin as it was sharp, shone like a single strand of spiderweb silk. A chamber filled with moonrain, a poison that dripped from the moonmirrors, lurked beneath the needle.

It was strong enough to instantly kill two people.

But, as I’d been instructed ever since Father had gifted me the ring on my thirteenth birthday, the generous amount was to be used on myself in the event I failed to stop the attacker with the first dose or if I found myself in a situation where I shouldn’t be taken alive.

He’d given Inessa one as well.

Quickly, I retreated behind one of the large mirrors.

It might simply be a gardener who had gotten past my girls, or it might be someone with much more serious intentions than weeding.

Whoever it was, I would see them before they saw me.

I listened, trying to track the intruder’s movements through the garden.

Footsteps crunched across the loose sea stones and crushed snail shells filling the pathways, but it was hard to distinguish the direction over the rattling irrigation system.

“Madalina?”

A familiar voice cut across the garden.

“Are you here?”

The last person I expected to hear was my sister.

I stepped around the mirror. “Inessa?”

“There you are.”

Inessa—who was very much supposed to be in Acus, preparing to walk down the aisle to her prince—stood across from me.

“Hands in the dirt again?”

I fought the urge to sigh in relief.

Sinets never showed weakness, especially not with each other.

The grave flowers gave her a wide berth, leaning away.

They remembered her. Once, I’d come to the garden to find that she’d goaded the serpentines and the lost souls into a fight. I’d cried for her to stop, and she’d said, Don’t you see? I set the grave flowers against each other and watch. Father sets us against each other and watches. The Primeval Family sets him against the other monarchs and watches. It’s walls of eyes, and behind each one, more eyes. I never knew what was more unnerving: when Inessa told me the strange things she was thinking, or when she didn’t and only gazed at me with a vacant expression.

Discreetly, I slipped the crest over its stinger and walked to her.

“The grave flowers were disturbed, so I was calming them,”

I said.

“Why are you here?”

“I forgot something.”

“Whatever did you forget?”

I couldn’t hide my confusion.

“Isn’t Acus over a week’s travel away? No one said you were coming.

The coronation and wedding are in less than a month.”

I hadn’t seen her since she’d left for the betrothal service, and I stared at my double.

Sometimes it was uncanny to have another moving about the world with my face.

But then, it wasn’t my face any more than it was her face.

It was our face, each the selfsame of the other. And it had its benefits. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw only blueish gullies beneath my eyes, an unruly cowlick, and skin that flushed ruddy at a single sip of wine. But when I looked at Inessa, I saw a chin curving into the bottom half of a heart, eyes so dark that they must have stolen the color from our grayish soil, and a silky mane of black hair, a gift from our Fely mother.

In myself, I saw our flaws.

In her, I saw our beauty.

Through the two images, I figured we were somewhere in between.

Those trying to flatter our family often said we were the sun Radix had never had, but I didn’t agree.

Not only because it didn’t make sense—we weren’t blond and didn’t have sunny dispositions—but because it was so ludicrous, given who we were.

We weren’t the sun.

We weren’t even the stars.

We were the thick web of night trying to reclaim the world after light had burst into existence.

“Gracious, calm yourself, Sister.”

Inessa walked over to the bench I’d abandoned and sat.

She glanced down at her wedding invitation and flipped it over, to the distress of the beauties.

She smiled slightly at her name.

Fear abated, I realized she was wearing practically nothing.

Her red gown was as airy and unexpected as a startled gasp.

The fabric ran up to her clavicle, but once it crested her shoulders, it hooked around her neck with a thin strap and then stopped, as though too frightened to cover her back.

Her spine shifted beneath her skin, the notched vertebrae reminding me of the knobby pearls that form a scorpion’s tail.

Embroidered scrolls, perfect copies of the ones on the invitation, spilled heavily across the skirt and gathered into a riotous display at the hem.

“Whatever are you wearing?”

I asked, shocked.

“This? Oh, it’s all the rage in Acus.

I think it’s the sunlight there.

It makes people wish to wear less clothing.

It was startling when I first arrived. There were so many body parts! Shoulders, thighs … even ribs, because it’s the style to wear garments with pieces completely missing.”

“Sounds dreadful.”

I brushed my hand across my thick Radixan skirt.

“How could you hide a weapon?”

“It’s impossible.

And you can’t even have a dagger in your boot.”

To illustrate her point, she lifted her skirt.

A thin satin slipper encased her foot.

Ribbons wrapped around her ankle and tied off in a bow.

“There’s no room for it.

And the ribbon wrapping is so elaborate that it would take much too long to take it off and strangle anyone.”

“You’d be doomed,”

I agreed.

“Perhaps you could sew in a hidden pocket?”

Contemplating, she ran her fingers over the skirt and then shook her head.

“No, the silk is too thin.”

“Thwarted again.

At least you have your poison ring.”

“This old thing?”

Inessa held up her hand.

“It’s most bothersome.

I keep using it and having to refill it.

At least blades can be wiped clean and are ready to use again.”

“So you’re the reason why we are so low on moonrain,”

I teased.

We had a stockpile of bottled moonrain from generations ago, making me assume we’d once known how to harvest it.

Hopefully, we’d figure out the practice again because our stockpile was almost depleted.

I paused, then asked.

“And Prince Aeric? What is he like?”

“A prince, as you’d expect.”

Inessa brushed her betrothed aside like an errant crumb.

“How odd he’s still called a prince,”

I mused.

For all the kingdoms, kingship or queenship transferred immediately upon the death of the previous ruler.

In Radix, we would instantly refer to the next monarch as king or queen.

In Acus, though, the term was prevailing, just as it was noted on the wedding invitation.

Prince Aeric was the ruler, but he was the ruler prevailing until the coronation.

To streamline affairs, the wedding ceremony would follow the coronation service.

By the end of the auspicious day, Prince Aeric would undergo the title change to king and have his wife, Inessa, at his side.

“It’s utterly ridiculous,”

Inessa agreed.

“They say it’s for holy reasons.

For the new monarch to reflect and prepare his soul for the sacred ritual of coronation.

It’s all well and good, but it gives too much time for others to plot.

To be king in everything but name is a weakness. If I were Prince Aeric, I’d demand my coronation the very next day, royal mourning or not.”

“The people would find it terribly disrespectful,”

I said.

“They’d worry you were power hungry and desperate.”

“True.”

Inessa pondered it.

“Well, I would make very certain to look sad and humble as I was crowned.”

I winced.

If anyone could act, it was her.

Inessa and I had been good friends until Father told us whichever twin he deemed the best would be named his heir.

Inessa changed.

While I longed to be in the garden, she longed to be in the future, sitting on the throne.

You don’t wish to rule, she would say.

So help me and you won’t have to.

You must never say a bad word about me, not even in front of the servants.

Whenever I tell you something, you must do it.

Show obedience so others do as well.

Copy my styles but without any personal touches or imagination so everyone knows you are the imitation, not the original.

Oh, and leave dark green for me alone.

Standing in front of any mirror, she’d stare at herself.

Sometimes she practiced crying; other times, she practiced giving orders or, as we got older, whispering to a lover. I was there to confirm whether her performances were authentic. If ever my gaze strayed, she’d pinch me hard, then snap, Watch me.

Inessa tossed her head, oblivious to the bleak memories she’d stirred.

“How has Father been?”

“Absent,”

I said.

“I think he’s taken to the hidden passages like a mouse, lest someone threaten him and demand he terminate the betrothal.

Did the terms not take your breath away? We’ve always defended our right to be as we are.”

“What we are is poor.”

Inessa snorted.

“What we are is free,”

I said.

“How could we let such a thing trickle through our fingers? Being a vassal is worse than being conquered.”

“Terribly dramatic, Sister.”

Inessa remained unmoved.

“I have a request.

I was wondering if I could sleep in your chamber tonight.”

“Sleep in my chamber?”

If she’d asked to borrow my head, I’d have been less surprised.

“Where would I sleep?”

“With me, silly.”

Impatience tightened her voice.

“For old times’ sake.”

Perhaps being a bride had turned her sentimental.

Love changed people.

Or so I’d heard.

Love was an affectation in the theater of my life. I playacted it to get loyal courtiers, to elicit secrets, to win favors. My heart was kept in a vault. I’d long lost the key, and I could feel the lock rusting like the chains around our unused gardening shed. It was for the best. I’d always known I’d be married off to someone I didn’t choose. My only hope was that whoever I wed wouldn’t mind that I spent most of my time in the garden.

“We haven’t shared a meal in years, much less chambers.”

“Oblige me,”

Inessa said.

“On the trip back, I couldn’t help but remember how we’d slept together when we were little.”

It was true.

Silly things, we’d been.

We had canopied beds as huge as carriages, but we always ended up in the same one, with me going to hers or her going to mine.

There, our whispers and giggles knit a new world over us, as real as the blankets we tunneled beneath. We would lie close, as though trying to re-create the closeness we’d shared inside Mother. It was an old memory, one I’d forgotten, and now that it was back before me, I didn’t know what to do with it. The years in between had corroded the recollection, giving it edges that could hurt me because of what we’d become. Warily, I walked over to sit next to her.

“You’re wearing green.”

She eyed my dress.

“You aren’t here anymore to tell me not to.”

“True.”

Her eyes flicked up to my face and then back down.

Her lips stretched thin across her face.

Whenever she was irked, she looked pinched, as though she had a pain in her side.

Then the expression vanished, replaced by a bright toothy smile.

“I’ll make sure you have a lovely dress for my wedding, one made by the finest Acusan sewists.

They are remarkable.

It’s a lifetime appointment for them, so they are quite old and are revered almost as much as monastictes.

They’ll create a stunning gown for you.”

“Oh, it’s quite all right,”

I said, still watching her carefully.

There had to be something she wanted from me.

A test was in order.

She was as vain as the beauties, so it wasn’t hard to come up with one.

“I shouldn’t, not on your wedding day.

You can be the prettier twin for once.”

The insult was bitter on my tongue.

I never enjoyed being unkind, but Inessa laughed, the sound as eerie as a moonmirror wail carried on the night wind.

There’d been a time, long ago, when I could tease her or even give her a playful verbal jab, but not after Father set us against each other.

Anytime I did, she would scowl and ruminate, digging through any jest for the whiff of a threat. It didn’t matter that I was her twin; beyond that, I was me—the weak Sinet. To Inessa, I was the soft spot in our family’s mortar, and I might bring everything down by wavering at the wrong moment.

But the worry painted too grand a picture of me.

“I won’t hear of it,”

Inessa said, her lightheartedness only furthering my suspicion.

“I’ll have you dressed in the finest creation you’ve ever seen.

None of these sober blacks and dark greens.

You’ll be resplendent in red and gold, the colors of Acus.

Anyways, I wish to tell you something.”

She pushed herself up, her hand coming near mine.

Our scars were as identical as our faces, the two threads of tissue running from our little fingers down to the bottom of our right wrists.

It was strange to think we’d been once attached, that we’d grasped hands in utero and simply never let go until skin grew over our bones like moss over rocks.

How quickly we’d gone from that to fearing a stab in the back from the hand we’d once held.

Mother had been the one to tell us we’d been attached at the hand.

She’d whispered it in our ears when we were eight, telling us she wanted us to know something true, something real, and to never mention it to Father.

“We were born into this life of shadows and secrets.”

Inessa spoke slowly, as though examining each word before saying it to make sure it would do what she wanted.

“We inherited it; we did not choose it.

As I’ve been away and on the cusp of a new life, I can’t help but think I’d like things to be different between us.

Father is above us, and everyone else is below us, nipping at our heels, trying to drag us down so they can climb over us.

But we are equals. Side by side, in life as in birth.”

“How would you want things to be different?”

Despite myself, I was drawn to the warmth in her voice.

“Well, for one thing, I would like for us to be friends.”

“Friends.”

I stared hard at her, wishing I could look behind the reflective mirrors of her eyes to know what she really thought.

“There’s no such thing for you.”

“I understand if you don’t trust me.

Please, will you at least give me a chance? I’m leaving, Mads.

For good.

If we don’t change things now, we’ll fall beneath the waves of our lives and be estranged. I wish only to be close and to have you come and stay once or twice a year with me at court. You can even study the Acusan flora. It’s much different than ours, bred and coiffed and spoiled and as devoid of life as rocks. I imagine it would make it much easier to garden, and you might enjoy it.”

My knees found their way to my chest.

I wrapped my arms around them, gathering my limbs about me on the hard edge of the bench.

Sisterhood.

Flowers—and not ones that can hurt you. I dug my nails into my elbows. The ten points of pain cut into my skin, comforting for their realness, for their reminder. Nothing was ever as it seemed except pain. I needed to think. What could she want? What could she gain from this sudden offer of friendship?

Slowly, my gaze traveled over her, trying to find a clue.

My eyes fell back to her hand.

Normally, our scars were simply white ridges, an island of tissue floating on our hands.

But hers was … lifted. Raised, as though something beneath it were trying to push it out.

“Your scar.

What happened to it?”

At the question, Inessa yanked her hand back.

She wasn’t fast enough.

I grabbed her wrist.

Twisting, she tried to free herself, her hand flopping in my unrelenting grip like a wild creature of its own. “Tell me.”

She was stronger than me.

She always had been.

Her free hand pushed hard against my shoulder, and she wrenched herself away.

As she did, our scars touched, mimicking how we’d once been. I slipped off the bench. Sharp-edged gravel received my backside, and my teeth clicked together. Immediately, my own scar came alive. I’d never felt this before. It’d always been a separate thing from me—a patch of dead skin, something on me but not of me. Suddenly, a thousand tiny nerves awakened in the scar, the tissue singing.

Pain, I realized.

The scar hurt with the brightness and ferocity of a wound just made.

It poured into my hand like liquid fire tipping onto dry kindling.

What had Inessa done to me? With a cry, I stumbled to my feet to face her.

I was not prepared for the scene before me.

Inessa twisted on the bench; her bones bent at their joints within the pallid coating of her skin.

A viscous blackness oozed from her mouth, too slow and congealed to be blood.

It creeped down her gown, where it mingled with the embroidered roses.

Around us, the grave flowers shook, buds opening and closing, leaves trembling. Jets of water from the irrigation system suddenly pitched much higher than ever before and in the same direction, toward Inessa, turning as black and thick as mud.

Help her.

The thought sent me toward my sister, despite my terror.

Before I could move, she lunged at me.

Cold, bony sticks latched around my arm.

It took me a moment to realize they were her fingers. She pulled me in. Suddenly, we were so close together, I could see only her eyes. They stared at me with the crystalline brightness of glass.

“I remember now, Sister,”

Inessa said.

Her voice was as watery and choked up as the congested fountain.

“I was poisoned in Acus this morning.

Mads, you are the only one who can help me—I’m trapped in Bide.

Please, avenge me and set me free from this agony.”