Page 22 of Grave Flowers

The next day, Sindony wasn’t among my ladies-in-waiting, which was just as well.

I would’ve had to dismiss her like Decima—only it would’ve been with good cause this time.

I stared distrustfully at the remaining girls.

No longer did their chatter and laughter sound innocent. Now it seemed like bubbling froth meant to hide secrets. I lurked in my bedchamber while they remained in the parlor, sewing as they waited for me to call for assistance.

There was a knock at the door, and one of them, Evi, jumped to answer it.

She spoke to whoever was there and came over to my bedchamber.

“It’s your wedding gown, Your Highness.

The sewists wish to fit it for you.

Prince Lambert put it on your agenda for the day.”

“Very well.”

I fought off a shudder.

Father would be enraged at Prince Lambert’s actions.

I hoped he wouldn’t think I was responsible.

No matter what, he wouldn’t agree to Prince Lambert’s terms, and neither would our people. Would Prince Lambert resort to violence? If he did, Radix would rise to meet him, but I knew the calculus: The superior Acusan military would quickly crush us. If Father at all sensed I was complicit with Prince Lambert, I wouldn’t be alive to see it.

“I’ll let them in, but, Your Highness …”

“Yes?”

“Would you like me to draw some water first?”

Confused, I glanced at my reflection in one of the wall-hanging mirrors.

I hardly recognized myself.

My face was so sickly white that it was almost blue.

Blood crusted the corner of my mouth from when I’d struck my face against the wall. I’d been so distraught over Yorick that I hadn’t wiped it off. Prince Lambert thought I was mad—and it might serve me to let him continue thinking so. If he thought things were just as he assumed, it would make him less fixated upon me as I figured out what to tell Father and how to still save Inessa.

“Whatever for?”

I asked Evi.

Her eyes widened and she nodded, though uncertain.

Hopefully, she’d tell Decima and Sindony, and they’d take the information straight to Prince Lambert.

“Let them in.”

The sewists bustled into the dressing area.

They were old women with white hair and long gnarled fingers.

Two servants followed behind them, carefully holding a mannequin in what I could only presume was my wedding gown.

Several more trailed along and held the train aloft. The leafy, fresh scent of silk filled the room. They set it down with care.

“I’m Gwenllian, Your Highness,”

the head sewist said.

Her own gown was a masterful display of embroidery.

Every inch featured a different technique or pattern, captured in hues of wine, crimson, and burgundy against gold silk.

It reflected in her white hair, giving it a red sheen. She frowned.

“It’s much too dark in here.

Whatever is this, a cave?”

She snapped her fingers at one of the servants to pull back the drapes.

As I always requested, they had been drawn, and only a few candle flames fluttered against the shadows.

“I like it that way,”

I said, regarding them as another set of people who might gossip about my eccentricity to Prince Lambert.

Gwenllian was undeterred.

A sewing needle was suddenly in her fingers, and she lifted it high.

The servants fell quiet, as though she held a holy relic.

“Art requires light, as does beauty,”

she declared.

“Let it in!”

The servants nodded enthusiastically and spread out, pulling the curtains back.

My girls and I squinted as light streamed into the chambers.

It cast stars onto the brass fixtures and made Gwenllian’s dress shimmer.

She smiled at herself in one of my mirrors and then turned to me.

“Now, time for your fitting.”

I stared at the wedding gown, half with awe, half with wariness.

It was a dreamy concoction, so ethereal and airy that I wouldn’t be surprised if it started floating.

This was what I’d wear to wed Aeric, the garment meant to symbolize a new beginning, even though death would follow soon after.

Slowly, I reached out to touch it, as though its beauty might transport me away from everything.

“Your Highness!”

Gwenllian gasped, throwing herself between me and the gown.

“If you don’t mind—I’m not certain how things are done in Radix—but please! This dress is an expression of the faith and requires reverence.

Only us sewists in our later years have been allowed to touch it, and we say prayers over it to the Daughter every day before we begin.

Once a sewing needle has been used on it, it is bent so it may never be used on any other gown.”

“I appreciate the care … but if I’m not supposed to touch it, how shall I try it on?”

“Simply stay where you are,”

Gwenllian said with annoyance, as though it were a hindrance to her that I, the bride, was part of the equation.

“We will dress you.”

In short order, my dressing gown was whisked away.

The blood at my mouth was wiped lest I sully the silk, and I was put into a shift and laced into a corset.

A hoop skirt dropped over my head and settled at my waist.

Intriguingly, it didn’t close in front, leaving my legs exposed. Intricate lace stockings were pulled up to my thighs and then, finally, the gown was taken off the form and carefully lowered onto my body.

I almost didn’t recognize myself as I stared into the mirror.

The dress had a scoop neckline that rose up at the sides.

Delicate lace trimmed it, peeking up like tender new sprouts.

Lace cut away at my thighs, while a translucent overlay hung down to my toes, showing the outline of my legs. Coils of elaborately embroidered cords cupped my shoulders and crawled upward to encircle my neck, creating a choker while leaving my chest exposed. Gwenllian buttoned it in place. The choker tightened. My scar burned, and I swallowed, thinking of Father’s drapery cord and the fact it was traveling in his pocket with him toward Acus.

Suddenly, there was a wisp behind my head.

I started, thinking it was Inessa.

Instead, a veil draped over me, as delicate as mist.

It covered my face and waterfalled behind me. Words were embroidered in script across the part that trailed past the skirt.

Marriage Eternal, it said.

I wondered if the term applied once you murdered your husband.

Gwenllian’s wizened hands grasped the veil to lift it off my face.

It tipped back, and I raised my gaze.

Black holes filled Gwenllian’s face where her eyeballs should be, and her face shriveled and twisted like a cloth being violently wrung.

I stepped back, horror choking me.

Everyone around me kept chatting.

Before me, the figure of Gwenllian continued to transform, slowly assuming Inessa’s features.

“Your Highness, please stand still.

You’re wrinkling the gown.”

I glanced to the side.

Gwenllian was there, healthy and whole.

I dared to look back.

Inessa stood before me in a state I’d never seen.

Her eyeballs were gone, and her hands clawed forward.

Her nose was missing as well. Only empty pockets where eyeballs and nostrils would be remained. Black sludge oozed from every orifice, dripping out of her ears, mouth, eyes, and nose sockets. Blindly, she reached out, groping through emptiness. I couldn’t help it. I grabbed both her hands, stabilizing her. Around me, surprised murmurs ran through the room. I imagined I looked strange, holding on to nothing, but I didn’t care. I had to help her. Immediately, pain riddled my scar, turning it into an agonizing ribbon of fire.

Through the sludge on her face, Inessa’s mouth lifted in a smile of recognition.

Slowly, she blinked furiously, and her eyeballs rolled up into place, as though they’d been lurking just below the sockets.

Her nose, though, didn’t return.

She was becoming worse. Much worse.

Focusing on me, gratitude filled her gaze, apparent even through the grotesque sludge.

Immediately, questions filled me.

What was her plan? Why did she hide the fact she could travel at will from me? Another burning desire followed.

The desire to tell her everything, from Prince Lambert’s forced marriage proposal to Yorick. Despite everything, she was the only one I could talk to plainly, just like a true sister.

“I wore it best,”

she said, voice so gritty and raw that I could hardly understand her.

“What?”

“They made the wedding gown for me, of course.

How could they sew one in time for you? I tried it on, once.”

“I beg your pardon, Your Highness?”

Gwenllian asked.

She couldn’t see or hear Inessa—but she could hear me.

“Nothing,”

I said.

I tried to sound commanding.

“I need a moment.

This is my first time seeing myself as a bride, and I would like to reflect.

Now, everyone out.”

“Your Highness!”

Gwenllian sputtered.

“We can’t simply leave you in the gown.”

“Now.”

“But—but—”

“I am betrothed to your monarch, and I am your soon-to-be queen,”

I said.

Pent-up nerves and fear made my voice taut.

“Do not question me, lest I have words with Prince Aeric … or Prince Lambert.”

At that, everyone skittered away, including Gwenllian, who stared tragically over her shoulder at me in the gown until the door closed.

“Spoken like a true ruler,”

Inessa said.

“I never thought I’d see the day, Mads—whyever are you looking at me in that way? Is there something upon my face?”

“It’s more what’s not upon your face.”

Inessa turned to the mirror and let out a little shriek.

“My nose! Wherever did it go?”

She frowned, tilting her head from side to side as though trying to find its best angle sans nose.

“Do you think it can regrow in the afterlife? Once you set me free from Bide?”

I met her gaze in the mirror, seeking her eyes behind the sludge.

The grime collected in the folds of her eyelids and the hollows beneath them.

“Inessa, you must be honest with me.”

The tautness in my voice drained away, making it crack with overwhelm.

“There’s a grave flower in your chambers.

One I’ve never seen before, and—and an arm dropped out of it, along with a strand of hair.

It looked like your hair.

Is your body there?”

Surprise flitted over Inessa’s face.

“Certainly not.

From what I understand, my body is in Radix, in a casket.”

“Then whose body is it?”

I pressed.

Questions came almost faster than I could speak.

Unknowing surrounded me.

I wished to claw free but could not.

“And how did the grave flower come to be in your chambers? Aeric wasn’t aware of it either, and I imagine if anyone else were, I would’ve heard as much.

There was also our plaque.

The one I stole from Mother’s altar. Why?”

“How many times must I tell you not to snoop in my things?”

Inessa demanded indignantly.

She sighed.

“I didn’t put any grave flowers in my chambers, and you were always more obsessed with that silly plaque than me.

If I had put a grave flower in my chambers, it would’ve been discovered when they cleared out my things to be sent home, and I imagine it would cause quite the commotion.”

At the very least, her story confirmed Aeric’s—the grave flower must’ve recently been placed there.

“Everything is awry.

Maybe it’s just the otherworld bleeding into this one as I cross back and forth from Bide.

Our childhood treasures have been stirred up by the trips, it seems.”

Chills swept over me, turning my skin cold against the silk and sunlight.

I thought of grave flowers appearing in Inessa’s chambers, old magic enmeshing with our present world.

In a way, Inessa herself was the same.

An incarnation of things I’d previously thought impossible and places I’d doubted existed.

“You are troubled, Madalina.

What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,”

I said.

I didn’t want her to doubt me or to think my weakness was getting the best of me, even as I feared it myself.

“Has something happened? Tell me—maybe I can help.”

She spoke serenely, without any hint of judgment.

It was all it took.

I spoke freely, needing to unburden myself.

“Prince Lambert wants me to marry him now that Queen Gertrude is dead.”

Saying it aloud made me even colder.

I shivered.

“I sought to secure Radix’s freedom, but he wishes to subjugate us once he’s king.

I can only imagine what Father will think.

And I—I thought I had a friend, but it turns out he’s … a ghost.”

At that, Inessa’s brows lifted, and her lips parted in surprise.

A bulging, four-legged creature scuttled out of her mouth and down her neck.

She flicked it onto the mirror.

It stuck. She slammed her hand over it. Guts burst from its body, and its legs spasmed in death throes.

“There’s another ghost here?”

Her lips pursed.

Of all things, she was jealous.

Then again, she’d never liked sharing.

“Who is it?”

“His name is—was—Yorick.”

I could see his sad thin face in my mind, the inked teardrops reflecting his lonely life.

Hurt burned inside me.

The image vanished.

“Apparently, only I can see him.

Just like only I can see you.”

“Whatever does he want?”

“I don’t know.”

I shifted in the wedding gown.

The veil caught on the shoulder embroidery.

Carefully, I worked to free it, but the more I tried, the more it snagged.

“He never asked anything of me.

In fact, he helped me bury Luthien and was always kind to me.

All he seemed to want to do was read.”

“Books?”

“No, street signage.

Yes, of course, books.

But I think he has a plan, though I haven’t the foggiest notion what it might be.”

I gave a final desperate yank on the veil.

The thin web of threads parted, and a small hole appeared.

“There must be something he wants,”

Inessa said thoughtfully.

She ran her finger through the guts of the bug, dragging its entrails across the mirror.

Tentatively, she licked her finger.

“Everyone is on a path set from birth.

Follow the path of his life, and you’ll find what he wants.”

“It’s just that none of it makes sense.

He’s from Pingere and was raised in a brothel.

His mother was treated cruelly, and he avenged her before coming here.

So I don’t understand why he’d be a ghost or what other unfinished business he might have—Inessa!”

My twin, finding the taste of the bug to her liking, applied her lips to the mirror and licked.

She paused and straightened, wiping the back of her mouth with her hand.

“I’m hungry,”

she said.

“Anyways, I think the biggest complication is Prince Lambert.

He wishes to wed you?”

“Indeed,”

I said.

My palms itched, as though I clung to the stone arrow on the heart bench again, Prince Lambert towering over me.

“What do you think will happen, Inessa? I can’t marry Prince Lambert.

Father will never agree to it—nor should he.

Radix must remain free.”

It was enough to earn Inessa’s full attention.

She straightened, abandoning the bug and facing me.

“I know you fear Father—with good reason—but perhaps he might help.

Only, wait to involve him until after you’ve done your duty and killed Prince Aeric and freed me from Bide.

He’ll know you followed orders, and then, before Prince Lambert announces his engagement to you, perhaps he might arrange to poison him with moonrain.

We can both return home with every thread binding us to Acus severed. Until then, be the dutiful bride.”

I ran my hands over the silk.

It wasn’t truly a wedding gown.

Not for me.

It was a disguise, a costume, a bit of trickery to get me from here to there. So much of my life was thus, and I’d accepted it, but the guise itched. Wore thin. It needed so much continual patching that I wondered what it might be to remove it altogether.

Inessa moved to my side and gently adjusted my veil.

“Look at us,”

she said wistfully, bending to fluff my train.

“I think this counts as playing dress-up.”

My heart warmed, even amid my unhappiness.

We used to love traipsing around in Mother’s gowns.

We’d twist crowns from thrushes and make scepters out of sticks.

“Mother would be proud.”

At that, the warmth in my heart turned hot, an ember of circling grief.

For other girls and other families, their mothers stood beside them as they readied to be brides.

They told them how pretty they looked and how proud they were, and they marveled at how it was only yesterday that they’d held them as a baby.

It wasn’t the case for us.

Gently, Inessa’s arm wound around my shoulders.

I leaned my head against her, and she held me.

“Inessa?” I asked.

“Yes?”

“Do you forgive me for Mother’s death?”

I waited, needing to hear the answer but fearing it at the same time.

Inessa’s arms tightened.

Finally, she said.

“Forgiveness is something I don’t understand.

Mother said something about it, once.

She said it’s like dropping the blade you hold against another’s ribs.

Maybe they deserve to be stabbed, but holding the blade tires your own arm. I know not of it, but I do know one thing—you. Madalina, you never deserved any of it. I don’t forgive you because you did nothing wrong. If you sense a blade at your ribs, it’s your own.”

We stood that way for what seemed a long while, and then, somewhere between the seconds, she left.

Quickly, I gathered up the skirt and staggered to the bathtub.

I pushed back the veil and waited.

Pain spread through my scar, along with a horrible tickling sensation.

Bitter waves of nausea coursed through me.

With a whimper, I held my hand over the tub, knowing something was coming and striving to protect the wedding dress.

A wriggling furry substance tore through my scar. It fell into the basin. Horrified, I stared down. Blood sprinkled the drain along with the convulsing leg of the bug Inessa had squashed and eaten. Weakly, I turned the knobs and rinsed the bug and blood away. Then I staggered back to my spot in front of the mirror.

“You may return,”

I called, loudly enough for the servants and sewists outside my door to hear.

The door opened, and they streamed around me.

I straightened and stared into the mirror, trying to forget the horrifying feeling of a bug leg writhing within my scar.

A Record

Experiments be damned! This Fely prisoner stole my wife and hasn’t helped at all with the grave flowers.

He knows how to make me immortal.

I know he does.

I went to him and gripped the front of his shirt and screamed.

“Tell me how to make myself immortal!”

He squinted due to the loud sound of my voice but remained silent.

“You made me kill my wife.”

“You mean Nerisa?”

he asked quietly.

“You never say her name.

Do you even know my name?”

“I don’t care about names!”

“Well, I’ll tell you mine anyways.

It’s Leander.

You should remember it.”

“Why on earth would I need to remember the name of a worthless Fely? Oh, you are smirking now, but you’ll regret it.”

By now, I’d quite lost my temper.

It’s nice to write about it.

It allows me to revisit the moment and appreciate how commanding I was.

I’m sure the Fely prisoner was terrified. Being a king comes naturally to me. More reason why I should be king foreve.

“If you don’t tell me how to become immortal, I shall round up every Fely on the coast and have them slaughtered.”

At that, his insouciant expression disappeared.

He shuddered and his eyes were wide.

I realized he was quite young.

Probably only twenty or so. Why my wife would ever find him more appealing than me is a mystery.

“There is a Fely invocation that only we use.

It’s called a roundabout.

When you are dying, it might let you slip through the cracks.

But it isn’t a prayer Radixans use because it isn’t to the Primeval Family. It’s to the other spirits who attend them. They are wily but may be beseeched. You say it when you die while crushing immortalities. It might forestall your death. It might give you more time, though you don’t know how much. Or it might send you straight to Bide.”

“Was that so hard?”

I demanded.

“Now I don’t need to pay your village a visit.”

“Not at all,”

the Fely prisoner quickly said.

He fished inside the neckline of his tunic.

Several gold chains glimmered with different pendants hanging from them.

He closed his fingers around one, and I think he was praying. I allowed him his primitive ways for the moment because I am a most gracious and open-minded king

x

The Fely prisoner has been tending the grave flowers.

He speaks to them as gently as though they were babies.

Before I engaged in the experiment, I started to see possible issues with these roundabouts.

“You say the invocation as you die?”

I demanded.

“How does that help me? I don’t want to buy time.

I want to be immortal.”

“It’s a good question,”

the Fely prisoner said, and I nodded magnanimously.

I am known for my good questions.

“The key is to have someone plant your portrait amid the immortalities.

It entangles with the roots.

Whoever plants it says the roundabout invocation once again, and you are brought back.”

“Wonderful! I have several portraits I can choose from.

Though I must die to live forever?”

“Indeed.

Through death, you gain life.”

“Most excellent news!”

I clapped the Fely prisoner on the shoulder.

He winced but smiled.

“My wife was ridiculous for thinking I shouldn’t bring you here.

Women.

They are truly unfit for anything more than babe bearing.”

He stopped smiling then, but who knows why?

“So I shall drink moonrain,”

I declared.

“You will bring me back immediately, and I will reign as an immortal king.

Ah, I am truly happy.

What a journey it has already been.

I shall have my finest portrait selected for you to bury amid the immortalities. And listen closely: I will have guards watching. If you don’t bring me back, they will go to your home and drag your family here and kill them before your eyes.”

With that, I headed back inside, feeling full of hope.

x

Today is the day! Next time I write, I shall be immortal.