Page 24 of Grave Flowers
I didn’t understand.
Why did the monasticte look so much like Mother? And what letters? I hadn’t even known he’d existed.
“What do you mean? I—I’ve never written to you,”
I stammered, as I removed the plaque from my pocket.
“Are you Alifair? Does this belong to you?”
“I am Alifair.”
The monasticte tucked the knife into his belt.
Stepping forward, he squinted at the plaque.
“That did indeed use to be mine, except I haven’t seen it for decades, ever since I gave it to my sister as a gift to remind her of home.”
Reaching out a finger, he reverently stroked its surface.
“We put prayers inside our holy images, and I put a prayer for her safekeeping inside it.
I remember it like yesterday.
But tell me, are you not Princess Madalina Sinet?”
His voice was still weak.
I remembered he spoke to others only once a week and, aside from that, was alone.
“Yes, but I’ve never written to you.”
Consternation settled over the monasticte’s face.
He walked to a cabinet and pulled open a drawer.
Young beauties growing inside sprung up along with mismatched gardening gloves.
He shook his head, closed it, and opened another. Stakes, twine, and trowels mixed with parchment. He rummaged about, muttering to himself. The mutters were words, yet they tipped up and down in inflection, as though they were halfway a song. Finally, he found what he was looking for. He returned to where I stood and held out a letter.
“Didn’t you write this?” he asked.
“No …”
I snatched it from his hand.
I recognized the handwriting, just as I had earlier when I found the address sewn into the red dress.
“My sister did.
Princess Inessa.”
My eyes jumped to the bottom.
“She signed it in my name.”
At that, the monasticte drew his fingers through his beard, curling the ends.
Despite his raggedy appearance, his beard was oiled, and it held the twists.
He shook his head once, then twice, as though wishing to deny what I’d said.
“Who are you, exactly?”
I asked.
“What did my sister’s letters say?”
“Your sister requested the guide.”
“The guide?”
Every turn of our interaction brought more confusion.
“What guide?”
“The ancestral guide for Radixan monarchs.
A Guide to Grave Flowers for Tortures and Torments.”
He spoke the title with practiced familiarity and blinked at me expectantly.
He crossed his arms, hesitated, then lowered them, as though he’d forgotten how people stood when engaged in conversation.
“I—I’ve never heard of it.
A guide? For grave flowers?”
The mysteries only deepened, so much so that I felt as though I were drowning in them and would never resurface.
“Maybe we should sit,”
the monasticte said.
He motioned to two rickety chairs.
Flower beds filled with soil perched on the seats, and he carefully moved them.
As he did, he muttered under his breath again, only it was fully a tune this time. It would’ve sounded cheerful if it weren’t entirely minor notes, each one discordant.
“From what you say, you are Madalina and your sister, Inessa, was the one writing me?”
I sank down.
“Yes, but why would she write you—and how would she know about this book and never tell me and—and—the book.
What is it about?”
“I was corresponding with the wrong sister.
Not good.”
Worriedly, the monasticte twitched in the chair, making it creak loudly.
“Not good at all.”
“Please.”
I leaned forward, eliciting a matching creak from my own chair.
“Tell me everything.
From the beginning.”
“The beginning …”
His fingers returned to his beard.
The ends already turned up perfectly, but he kept reforming them to the exact same style.
“I apologize.
I am as overwhelmed as you seem to be.
I think I’ve made a mistake.
A terrible mistake.”
“Of what manner?”
Shakily, I took a breath, trying to slow my own thoughts so I might guide my discombobulated host, but there were too many questions to ask, too many points of entry into the secrets.
I picked the most pressing one.
“Who are you, and why do you look so much like my mother, the former queen of Radix?”
The question made the monasticte lower his hands from his beard.
A smile flashed from inside his beard, and suddenly he looked as though he’d walked into a memory.
He stared at me with familiarity, like he also saw Mother, not me.
“I’m her twin brother and your uncle, Alifair.”
I sank back into my chair.
Just as I had a twin, so had Mother.
I’d imagined her with different types of families—several vivacious sisters or strict parents or a pesky younger brother—but I’d never considered she might’ve had a twin.
“She never spoke of her family,” I said.
“We spoke of her all the time,”
Alifair replied.
“We missed her terribly.
But she believed in what she was doing, and she helped us tremendously.”
“What do you mean?”
“Growing up, I was raised to know my path and what I was meant to do.
Agathine was always there for me as I struggled with my future,”
Alifair said.
He had one leg crossed over the other, and the raised foot swung side to side instead of back and forth.
Somehow, the motion reminded me of the tune he’d hummed—strange and eerie.
“Eventually, she decided she could do the same thing but in her own way.
Just as I was a sacrificial soul for our family and people, she would be too.
Agathine thought she could change things for us by marrying King Sinet.
After he killed his father and seized the throne, she went to work in the palace—the only Fely to do so in several generations. She was paid half the wages of everyone else and treated cruelly.”
I hardly dared to breathe.
I felt if I did, then the story unwinding around me might vanish under the heat of my breath and this new image of Mother would be snatched away.
Alifair continued, his voice growing stronger as though strengthening after years of disuse.
I heard strains of Mother’s accent in it, but his was different. His accent was half Fely and half some other strange thing, his intonation evolving on its own apart from his people.
“Agathine realized King Sinet was having trouble establishing authority over his court after stealing it from his father, and every day, when he stormed out of meetings with the nobles and advisors, she’d be there.
Dusting.
Mopping.
Carrying trays of dishes.”
His foot stilled as he told the story, and his eyes grew warm as he recalled Mother’s actions.
“Eventually he noticed her, and she smiled at him, just a bit.
A secret smile, just for him.
One day, she made a bold move.
She spoke to him in front of a prominent nobleman. The nobleman struck her for daring to speak to the king as a Fely, but it was enough. King Sinet defended her. He saw how disdained she was and knew that if he married her, his court would be appalled, and they’d understand they had no control over him.”
“They married,”
I said softly.
“I always thought Father pursued her.
I never considered that she might’ve tried to orchestrate it.”
“Immediately, things changed for us.
Before, we were taxed triple, and when they were due, collectors would come with guards and take whatever they wanted, often killing one or two of us in the process.
Now, with a Fely queen on the throne, it was rectified.
Certainly, Radixans still loathe us, but legally, we are equal.”
Alifair shook his head, as though uncertain the good was worth the cost.
“Agathine was terrified all the time.
She tried to be whatever she thought King Sinet wanted.
He’d told the court he wished to marry her to gain more knowledge about the grave flowers, but when she offered none, she thought he might divorce or execute her.
Then, when it took her a long time to become pregnant, she feared he’d strangle her. She prayed every day at her altar on her knees, begging for help. Every now and then, she’d sneak away and meet me, and every time, she wept in my arms.”
I’d thought Mother had been embarrassed about her family and that she’d kept us away from them out of shame.
But that wasn’t the case.
She wasn’t embarrassed.
She’d been protecting them.
“I had no idea,”
I said, my voice catching.
I remembered Inessa standing in front of her mirror, pretending to be a different person, honing each character like an act.
Little had we known that our own mother had been acting too.
Only, she hadn’t acted for a night or a meeting or a few days. She’d acted for her entire life. I’d thought Inessa’s skill had come from being a Sinet, but maybe it came from being a Tachibana too.
“If only I’d known.”
“You couldn’t,”
Alifair said.
“It would’ve been too dangerous.”
Mother hadn’t been protecting only her people.
She’d been protecting us too.
Inessa and me.
The knowledge was twofold, bringing comfort and grief.
“Inessa figured it out, then?”
I asked.
Sadness pervaded my confusion.
Why hadn’t I ever thought to inquire about Mother’s past? I might’ve known her differently, known her truly.
I would never get the chance now.
“You said she’s been writing to you under my name about a book.”
“Indeed,”
Alifair said.
His voice lowered, as though he was afraid someone might overhear.
“There’s something called A Guide to Grave Flowers for Tortures and Torments.
It’s an ancestral book by a long-ago king for Radixan monarchs, recording experiments with the grave flowers before the invocations were lost to time.
It includes the invocations themselves and results of the experiments.
None of them went very well.”
I listened in awe.
I’d always wondered at the full potential of our grave flowers.
If there was a guide to them, I longed for it.
I’d never thought there would be a way to learn the old invocations, but the knowledge hadn’t been fully lost. Merely hidden.
“A Fely prisoner was used to help.”
Alifair’s fingers returned to his beard.
This time, though, he didn’t curl the ends.
He dragged his fingers through it.
The motions undid the twists and left it raggedy.
“One day, an experiment went particularly disastrously, and part of the palace was destroyed.
In the chaos, the prisoner stole the guide and escaped to Acus.
He joined a monasterium—this monasterium—and became a garden monasticte.
Some of our people thought the book should be destroyed, but his family didn’t agree. However, they knew it was powerful and that it would be dangerous in the wrong hands. And they certainly didn’t want a Radixan monarch using it. Ever since then, a child from the Fely prisoner’s descendants has been sent to safeguard the book while studying the grave flowers here. I’m the current one. I was raised knowing I would do this for our people. But I must be careful. Our Fely interpretation of the faith is heretical to most, and we wish to keep the information secret, so I stay in isolation.”
“Did you send the book to Inessa?” I asked.
“Certainly not.”
He spoke strongly, passionately, and for once there were no minor notes in his voice.
“The book must stay out of Radix.
But I answered her questions and transcribed passages for her for the past year, sending them to the Radixan palace.
I knew she was writing in secret because she had me send the letters to a servant’s quarters.
I assume she had someone in her employ who she retrieved them from.”
“What sorts of passages?”
Inessa had been plotting for well over a year and writing to Alifair the entire time.
The knowledge was as heavy as a stone.
It sat in the pit of my stomach, coated with dread and panic.
I didn’t know the nature of Inessa’s plot, but I knew Inessa. She longed for power more than anything and pursued it naturally, her desires pointing the way and forming her path. After finding the address in the dress and learning she could visit other people, I’d suspected she wasn’t a mere victim, and with every confirmation, a new image of her formed before me. Only it wasn’t truly new. It was Inessa, just as I’d known her in life. The new Inessa was the one who’d come to me claiming to want sisterhood and friendship. That was the fake Inessa, a counterfeit I’d so easily accepted as real.
“In her first letter, Princess Inessa sent me a drawing taken from the plaque you have.
It was where she discovered my name.”
I remembered how the plaque had gone missing from the hiding place atop the palace.
She’d taken it and kept it despite our plans to make our own chapel.
“The plaque features the immortalities.
I sent her the results of the experiments.”
“Immortalities? But those have died out.”
“Not so, not so.
Your sister was under the same misunderstanding.
But immortalities have an alternation of generations.”
Just as his eyes had warmed when he talked about Mother, so they did when he explained the grave flowers.
“One generation grows underground for a century.
The next grows above.”
Underground grave flowers.
I’d never considered such a thing.
I tried to think.
Immortalities … experiments … Mother. Every time I pried further into Inessa’s death, I found shocking truths, and each revelation left me more disoriented than the one before. I felt wounded, deep inside, where you couldn’t see, only feel. I didn’t understand who was to blame for the wounding. Not Mother, who’d tried to protect us. Not Father, who didn’t know half the things I did now. Not Inessa, who’d lost her life trying to … what?
“I need air,”
I said abruptly.
“And time to think.”
I suspected all the time in the world wouldn’t make things clearer or easier.
The kitchen windows overlooked a small courtyard centered in the cell.
I stepped out and found myself in a grave flower garden.
Several fancy bathtubs with elaborate feet were used as flower beds. Some of the tubs were copper, and others were porcelain. One of the porcelain tubs was hand-painted with delicate pink and blue blossoms. The feet were different on each bathtub. Some had pointed clawed paws and others were human. The farthest one even had two feet at each corner, for a total of eight.
All the grave flowers were quite young, I noticed.
In fact, they must have only recently been planted because most were mere seedlings, similar in height and width to the ones growing in the pots in the kitchen.
Tiny starvelings budded in one tub, their thorns no longer than my pinkie nail.
Next to them, lost souls were so juvenile that their petals were still the color of blush, and they didn’t have the ability to turn red or black. The largest grave flowers were enmities. They, at least, were big enough to have their budded cups. And, I noticed, they were filled with liquid. Alifair watched me from the kitchen door. His mournful hum drifted from his lips.
“Hello, then,”
I whispered to the grave flowers, trying to find comfort in them lest I crumble away beneath the weight of everything.
I spoke louder to Alifair.
“I’ve never seen enmities with liquid in their cups.
The other grave flowers are always thirsty, so they drink it.”
“Ah, ah.”
Alifair joined me in the garden, fingers still combing through his beard.
“I’ve heard the royal grave flower garden is quite … chaotic.”
It was true, but the word rubbed me wrong.
Chaotic sounded meaningless, as though there was no thought or purpose to our garden.
Certainly, it was a raucous mess, but for its disorder, it was a bastion of formlessness, and anything might rise from that.
“Did you know there’s a story in Fely lore about enmities?”
Alifair asked.
“Everyone thinks they are called that because when you learn the secrets someone is keeping from you, you hate them.
Friends turn to foes, and animosity grows.
But our stories say that they weren’t originally enmities.
They were amities, which means ‘friendship.’”
“Friendship?”
I asked dubiously, thinking of both Aeric and Yorick.
“After learning secrets a friend has kept from you?”
“Indeed,”
Alifair said.
Finally, he started curling the ends of his beard again, returning its dapperness.
“The thought is that true friendship is formed when you fully know someone and love them still.”
The thought was absurd.
Every family secret I learned pushed me further away from them.
Now there was so much distance between us, I didn’t even recognize or trust my own experiences of Mother, Inessa, and Father.
I thought briefly of Aeric, about the secrets I had from him and the ones he had from me. We’d be free of our deceptions only when one of us was dead.
“Once, long ago, the grave flowers were created for good purposes that were corrupted over time.
But now it’s impossible to be truly at peace with them.”
“Impossible?”
I echoed.
“But you live with them here.”
“I’m only able to because they are so young,”
Alifair said.
There was no hesitation in his voice.
“If I let them grow too much, they’ll slaughter me and take over the isolation cell because it’s so small.
The royal garden in Radix is big enough to let them grow to their natural size and thrive on their own.”
“And you …”
“Kill them before they are too big.”
I saw his teeth again, but it wasn’t in a smile.
It was in some weird flinch of the mouth.
“And then regrow them.
I’ve learned much about them that way, though.
I harvest their nectar and give some to the other monastictes to sell to the Oscura.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t be allowed to stay. Most of the monastictes don’t know I’m here, but the ones who do demand compensation for their discretion.”
“Oh,”
I said.
I stared at the grave flowers.
They were so small, so unlike themselves in this vulnerable, young state.
“There isn’t another way?”
I couldn’t stop the shudder passing over me as I stood among grave flowers that would never truly become themselves.
“No,”
Alifair said with finality.
“Might I add, Princess Inessa did not share your sensitivities in her letters.”
There it was.
My weakness setting me apart from my family.
But in this instance, I did not care.
I made myself refocus.
“You said Inessa signed her letters in my name,”
I said.
“Do you know why?”
“Agathine gave me two responses, one for each daughter.”
He held out both hands.
“If you wrote to me, I was instructed to tell you whatever you asked.”
He lifted his right fingers.
“If Princess Inessa wrote to me, I was not to tell her anything.”
He closed his left fingers.
“You see, Agathine worried about her.
She thought once Princess Inessa was queen, she would use knowledge of the grave flowers to strengthen her rule, no matter how cruel.
She thought Princess Inessa was like King Sinet.”
“Soulless?” I asked.
“No, no,”
Alifair said.
He clasped both hands together, reconciling them.
“She never described them as soulless.
She described them as people born with their hearts broken into two pieces.
Agathine wished she knew a way to bring the two parts together but said she never found one.”
From within the kitchen, the grate screeched, startling Alifair and me, followed by footsteps heading toward us.
Aeric appeared in the kitchen doorway to the garden like a vision.
I started at the sight of him, my mind not prepared yet to see him.
Acusan fashions were already miniscule, but he always made them more so, even in a monasterium.
His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, and his collar was undone. I stiffened. What might he think of Alifair, and how might I justify my appearance here?
“Stop, stop! Who are you?”
Alifair cried.
His voice, unused to being raised so high, cracked.
“It’s Prince Aeric, the reigning monarch,”
I said, hastening to explain so Alifair might show proper deference and buy myself time to plan my next lies.
It worked.
Alifair’s lips parted in shock, creating an opening in his beard.
He bowed, deeply, and when he straightened, fear swam through his eyes.
“Forgive me, Your Highness,”
he said.
“I’ve been in holy isolation for more than half my life.
I did not recognize you because you’re grown.”
“Think nothing of it,”
Aeric said.
He addressed me, voice full of charm yet underscored with suspicion.
I tried to regard him calmly.
“I inquired as to where you were, and no one knew, though a neophyte said you asked about holy isolation.”
“As I reflected upon our forthcoming marriage, I decided it best to seek spiritual counsel,”
I said smoothly.
“Who might be more attune to the divine than a monasticte devoted to such a sacred quest?”
Aeric’s lips twitched.
I knew he didn’t believe my lie, but he didn’t seem upset by it.
In some ways, strangely, he knew me well.
Similarly, I knew him well, our knowledge of each other formed around our secrets.
“How inspiring that you’ve suddenly developed an interest in our faith,”
Aeric said.
“But perhaps there’s more to it?”
He turned to Alifair.
“Who might you be?”
“I—I’m a lowly garden monasticte,”
Alifair sputtered.
“Please, Your Highness, I have a secret garden here and grow grave flowers, but I keep to myself.
I don’t bother the others, and I don’t spread the Fely faith.”
“Be at ease,”
Aeric said.
There was no hesitation in his voice.
“I do not mind that your garden is here.”
Alifair let out a sigh of relief, and he bowed again to Aeric.
The soft keening of grave flowers came from a door across the courtyard, opposite the kitchen.
He looked toward it.
“May I be excused?”
“You may,”
Aeric said.
He hurried off, leaving us.
I regarded my betrothed, worried he was closing in on me, even as I worried that Inessa might have plans of her own.
The longer I was in Acus, the more trapped I became, every relationship backing me into inescapable corners.
I thought of Yorick and how I’d protected him, only to be betrayed.
Alifair might not like isolation, but I suddenly saw its benefits, how isolation could be safety. Perhaps I could bear loneliness. Love hurt much more. All its forms—familial, friendly, romantic—led to pain so great, it stole every active part of you. Once it was done with you, you were nothing but dry bone.
Aeric spoke first.
“Well, I’d pick you a flower, but I think I’d be bitten.”
The starvelings nipped at his fingers.
He stepped out of their reach.
“So there’s a secret grave flower garden in Acus.”
“My mother’s family runs it.
They will do you no harm and merely wish to be left alone,”
I said.
I’d led Aeric here—just as Mother had protected her family, I would as well.
“Please, you won’t tell anyone of it, will you?”
Aeric paused.
I waited, frayed and fretful.
“I see no reason why I should,” he said.
I hid a sigh of relief.
“Thank you,”
I said, speaking more sincerely to him than I ever had before.
“Did you … enjoy your admittance?”
“Of course.
I deeply enjoy recounting my personal failings,”
Aeric responded dryly.
His hand was at his neck, and he tucked his pendant beneath his shirt.
I watched it disappear, remembering how its chain had felt in my fingers as I pulled him close to me.
“You don’t wear one.”
I blinked, confused, mind still half afire from the recollection.
“Wear what?”
“A pendant for the Family.”
“No, why would I?”
“Most do,”
Aeric said with a shrug.
“At least in Acus.”
“Radixans do too, though mostly for style,”
I said.
“I suppose I don’t see the meaning in wearing one, so I don’t.
Why do you wear yours?”
“It’s an inheritance from my father.
One of his personal items,”
Aeric said.
“I use it to pray.”
“Pray?”
I asked.
Prayer as a practice was bizarre to me, even as the kingdoms were full of monasteriums and statues for the Family.
I could understand offerings, even if I wouldn’t bother to provide any myself.
Offerings were transactional and physical.
You left an object in hopes of getting help in return.
It was a trade, essentially—a business transaction.
Prayer was much more intimate, implying conversation, which implied someone heard what you said and might respond. I couldn’t imagine anything more terrifying, and I figured if I never prayed, I’d never have to fear messages from the beyond.
“Whatever do you pray for?”
“I pray for you.”
If he meant to shock me, he had.
I didn’t know what to say to such a thing.
No one had ever said they prayed for me before. “Oh?”
The word faltered on my lips.
“What it is that you pray about me?”
“For your downfall.”
Fear closed an icy fist around my heart.
“What?” I gasped.
“I’m jesting, Princess.”
I daggered him with a stare.
He leaned against the courtyard’s stone wall, arms loosely crossed, as though he hadn’t a worry in the world.
For someone speaking on sacred matters, he was ridiculously brash.
“Do not fret.
I ask for your peace and happiness.”
I thought about him speaking my name and offering it up for blessings.
I almost wished to tell him to stop, to leave me from his prayers.
If the Family heard him, I did not wish for them to take note of me, and and even if they didn’t, I should not wish to be in Aeric’s mind’s eye or his heart’s prayer.
Such places allowed for examination. Yet I couldn’t quite manage to say so, and something selfish and forbidden in me longed to be safeguarded by him, even in this way. I stared down at the dirt.
“If the gods are real, surely they hate me.”
I hadn’t intended to say something so raw and my words rang with confliction.
I didn’t dare lift my head.
“Then I will stand between you and them in this life and the next.”
Aeric’s voice was unexpectedly as ragged as mine.
I lifted my chin.
He’d straightened and his eyes blazed.
For a moment, I lingered in his promise. But bleakness swept in. He would not offer such a thing if he knew who I truly was.
Taking a breath, I turned away, pretending to be distracted by the grave flowers.
I stepped over to the enmities and knelt.
“What type of grave flowers are those?”
Aeric asked, smoothly switching topics.
“Enmities.”
I pushed aside thoughts of prayer and stared into their filled basins.
Thick silvery-black liquid shimmered in the two cups.
No wonder the other grave flowers enjoyed drinking it.
It beckoned me. Sparkling metallic flecks drifted through the nectar, making them glimmer.
“The lore is that two people drink from the cups at once and learn secrets the other wishes to hide from them.
They are the more discreet grave flower.
Mad minds will have you proclaiming your sins for all to hear.”
I described my grave flowers to him, telling myself I wished to scare him and ignoring the fact I also wished for him to be impressed by my beloved grave flowers.
Aeric’s eyes narrowed.
He ambled over and knelt next to me.
Gently, he touched the petals forming the cup.
“What’s your favorite grave flower?”
he asked.
He’d been so focused on the enmities that I wasn’t prepared for the question.
“Oh, I could never choose,”
I said, thinking about our garden back home.
I’d seen different grave flower garden variations—Inessa’s starvelings, the stall at the Oscura, the newly planted beds at the Acusan palace, and now this secret conclave—but none could replace the grave flowers who’d raised me and known me since birth.
“I love them all.
They probably don’t love me back, but I wouldn’t change it.
In fact, it means more to me that they don’t.
They belong to no one. Their wants and intents are theirs alone, unshaped by circumstances or the wills of others. It’s a rare thing in this life. An impossible thing, even. But it becomes transferrable, somehow. When I’m in the garden, I’m one of them, and I’m free too, just so long as I’m there.”
Aeric nodded, quiet and contemplative.
The enmities stretched their basins to us, wishing we’d drink.
The liquid dripped over the edges and rolled down to the stems in beads.
My mind clouded, and my limbs became heavy and slow. By contrast, my vision seemed to sharpen, my eyes suddenly sensitive to the way light reflected from the pools. My tongue went dry yet tingled. The enmities were drawing me in, making it so all I wished to do was take a sip.
“Persistent, aren’t they?”
Aeric asked, as they began to gently whine, desperate for us to partake.
His own attention was fixed on them as though he, too, was under their sway.
“Shall we try them, then?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Did he not understand? Had he not heard what I’d said about the enmities’ powers, about what they did? Didn’t he have secrets to hide? I tried to contain my dismay over my precarious position.
If I refused, I would show my hand in a way I never had before.
My refusal would be a confession.
Perhaps that was why he offered to drink. He was confident I would decline, which would confirm my guilt—all the while, he’d appear innocent. Frustration gripped me. Why hadn’t I thought to suggest it first? I tried to think of how best to respond.
“We are betrothed, yes, but we haven’t known each other long.
I don’t wish to have my mind bared.
If you’ll understand … I carry many hurts.
I wish to maintain my pride and keep them private.”
“I can understand,”
Aeric said, but I knew I hadn’t won.
His tone was too flippant, too smooth.
“However, if I’m correct, the enmities don’t share your private hurts.
They share only a secret you are keeping from the person you drink with.
Anything they reveal will relate to us alone. Unless …”
A coy smile spread across his lips.
I waited, dread in my stomach.
“Unless your thoughts for me are too unholy?”
My face didn’t simply blush pink.
It turned red, my cheeks burning with embarrassment.
“Too unholy?”
I sputtered.
“You overestimate your appeal.”
I was backing myself further into a corner.
Frantically, I glanced around the garden as though I might find help lurking behind one of the bathtubs.
Nothing but the young grave flowers surrounded me.
They bobbed in the slight breeze, oblivious to my distress. A thought struck me. I knew what I might do to avoid suspicion—and learn the truth of Aeric’s plans. Discreetly, I touched my thumb to my poison ring. If the stinger wasn’t compressed against a firm surface, it wouldn’t deploy its poison. It would be perfect for slashing.
If we did indeed drink, I could slash his basin with a flick of my ring while his head was slanted back to sip from the basin.
The liquid would drain and prevent him from imbibing, protecting my secrets from him while I still drank and learned his.
If I moved quickly and lightly, he’d never see my tampering.
He’d think his basin malfunctioned in some way.
“But now that I reflect upon it, yes,”
I said.
“I think we should.
We are about to become husband and wife.
Let’s begin our union with honesty.”
I smiled back at Aeric, expecting him to waver.
“I couldn’t agree more,”
he said.
“Tell me how to do it.”
By the Family, Aeric mystified me.
I tilted my head, wondering if he didn’t understand the significance of our plan.
He was either the most reckless and idiotic monarch to exist or the most cunning and devious one.
“I’ve never done it before,”
I said.
“but I know we drink at the same time.”
I waited to see if he’d decline or try to make an excuse for why he couldn’t drink.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t resist in the least.
Instead, he asked.
“Do we pick them?”
“By the Daughter, no.
We drink from them as they are.”
This I somehow knew on an intuitive level.
The grave flowers had taught me their own ways.
“I imagine they’ll bring the basins to our lips.”
We sank to our knees, side by side.
I realized, with a start, that we were in a marrying posture, the sort taken by the bride and groom during the wedding ceremony.
Only, we were not set to wed each other.
In this moment, we were set to extract the other’s secrets to use as we might. Nerves made my hand shaky. Within the shroud of my skirt, I flicked open the crest of my poison ring. I needed to focus. If I made one mistake and Aeric drank, everything would be ruined. He would know the plot. I would be arrested, tried, marched to the block, and executed for all to see. Yet, inexplicably, I dared one quick glance at my betrothed. At the last moment, he returned my gaze.
He winked.
I smirked back despite the dire circumstances.
Then we both turned to the enmities.
A tart scent struck my nose.
The basin tipped toward me, gently and slowly, as though careful not to spill a single drop.
Quickly, deftly, with speed and accuracy long honed from my years dancing, my finger flashed against the branch holding Aeric’s basin.
I stabbed the ring through the petals, its needle slicing easily into the delicate tissue. Aeric, with his head tipped back to drink, couldn’t see. I opened my lips, ready to imbibe. Nothing touched them. I pulled my head back. Liquid drained from my basin, spiraling out from a gash in the bottom. Quickly, I flicked the stem. One tiny drop of nectar sprang up. It landed on my lips, a single bead. I licked it.
It was enough.
Immediately, my mind deadened.
I saw inside Aeric’s mind as though it were a drawer I’d pulled open.
Fear unspooled from it—cold, despairing, heavy.
It wrapped around me until it settled in my chest, a ball of icy hopelessness. I passed through a collection of memories too fast to understand them, each belonging to Aeric. There was a flash of domed bells, the loud snap of a strap, wind whistling through narrow windows. I was within him, seeing with his eyes, thinking with his mind, feeling with his heart. But these memories were private. They didn’t pertain to me, so I was whisked along to the ones that did.
Everything slowed.
His hands moved in front of me.
I, inside his perspective, stood in front of three costumes hanging from a rod backstage.
The costumes had names embroidered across them. One of a prince, which bore the name Prince Lambert. One of a queen, which bore the name Mother. And one of a princess.
A red dress.
Inessa’s dress, the one that haunted me.
It bore my name. Madalina.
Aeric’s hand moved.
It took down the queen’s costume.
Slowly, he folded it up and brought it to his lips.
“I meant to trap you with Lambert, Mother,”
he whispered.
“Yet you left before I could.
Forgive me if I got it wrong.”
He set it aside.
Then he picked up a cue script.
But this one was different than the other script I’d seen.
Across the top was a title. A King Betrayed.
“I shall avenge you, Father,”
he said, hands so tight on the script that the blood drained from his knuckles.
“I’ll reveal your murder before the entire court and secure the throne.”
The setting shifted.
I was elsewhere inside Aeric’s memories, a stony place up high and outdoors.
The palace roof, I realized and—and—there was a figure in the corner.
Half hidden behind a guardian. A cloak was pulled over its face. Angry words poured from its lips, hissing.
“Treason surrounds you.
Your uncle murdered your father in the memory garden and plans to kill you.
You must slay him before the wedding.
At your play, if you wish. Do as I say, exactly as I say, lest you succumb to fate.”
“Who are you?”
Aeric spoke in the memory.
“A spirit, sent by your father.
I speak with his words.
If you follow not my instructions, calamity shall beset you.
The throne shall be stolen, and your father shall not rest.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t act so rashly.”
I could feel Aeric’s emotions.
He was conflicted, torn apart, suspicious.
“Perhaps I should wait while I investigate things for myself and lay a trap from which my enemies cannot escape.
Such things take time.”
“No!”
the figure screeched.
“If you wait until after the wedding, you will lose the throne forever.
Do as I say! Your father the king orders it of you.”
“I know not of your credibility.”
Aeric’s voice was raw and broken.
“I don’t know if you’re fiend or friend or if you truly were sent by my father.
But if you were, tell him this: I’ve planned a play, and by the end of it, I shall avenge him.
If my uncle proves himself as his killer, I shall run him through.”
Stars bounced across my vision.
They grew brighter, obscuring the vision with white light.
I thought I might be released, that the effects of the enmities were dwindling.
But there was one last secret.
It whispered in my ears as much as I saw it written out in my thoughts:
I fear I love Madalina.
x
I thought I could come back to my life.
But everything is changed.
Soldiers came to the shore.
Not guards.
Soldiers, sent from the palace by the advisor who is acting as regent until King Llyr’s son is of age to rule.
They ransacked our home and killed many.
All looking for me and this book.
We Felys know the rocks well, though, just like we know our grave flowers.
I hid away until they left.
My hands ached to fight, and my heart broke because I could not.
After, I learned the truth that severed my life into before and after. Florin had been murdered. My sister, my alter, my twin who wasn’t my twin, is gone.
We mourned her and the rest of our dead, burying them among the rocks as we always do and releasing a floating garden of grave flowers to the sea.
My soul left with the floating garden.
I know I will never have true harbor ever again.
Then we had a council with the elders.
Some wished to destroy this book.
Father and Mother, though, were adamant it needed to be protected.
They offered me up as its guardian.
Privately, that night, I heard them crying and saying there must be some meaning behind Florin’s death and what I endured at King Llyr’s hands. I worry there isn’t, but I could never tell them as much.
Now I travel to Acus in hopes of sneaking into the kingdom and finding a way to live there and protect the book in secrecy.
Before I left, Father told me he will set a system in place if I find a way to live in Acus.
The Tachibana family will become the guardians of the book to protect our people.
Once I age and die, another will be sent in my place, one raised specially to do so. And after that, another.
The stories coming from the palace are humorous.
Those in the palace didn’t fully understand what occurred.
There are cries to burn all portraits and ban their creation.
However, little brings me joy, especially as I sit in the middle of nowhere, days still from Acus. I’m hungry, cold, and tired. I finger my pendants but cannot bring myself to say any prayers. There is one pendant I do not touch. It’s a small portrait of King Llyr set within a gold casing. Queen Nerisa gave it to me, a small defiance of her own. I realize I can bring him back anytime and make him suffer as his body is destroyed. Still, I have no desire.
Whether I want this or not does not matter.
I am a Fely.
Our piety is familial.
I will do my duty to my family and my people.
And I will miss the sound of the waves until the day I die.