Page 25 of Grave Flowers

I was falling.

Hands caught me, strong and certain.

Aeric.

I was back in my own mind, held around the waist. He steadied me, then pulled his hands away as quickly as he could.

I blinked.

As our eyes met, he shuffled anxiously in place, as though afraid he’d made a terrible mistake.

There was a dagger in his hand.

Terrified, I raised my hands to protect myself, but all he did was hide it away within his pocket, the movement riddled with frustration.

“So,”

he said in the stoniest voice I’d ever heard him use.

“what did you see?”

Bewildered, I looked down at the enmity I’d attempted to drink from, trying to understand what had happened.

Both enmities drooped.

Nectar hemorrhaged from their stalks.

Weak and hurt, they tucked their emptied basins beneath their leaves.

So there was a reason Aeric had suddenly held a dagger in his hand.

“You—you slashed my enmity,” I said.

“I think you did the same for mine,”

he returned.

He ran his hand through his hair.

The motion was desperate and despairing.

“But it seems you still managed a few drops.”

“Only one,”

I said, considering what to reveal and what to hide.

Perhaps the best thing for now was to simply bely his fears that I’d learned too much.

Then I could cull through what I’d learned and decide the best course of action.

“It was hardly anything.”

I should probably say it was something inconsequential, but I couldn’t help torturing him a bit.

“I must confess, I was enchanted.”

“Enchanted?”

“You fear you love me.”

Aeric, who always had a ready answer for everything, was silent.

He dropped his head for a long moment, so all I saw was his tousled hair.

When he lifted it, his eyes were full of resignation and mortification.

Still, ever himself, he tried to soldier on.

“What’s a little fear between lovers?”

he asked.

He bit off the ends of his words.

“Keeps things lively, I should think.”

“Perhaps.”

I tried to make use of the moment.

“But why fear loving me? We are to be wed.

I should think you’d fear not loving me, especially since our union was arranged by others.”

“Because I saw what love did to my father.”

Gone was the brazenness.

Aeric spoke directly to me, his voice suddenly tinged in pain.

“His love for my mother tormented him.

It made him question everything, whether he’d done the right thing or whether he hadn’t done enough in the whole Montario business.

The questions were like a room, frozen in time, one he reentered every night and sat inside.

When he died, part of me was relieved. I hoped, desperately, that he could finally leave the room. That, when he arrived where he was going in the afterlife, he found the forgiveness he sought from my mother.”

I listened, half infuriated, half hurting for my betrothed.

He spoke the truth—of that I was certain.

But I also knew it wasn’t the full truth.

Aeric, I suspected, was masterfully using his genuine emotions as a trick to distract me.

“Marriage is a transaction for ones such as ourselves,”

I said, unable to completely remain unsympathetic.

“But love is not.

Its presence or its absence complicates all.

I fear love too.

I fear its strength and how it cannot be restrained once given.”

I paused, hoping I’d sufficiently lowered his defenses.

“But if that was your secret from me, I do wonder why you slashed my enmity.”

Aeric’s face darkened, and one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile, as though acknowledging that I hadn’t fallen for his wiles.

“And just as you wonder why, I wonder the same for you.”

“Unholy thoughts about you, of course.”

I smiled back at him.

“Very unholy.”

A raw fire dashed through Aeric’s eyes faster than he could suppress it.

It was the sort of fire that made you wish to pin someone against a wall and press your lips to theirs.

I knew because my own desire rose for the same, despite myself.

I wondered, for a moment, if we just might. I sensed that if I moved one inch, if I took one step toward him, he would come to me and lean me against one of the rock walls.

And I couldn’t allow it.

I tore my gaze from him and then met it once again, struggling to fully vanquish my rampant desires.

We waited, readying for the other to show their hand, to make a move, to make a mistake that might be exploited.

Then, slowly, an inane humor welled inside me.

My mouth twitched, a real smile replacing the fake one. Aeric blinked and then he grinned too.

I laughed.

He laughed.

“We are a ridiculous pair,”

he said.

He rubbed his neck, glancing at the enmities we’d both slashed to protect ourselves.

“Perhaps one day we will truly know each other.”

I sobered.

I knew such a day would never come.

“We should head back to the palace,”

I said, burying my sadness.

“Tomorrow is the wedding.”

Just as I didn’t let Aeric use a possessive pronoun with me, I didn’t allow myself to use one for the wedding.

It wasn’t truly our wedding or my wedding.

It was only the wedding, something far removed from me. I paused.

“I noticed you had a dagger.”

“This?”

Aeric reached into his pocket and brandished the weapon with a flourish.

“I took your advice on hidden weapons.

You were right.

It was challenging to conceal it with the thin fabric, but one of the sewists finally figured it out.”

“And how do you like it?”

“I like it.

I’m truly unstoppable now.

Though if you ever wish to embrace, let me know, and I shall quickly divest myself of it.”

“Oh, a dagger wouldn’t keep me away,”

I said with a smile.

“I’m a Radixan princess.

If anything, I would find it exciting.

Now, do you mind going ahead? I wish to take my leave of Alifair.”

“Very well.

I’ll wait for you outside.”

I went to the door Alifair had entered.

Cool shadows cloaked me.

My vision was bleached from the sunlight.

I blinked furiously, straining to clear my sight. Afterimages of neonic light hung between me and the room, but, slowly, they dwindled. All I heard was Alifair humming. The jarring tune echoed off the plaster walls and filled my ears.

I gasped.

Grave flowers in small porcelain pots were strung through with large threaded needles.

Their nectar dripped along the threads into long basins that funneled into jars.

The young grave flowers struggled and writhed, and the more they did, the more nectar they released.

Alifair stood in the middle, pausing as he threaded a needle. Whimpering filled the cell.

“No, no,”

Alifair said.

The ends of his beard bobbed as he fervently spoke.

“I did not wish for you to see this.

Come, let us speak in the garden.”

I allowed him to lead me back to the main garden.

The disturbing image followed me.

Helplessly, I wished to demand the grave flowers be left alone, but it was not within my power.

I took a weak breath, shook off my unsettlement, and faced Alifair. He regarded me solemnly but resolutely, no part of him open for critique.

“I’m returning to the palace, but I have a request,”

I said.

“May I have the ancestral book? Please, I need to see what Inessa was reading and figure out why.”

“It cannot leave here,”

Alifair said.

He loomed before me, solemness gone, only the resolution remaining.

“My whole life has been dedicated to guarding it, as have the lives of those who came before me.

I will transcribe portions for you as I did for your sister and then send the copies to you.”

“I worry there isn’t enough time,”

I said.

“It’s most important.”

Alifair’s eyes narrowed, and his gaze became flinty.

He cocked his head one way and then the other, as though sniffing for blood.

His whole mission was protecting the book, and he’d already been tricked into giving excerpts to the wrong sister.

He wouldn’t let me take it. I was Fely, yes, but I was also a Sinet monarch asking to take the only copy. I was one of the very people he protected the book from.

“I already regret something I sent your sister.”

He spoke as though compelled.

“What was it?”

“A locket with a portrait of the Radixan king who wrote the book.”

“A portrait?”

I’d never heard of a Sinet with a portrait, especially a monarch.

“Indeed.

I sent it to her because I did not wish to have the means to … hurt him any longer.”

Alifair’s steely gaze melted into distant softness.

He twisted the ends of his beard again, curling them but then tugging, hard.

He winced but didn’t stop.

“The king from long ago? How might one hurt a king who has been dead for so many generations?”

“I reckon you do not know the reason behind the Radixan resistance to portraits.”

“No,”

I said.

“I assumed it was simply superstition masquerading as tradition.

Or that the Radixan royals weren’t attractive enough to warrant it.”

“Time stole the reason.”

His breath was heavy between words, and I somehow heard it as the minor tune as well, as though all of him were tuned to the sad melody.

“It was forgotten by the royals but remembered by us Felys.

If someone dies an improper death and ends up in Bide, you can bury their portrait with the immortalities to bring them back.

Not simply as a shade or specter, but their soul in the way it was when they were alive.

However, to have your soul here after your corpse has long decayed is tortuous. It’s like seeing a creature that has been flayed off their skin and is desperately searching for it. The soul begs to be killed again so they might be sent back to Bide.”

“You’ve done it,”

I said slowly.

“You’ve brought the king back.”

“More than once.”

Over and over, he kept pulling at his beard.

I almost wished to tell him to stop.

“I try to accept it, but this life rubs against me, and I think about home.

My suffering is lonely, and a story known only by me—and him.

He’s the reason I must safeguard the book, so I brought him back by burying his portrait with the immortalities.

At first it was to hurt him. But sometimes it was out of loneliness. Weakness. The inability to remain in my own thoughts.”

His eyes grew misty.

“So, when your sister asked for the book, I said no but decided to send her the locket because I don’t trust myself with it.”

He glanced at the enmity I’d wounded.

It was already wilted and lying limply on the dirt.

Every now and then, it shook as though weeping.

“But go forth, I’ll work on transcribing portions of the book for you.”

“Thank you,”

I said.

“If I may, I’ll return.

Not just for the book but because you’re my uncle.

I’d like to know more about you and Mother and your—our—family.”

At that, he nodded and bowed.

I headed out but paused at the kitchen door and looked back.

Alifair knelt next to the hurt enmities.

The ones we’d slashed to protect ourselves. He removed a folding blade from his pocket. He cradled the blossoms and gently whispered to them. He hummed the tune. They stopped writhing, soothed, loved. He hacked both off in one swoop. Suddenly, I smelled citrus, and I remembered Father holding the face of the man he’d strangled on the banquet table. I felt as though my hands were sticky with nectar, but they weren’t. Shame formed a thick river inside me.

I turned away.

I didn’t want to see any more.

Alifair’s melody stayed in my ears.