Page 28 of Grave Flowers

Father tapped my shoulder.

He cocked his head to the discarded orb and mask on the carpet.

“Mad minds?”

Wordlessly, I nodded. “I see …”

He paused.

“Does the boy know your part?”

“No, he has never even suspected it,” I lied.

“Very good.”

He reached for his goblet of wine and cautiously sniffed.

Then he held it up to peer at it, as though it was more interesting than the drama unfolding on the stage and his ability to drink it was of the utmost importance.

Satisfied it didn’t seem to bear any poison, he took a sip.

He sat back as though to enjoy the proceedings, then began fiddling with the goblet, testing the tightness of the gemstone settings.

My attention returned to the stage, along with that of the rest of the audience.

Prince Lambert’s and Aeric’s swords tangled.

Prince Lambert’s teeth bared around his swollen lips, and he pushed back Aeric’s advance, slashing his sword down.

I leaped to my feet and gripped the edge of the royal box, the velvet balustrade soft beneath my clawing fingers. Prince Lambert’s blade pierced the air, stabbing toward Aeric’s chest.

His motions were erratic and sloppy, but skilled.

His blade connected with Aeric’s forearm.

Blood bloomed across his sleeve.

It wasn’t fatal, but it was his sword hand.

“I’ll take everything from you too, boy,”

Prince Lambert sneered.

“I took your mother’s heart.

I took your father’s life.

Now I’ll take your throne and your bride.”

Forcefully, Aeric parried Prince Lambert’s attack, forcing his uncle’s sword up and away.

For one moment, his chest was exposed.

Aeric’s sword flashed like a sunray.

Then it disappeared into Prince Lambert’s chest. Prince Lambert’s eyes widened, the whites showing in the grotesquely swollen folds of skin. He stumbled back. With two hands, he gripped the sword handle. He staggered, stumbled, fell. The sword protruded from his chest, a silver line pointing up to the ceiling.

For a moment, everything was silent.

Faces bore round holes of open-mouthed shock and wide-eyed horror.

Gasps and screams rang out seconds later as the court recovered their voices.

Heads bent together, and elbows nudged, and whispers slithered about beneath it all.

Then Horatio cried out.

“Long live the king!”

At that, the court cheered as though they’d watched the most astounding play of their lives.

In a way, they had.

They’d come for a play.

They were leaving with their true king.

The treasurer, the head monasticte, and a few nobles slipped up the aisles and out the doors—supporters of Prince Lambert.

They would have to be tracked down and either brought under Aeric’s command or imprisoned.

There weren’t as many as I’d thought.

Perhaps Prince Lambert’s strength had been Queen Gertrude; without her, he had been an illusion, a theater set, a prop made of paper. Father rose as well. Planting his hands on the rail, he scanned the theater. His eyes darted about. I knew he was deciding what was best. Flee or finagle.

Aeric scanned the theater, eyes so bright that it looked as though he had a fever.

Then he bellowed.

“Leave, everyone.”

Thrill and excitement crackled through the theater as though this, too, were part of a play, and the court loved being in it. “Now.”

He pointed at Father and me.

“You two, come.

There are guards outside waiting if you try to run.”

Terror choked me.

Did Aeric mean to kill us, just as he had Prince Lambert? Father seemed to think so.

His hands rifled through his pockets, seeking just the right weapon as the court hurried for the doors, most still clutching their wine goblets.

Musicians, actors, and theater smiths emerged from backstage and the orchestral section like rabbits from hovels. The head general wavered, along with the guards. “Go!”

Aeric commanded them.

Finally, the theater doors slammed shut for good, leaving the theater empty aside from Aeric, Father, me, and Prince Lambert’s corpse.

I realized Aeric had relieved me of my duty.

Now that our ally was dead and there was no one to give us Montario coin, I had no impetus to poison Aeric tonight.

The vial within my bodice was suddenly unnecessary. The thought dizzied me. Everything had shifted—but would it matter? Aeric knew I’d planned to kill him. Such things couldn’t be forgiven, could they? I ascended the stage with Father, and we stood side by side, the remainder of House Sinet facing the remainder of House Capelian.

My betrothed cursed under his breath.

He yanked his sword from Prince Lambert’s chest.

Father and I waited.

“A king who sends his children to kill for him.”

Aeric breathed heavily, speaking to Father.

Blood dripped from his arm, and the sword trembled in his hand.

“You allied with my mother and uncle and sent your daughters to assassinate me.

I shall dispatch you as I did my uncle, and your reign shall end.”

“We’ll see about that, boy,”

Father said.

“This is your first taste of blood, but I’ve been drinking it nearly all my life.

Many have tried to end me and failed.”

Aeric’s face was pale, and he staggered in place.

He was going to faint.

Had he been wounded more deeply than I realized? With a clatter, he collapsed, the sword skittering from his hand.

“Father!”

I cried. “Stop.”

Father’s watery eyes settled on me.

His face emptied of emotion.

“Did you tell him everything? Did you listen to his lies of love and give in to your weakness?”

A dagger appeared in Father’s hand.

“I knew not to send you.

Out of my way—I’ll do what you could not and kill him.

We’ll say Prince Lambert wounded him mortally where none could see and then you and I will escape home.”

He advanced.

Aeric’s sword was close.

I snatched it up and raised it, keeping Father back.

“Stop!”

I ordered him.

He did, but there was no true stopping him.

He impatiently shifted his weight back and forth, eyes running the length of the sword I held.

“I’ve done my duty to my kingdom while you never have, Father.

You’ve always put your own needs before the crown and used me for your benefit.”

With one hand, I fished the vial of poison from my bodice.

I threw it onto the stage.

It shattered, dusting the ground with smashed glass.

Green liquid spilled down through the floorboards.

“Know this now: I am a Radixan first and a Sinet second.

If you’d been a better king, you’d have been the same.”

“Suddenly you’re strong enough to betray me,”

he said.

“I always thought it might be Inessa, not you, but you prove your lineage.

Betrayal.

It’s what we do, even against ourselves.”

He toyed with his knife.

“And what is the plan now, Daughter? What do you wish to do? How odd …”

He paused, still for only a second.

A dull smile passed his lips.

“I had this conversation with my father.

The old man was so frightened.” I steadied myself.

If this scene replayed history for Father, it wasn’t identical.

Father was the one at the mercy of his child, yet I was the one afraid. Father held out his hand. “Listen to me, Madalina. Give me the sword. You are too weak to—”

A blow struck my spine.

It was so hard and relentless, I thought I might’ve been stabbed myself.

From the side, Aeric gasped in shock.

I reeled forward, sword still aloft.

Another blow struck my back. The pain took the shape of a hand, flat against me, shoving me with great strength. Violently, it propelled the sword and my body forward, as though we were one instrument—right into Father.

The sword bypassed his extended hand and entered his chest with no resistance, as though it had long sought him.

He stumbled away, eyes fluttering in shock.

I released the hilt.

It clattered to the ground, not far enough in Father’s chest to remain. Freed of the blade, he staggered and sank against the prop bed. I turned, thinking an attacker was behind me.

No one was there.

Who had struck me?

“Primeval pestilence!”

Father cursed.

Blood leaked through his fingers.

“It’s deep.”

“But not deep enough.”

A low voice spoke in my ear.

Whoever had been behind me wrapped an arm around my waist and grabbed my wrist with their other hand.

The hands wore gloves.

Black leather gloves trimmed in lace.

“Yorick?”

I gasped, twisting in his embrace.

He held a dagger, and he forced my fingers closed around it, dragging me to Father’s side.

“What are you doing? Release me!”

Yorick lifted my hand and thrust it forward.

The dagger bit into the same place the sword had: Father’s chest.

This time, though, it rammed deeper, the blade sliding beyond skin and muscle to the organs behind them.

Father sank back, staring at me in pain and bewilderment. I tried to jerk free, but Yorick held me tight.

“Say what I tell you to say,”

he hissed in my ear.

“Speak to your father.

Tell him Yorick commands the blade that kills him.

Speak the name Rosalinda.”

“It’s Yorick!”

I said.

“He says to tell you a name.

Rosalinda.”

“Rosalinda …”

Father repeated.

His brow puckered in confusion.

“The whore?”

“You spineless sovereign of slop!”

Yorick spat, but Father couldn’t hear him.

The jester yanked me around to face him and gripped my shoulders.

Rage excavated his face, turning him inside out.

“King Sinet is a blight upon existence, and if I could, I’d drain every drop of his blood from my veins.”

“Every drop of his blood from your veins … Yorick, I don’t understand!”

“That Primeval pig you call Father is mine as well.

I was his bastard, born to my mother after he used her, over and over.

And he calls her a whore.

If there ever was a whore, it was him!”

“You’re my … brother?”

I stared into Yorick’s face, aghast and seeing it anew.

The same hand had drawn Father’s features, though Yorick’s were much more delicate, tempered by the other half of his parentage, Rosalinda.

“I am your brother but in no way that matters.

My mother always hoped King Sinet might help us.

Royal bastards are often given titles, lands, provisions, even if they are never claimed.

But he gave us nothing, and she died in the same room he used to visit her. So I tried to gain my way into his service, but he had too many precautions in place. I never reported to him directly. Ask your father the name of his last Acusan spy.”

“Father, who was your Acusan spy?” I gasped.

“Yorick.”

Father said the name simply, vaguely, as though it were of no consequence to him.

“But I had him killed.”

“It’s true,”

Yorick said.

His hold on me tightened in rage, causing me to cry out.

“After Princess Inessa died, your father had me murdered because he no longer trusted me.

How silly of me.

He sent me a bottle of wine, and I assumed it meant I was doing well in my service.

I drank at a court party, longing to pass the time, cursing his name as I did. It was the same poison you gave the Radixan. I died instantly but with no visible symptoms. I fell into a fountain, and in the party’s chaos, no one noticed till morning. I woke a ghost, unable to leave the palace.”

He took a long, slow breath, one full of pain.

“But I’ve done it.

King Sinet shall shortly die.

My mother has been avenged.

I care not for anything beyond that.”

“And what of me, Yorick?”

I whispered, twisting in his grasp.

“I thought you were my friend, my very first one.

And if what you say is true, we are more than friends.

We are family, brother and sister.”

Only that quelled the bite of his rage.

There was a softening to his face, and I saw a flicker of the old Yorick, buried within his anguish.

“We are star-crossed, Princess.

Not as lovers, but as blood.

I did what I had to do.

And I wish you happiness … though I know you’re ensnared by the beyond.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can touch you.”

He shrugged.

“I can’t touch or interact with any other living person unless they’re also dead.

I needed your fingers to kill our father.”

He released me and stepped back.

His hand lifted, and I flinched, but all he did was carefully wipe Father’s blood from my face.

“For what it’s worth, conspiring with you was the loveliest time of my life.

Yet don’t be too proud about it.

I haven’t had a very lovely life.”

He vanished, leaving nothing but emptiness in his place.

“It was Yorick?”

Aeric had regained consciousness.

He spoke from the floor, his voice weak.

“The jester?”

“Yes,”

I said.

“Aeric, I—”

I wasn’t certain what I meant to say to him, but I never finished.

He pulled at his sleeve, rolling it up.

The cut festered, reddish foam bubbling around it.

“By the Family, my uncle poisoned his sword,”

Aeric muttered.

He cast a frantic gaze at me.

His teeth chattered.

“Madalina, I would’ve liked to …”

The rest of the sentence turned to senseless mumbling.

He sprawled across the floorboards, his limbs lifeless and his eyelids flushing blue.

Aeric was dying.