Page 30 of Grave Flowers

A glint of silver on the floor winked in the corner of my eye.

The dagger Inessa had cast aside after stabbing Father.

It pointed to me like an arrow, its bloodstained blade only inches away.

With every bit of my strength, I strained against the grave flowers and grasped with my hand.

It bound the cord tighter.

Inessa saw what I reached for and jerked hard on the cord, trying to yank me back.

My head buzzed, and blackness passed over my eyes. I tried to scream, but only strangled sounds came from my throat. In one last surge of effort, I stretched just far enough to drag my hand against the blade. Father kept his daggers sharp, and this one was no exception. It glided through my skin, catching on the immortalities growing from my scar. More blackness fell over my vision, thicker this time. With a shriek of rage, Inessa jerked the cord again, but it was too late. The blade bit deep. It sliced off my scar and tore the immortalities’ roots out. Blood poured from the fresh wound.

Immediately, the grave flowers binding my wrists and ankles loosened.

They swirled, the buds with the eyeballs looming close to inspect my hand and then slinking to Inessa.

Back and forth they went, chittering and whispering and muttering.

But there was no denying it.

We were no longer identical.

I was not her portrait, nor was she mine.

No longer could we switch.

Still, Inessa didn’t loosen the cord.

She drew it tighter.

She was going to strangle me, simply to kill me.

A figure appeared to the side of me. I thought I was hallucinating. I saw narrowed, angry eyes. Tattooed tears danced beneath them. It was Yorick. His brow was furrowed as he stepped forward. Inessa looked up and released the cord to lift her hands in defense. It was too late. He gripped her neck and, in one swift motion, snapped it. Inessa’s body collapsed to the ground, a tumble of limp limbs and twisting red dress.

Immediately, her ghost sprang up.

Decay subsumed her once again.

Her nose was gone.

Bones and muscles poked through the crests of her cheeks and her shoulders as though her skin were a garment she wore. With a cry of rage, she lunged at me. I ducked, and she fell forward, crossing into the gray fog. Her hand closed around my wrist, and she dragged me with her toward the abyss, trying to pull me into the beyond. I spun away. It stopped her momentum but wasn’t enough to free me from her grip. I was on one side of the fog, and she was on the other, trapping us in a dance, one no training could free me from.

“Inessa!”

I screamed.

“Let me go.”

She held me tight, the mad despair of the world in her eyes.

Her scar rubbed against the wound where mine had once been.

“I could’ve been different,”

she screamed.

“I could’ve been born you and you me.

You are quiet and scared and soft and weak.

But you’ve become the best of us, bypassing fate to gain a kingdom and a crown of your own.

Father thought Mother’s death broke you, but here you stand, alive, while death comes for me.”

“Please, Inessa,”

I said.

“Release me.”

A final tortured, wordless scream ripped from her mouth.

Her head bowed, and she looked over her shoulder into the gray fog.

She met my gaze once again.

Her lips quivered, and despite the decay masking her face, I saw her simply as Inessa. No matter what, I always would.

“I can’t,”

she said brokenly.

“I hear … music.

It’s pulling on me.

If I go, I won’t go back to Bide.

I’ll go to the light I saw before, and Mads—Mads—I’m scared.”

I told her what she’d told me as a child, when thunderstorms scared me and she’d held me close.

“Don’t be scared, Inessa.

I’m here.”

I dared to put my other hand over hers.

“I know you, all of you, and I love you.

Wherever you go, you will rise.”

Surrender flooded through her.

She didn’t release me, but her grip eased, her fingers growing slack.

Then a slow cunning smile passed over her lips.

A spark lit her face. She took one long breath and then several short ones, in the way one does when girding oneself for battle. Her hand tightened on mine once again. But this time it wasn’t to drag me with her. It was to simply hold hands.

For a few moments, we were that way.

Holding hands, just as we had within Mother.

Only, this time it was because we wished it.

She didn’t say goodbye.

She didn’t say she was sorry.

She didn’t say anything at all.

She simply let go, and the moment that she did, she was gone.

“Inessa!”

I screamed.

My voice echoed through the gray fog, but I knew she wasn’t there any longer.

She was headed somewhere else, somewhere with music and, I hoped, Mother.

At her disappearance, the grave flowers slithered and swam back into the fog, clustering around it as its edges blurred and dwindled.

The rectangle sucked them in, slurping them down.

A figure appeared by my side.

It was Yorick. He cocked an eyebrow at me, his face angled so I saw only the inverted teardrop.

“So, wherever our sister is, there is music.

Do you think there are books as well?”

“I don’t know,”

I said, sinking to the floor.

I stared hopelessly at him.

“I don’t know anything, Yorick.

But thank you for saving me.”

Slowly, Yorick worked off one of his leather gloves.

He took my hand with the lightest touch and bent to kiss the back of it.

He straightened and meticulously replaced the glove and straightened its lace.

“It’s what friends do,” he said.

“Will you stay? Please don’t leave me.”

“I can’t, Princess.”

Despite his response, he knelt next to me, and we sat with my head on his shoulder, watching as the fog and its mouthful of grave flowers grew smaller.

Before it was gone altogether, he gently pulled away from me.

He stood.

I thought he would step through the dwindling door, but he turned, putting his back to the fog.

“Here I go.

Remember me? Every now and then?”

“Every now and then? No, always.

How could I not?”

“Very good point.

I’m unforgettable.”

He smiled impishly, grandly, and took one step backward.

Like Inessa, he was gone, disappearing as the opening did, the final grave flowers swept away.

I staggered to my feet and sank down next to Aeric.

His head tilted to the side, and his pulse was faint in his wrist, each throb drifting further from the one before it.

Death was taking him slowly, inevitably.

He would be gone. Just like all the others. I would be alone, a girl with a crown on her head and a kingdom in her hands but nothing in her heart, a copy of Inessa. I lay across Aeric’s chest. A sob rose in my throat, but I turned it into a scream at the last moment. It surged raggedly from my lips. Most screams released energy and let go of emotion. This one wasn’t that. This scream held all my rage and despair and returned it to me. I wouldn’t let him go. I couldn’t.

Guards and nobles hurried onto the stage around me.

They reached for Aeric but I lifted a hand, holding them back.

As queen regnant, I was the highest-ranking authority present, and they obeyed.

One of the immortalities I’d shorn out of my hand lay nearby, a tattered remnant of itself, its translucent petals wrinkled like worn satin.

I picked it up, crushed the petals, and in a ragged voice I didn’t recognize as my own, I said.

“Left, right, up or down.

Let me use a roundabout so I may in right time be found.”

My blood mixed with the immortalities as they crumpled apart in my fingers.

I closed my eyes, hearing Father’s mantra as he’d tried to help me save Mother, how he’d repeated it over and over.

Someone whispered.

“Madalina.”

It was Aeric.

I lurked in my chambers for the next few days.

No one came to attend my hand, so I wrapped it in a strip of sheeting.

My girls were gone.

Servants entered my chambers only to leave food and then immediately left. Every sound terrified me. I kept thinking guards would appear to arrest me on Aeric’s orders. Even in sleep, I was in a panic, growing alert in my dreams and waking to find myself soaked in sweat and gasping. I needed to flee. I needed to get home—but my chambers had become my den. Somehow, in the darkness with the faucet dripping, I felt like I might forestall what was to come and that if I set foot outside, I’d be detained or perhaps even conflagrated by sunlight.

On the third day, I decided.

I’d take a horse, just as I had before, and I would ride alone to Radix.

It was an arduous journey, but I inadvertently had sustenance.

Unable to eat, I’d stockpiled the loaves of bread the servants had brought me to avoid attention. They were stale, but they’d last, and there were plenty of freshwater creeks running across the countryside as they tumbled toward the ocean.

I dressed quickly, swathing myself in Yorick’s cape and putting on the one Radixan dress that had remained in my wardrobe.

It was the green gown I’d worn when I’d arrived.

I strung the thick bodice tight about myself, feeling its security, its comfort, its snugness.

I wavered. How could I leave my grave flowers here? Once I left, they’d be in the hands of the Acusans. I should set them afire and destroy them. They were still young and weak and wouldn’t be able to fend me off. In fact, the fire would be a good distraction as I fled … if I could bring myself to do it.

The grave flowers lifted their heads as I came.

I tried not to look at them.

For the first time since I’d left Radix, tears filled my eyes.

Hands shaking, I removed a matchbox from Yorick’s cape. I struck a match. Its head burst into flame. I held it out toward the delicate petals of the beauties. The grave flowers became quiet. They had no eyes, yet they seemed to watch me, their blossoms turned quietly to me. Even Inessa’s starvelings fell silent, as though my presence were a spell. The flame ate its way down the match. I needed to protect the grave flowers. I must do it because it was best and because I loved them.

I blew out the match.

Smoke stung my nose.

I couldn’t do it.

When I’d sat on the stage next to Aeric’s body and said the roundabout invocation, I’d seen a flicker of something other than brutality, something luminously beautiful yet as thin and obscured as a sickle moon in the foggy Radixan sky.

I wished I’d never glimpsed it.

The tears in my eyes rolled down my cheeks. Furiously, I dashed them away.

A hand touched my shoulder.

Panicked, I pulled away.

Aeric was there.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

I gathered Yorick’s cloak tightly about myself.

“Merely cold.”

It was preposterous because the day, just like all the other Acusan days, was perfect.

“Hmm.

Last time you said you were cold, you stole a costume and undermined a vital scene in my play.”

“I think I improved it,”

I said.

I wished to keep my face hidden within my cloak so he wouldn’t see the tears on my cheeks, but his familiar voice, full of confidence verging on cockiness, drew me out.

He considered me with the same reluctant fascination I felt.

He was pale, and his arm was wrapped in a bandage, but he was otherwise well. Somehow, we’d defied fate. All the supposed benefits—coronation, marriage—had been bestowed upon us, and all the dangers—his death at my hand or my arrest, trial, and execution by his—had passed over us, for now. It defied everything I knew about the world. Perhaps the Mother had heard my rash plea at the altar and had snatched it from the air to turn things about. I shifted at the thought, relieved but also terribly frightened by it.

“May we speak frankly?”

Aeric asked.

“I always do,” I lied.

“As do I,”

he lied back.

“I wish to ask you something.

My mind has been filled with fog.

I think you saw this, in my mind, when we drank from the enmities.

There was a spirit who spoke to me about my father’s murder and told me to kill my uncle before the wedding … only, when I tested it by trying to change the timeline or do things in my own way, it became enraged, making me doubt it. My mother had just received her inheritance and wed my uncle, which made me suspicious of their plans, particularly once my mother arranged my marriage to your sister. Then, once King Sinet sent you as a replacement bride, I was convinced you’d been sent to finish your sister’s job. Yet you saved my life. Why?”

“I think …”

I took a breath.

“I didn’t wish to kill you.

I felt that if I did, I’d lose a part of myself I’d never get back.

However, I’m queen now, not merely queen consort of Acus.

I am queen regnant of Radix. I imagine I’ll have to do a great many more things I don’t wish to do.”

Silence settled between us.

Aeric nodded heavily. “Only …”

I should have stopped talking, but now that I’d started, the words kept coming.

I dropped the match to the grass.

“I found myself yet again drawn to do what I hate, and I—I don’t understand.

Maybe I am what I am and can be nothing else.

I’ll do terrible things to survive this world.”

“Then I will make you a new one,”

Aeric said softly.

“Why would you want to?”

My voice was as raw as Aeric’s was gentle, bordering on angry.

“Even if you did, would I know how to live in it? I don’t know how to be loved.

I don’t know how to change.”

“If you let me”—Aeric hesitated and then persisted—“if you let me, I’d spend a lifetime showing you how to be loved, and even if you never figured out how to let me in, it’d be all right.

You could just be loved with nothing demanded in return.”

I stared at him desperately, confused by his kindness, especially after my true nature was revealed.

“And as far as change goes, we can attempt to be different.

Different than our parents.

Different than their parents.

Likely, we’ll fail over and over again, but eventually, we’ll have changed just enough to have made it far from where we started.”

“I hope so,”

I said.

From the bottom of my heart, I meant it.

“May I tell you something else?”

Aeric asked.

“You may.”

“Madalina, after I was poisoned, all I remember is light opening before me, a whole ocean of it.

I knew if I was pulled into it, I’d never make it back.

I fought with all my might for another chance, but nothing could stop it.

Then I heard you from far away, saying a prayer. Your voice was a whisper, but it grew louder. I was released, and it was because of you.”

He paused.

“I owe you a king’s debt.

Tell me what you desire from me, and it shall be yours.”

A king’s debt.

To invoke such an article, even in private conversation, was binding.

I was shocked.

I’d thought the fact I’d wished to kill him canceled out any credit for saving him. Yet he stared at me, offering me anything within his power to grant.

Immediately, I knew what I wanted.

“I wish that Radix might not be a vassal,”

I said.

“And I want the grave flowers here taken home.

They must be transplanted quickly, before they grow too strong.”

Aeric nodded.

“In my first order as king, it shall be done.”

His old lazy grin suddenly spread across his face.

“May I seal it with a kiss?”

I smiled at his impertinence.

“You may.”

The grin disappeared, replaced by surprise.

He stared at me for a long moment.

Then he said earnestly.

“Thank you, wife.”

“Your wife,”

I corrected him.

“Do you command it?”

Aeric asked, and there were many unspoken things in his question but only one answer.

“I do.”

“Then thank you, my wife.”

Our kiss was long, and in it, I felt like I’d found my way somewhere surprising.

A place where there was no thorn spinning its way into the world or cold setting into my bones or ghosts following just behind me, but simply my heart beating against his.

After, we didn’t say anything.

I held out my hand.

I wished for him to hold it.

He took it, gently. It was my injured hand. I hadn’t looked at it closely since cutting off the scar, but it ached, the pain flooding all the way to my wrist. It was a fresh wound, nestled atop the old one.

In a few months, it would stop hurting.

Eventually, a new scar would form, but I’d always remember the one underneath, the one no one would see.

It would remind me that the past dies but that some of it lives, always.

It would remind me that there had been a girl, one who shared my face.

A girl who’d thought she had no heart or maybe a heart in two pieces.

Maybe she was right or maybe Mother was, but maybe neither were—maybe my own heart told me of hers.

I knew she had one because she’d known mine.

Sisters were like that.

I’d cling to the truth I needed most. I had a sister. I had a twin. I loved her.

And every time I thought of her, I would say her name in my mind and my heart, over and over.

I would offer it to the light.

Inessa.

Inessa. Inessa.