Page 9 of Grave Flowers

Once I arrived back at the palace, I quickly changed into a breezier dress.

I cringed as Inessa’s red dress flooded over my fingers in a silken rush as I pulled out the fresh one, waving off the eager but insufficient Sindony.

I meant to head to the garden but thought perhaps I might go to the queen’s quarters.

I needed to get inside, but if I asked for access, Aeric or someone else would have time to clear away anything they didn’t want me seeing. The best thing would be for me to gain access without anyone knowing.

It didn’t take me long to find them.

The queen’s quarters were located on the far side of the palace.

Two large doors, embellished with the crest of the House of Capelian, marked their entry.

They were honey oak and made more golden by sunbeams. It was a busy area. Servants, nobles, and guards filled the hall, gathering to talk, clean, or bustle by.

I regarded the keyhole from afar.

I could try to pick it.

Inessa and I had been taught to pick locks while we were first taught our letters.

But even without inspecting it closely, I could tell it was more elaborate than any lock I’d encountered in Radix, making me fear I might not be successful. When there finally was a lull in traffic, I hurried forward. I knelt, examined the keyhole, and tested the doorknob to see what mechanism held it closed. As I feared, the lock was terribly complicated and went beyond my skills.

How might I get inside? I couldn’t pick the lock, and the rooms were located several floors up, meaning I couldn’t access them from outside.

I was certain that the king’s chambers would connect to the queen’s quarters, so they might have private access to each other, but Aeric occupied those.

The task seemed impossible.

Already, I was failing Inessa. Sitting back on my heels, I thought of her in Bide, alone, hungry, and cold.

Footsteps and voices approached, making me rise.

I couldn’t give up.

At least I might still visit the garden.

I headed down the hall. Trying to enter the queen’s quarters reminded me of a time I’d successfully gained access to the chambers of others. It had been with Inessa. All my best mischief was with her. Our tutor had been executed a month before, and a replacement had yet to be chosen. I never learned what our tutor had done and only remembered we hadn’t been shocked when Father calmly informed us that she was gone and another would be coming.

Until then, we were left to do whatever we wanted from dawn to dusk and spent much of our time in the hidden passages.

We giggled, weaving around pipes leaking water at every seam, stones speckled with green mold, and sawdust from the ravages of termites.

Inessa always led the way.

She held my hand, tugging me along when I was frightened, which was often. Eventually, we found a passageway that fed into our parents’ chambers. Neither Inessa nor I were ever allowed in them, but when Mother was alive, they shared chambers, unlike other royals who kept separate quarters. It was considered terribly promiscuous at best and vulgar at worst. Father and Mother remained undeterred. I was in their chambers only once, and it was nearly the last thing I ever did.

We hovered at the door, giddy with excitement and terror.

“I dare you to go in and take something,”

Inessa whispered.

“I won’t!” I gasped.

“Of course you won’t.”

It was too dark to see her expression, but disdain dripped from her words like the brackish water dripping from a nearby pipe.

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re really a Sinet.”

“How?”

I demanded.

“We’re twins.”

“I suppose its undeniable.”

She sighed, disappointed by my irrefutable proof.

“But everyone takes something in this family, and you don’t take anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Father took the throne from grandfather and began his reign.

Mother took Father’s hand in marriage and made herself a queen.”

“And you? What have you taken?”

“Your face.”

She smiled sadistically.

“I take it as mine whenever I need to.”

“Inessa, don’t say that,”

I cried.

“It gives me the chills.”

“Oh, settle yourself.

Will you take something or not? You don’t have to if you’re scared, though Sinets aren’t supposed to be scared.”

I fell silent.

It was true.

Danger surrounded us, but while I’d seen my parents and Inessa angry or sad, I’d never seen them afraid.

Mother, I knew, had learned to hide it. Father and Inessa were different; they didn’t seem to feel it.

“I’ll do it.”

I entered the chamber before I lost my nerve.

The smell of minerals, sea salt, tallow candles, and herby tobacco filled my nose.

Water ran down a wall into a constantly draining puddle, an ancient wound in the palace.

It must’ve been doing so for centuries because it eroded the stone, liquid winnowing rock.

“Hurry, you Primeval pigeon!”

Inessa hissed from the door.

I looked around.

What should I take? It had to be a worthwhile item but also something Father wouldn’t miss.

An inky-blue scarf was wrapped around one of the bedposts.

I didn’t know whether it belonged to Mother or Father, but it would do. I stole toward the bed, my heart thundering, and snatched it. Quickly, I looped it around my neck.

To my right, I noticed a low table used as an altar.

It had to be Mother’s altar because it was covered in figurines along with wood plaques painted with scenes, some of the Primeval Family and others of divine beings related to the Family but only acknowledged by the Felys.

One of the paintings caught my attention.

It featured a flower, perhaps a grave flower, but one I wasn’t familiar with. Each petal was as clear as a pane of glass. Impulsively, I grabbed the plaque.

As I did, there was a creak.

I spun around.

Father rolled over on the bed.

He stared right at me. I nearly dropped the plaque. I didn’t know what to do or say. Father’s mouth fell open, and a loud snore rumbled from it. Asleep. Father was asleep, his eyes open but sightless. I dashed back to the passage where Inessa waited.

“He’s in there!”

I cried once the door was closed behind me.

“He’s sleeping!”

“Run!”

Inessa shrieked.

Together, we fled.

“Your Highness!”

A cheerful voice called to me, startling the memory away.

Yorick approached.

His long strides brought him quickly to my side.

“Hello,”

I said.

“How are you today?”

“Very well, aside from the fact that I’ve been banished.

My room is backstage in the theater, and Prince Aeric’s rehearsals have made it much too noisy for reading. And you?”

“Off to the garden.”

I smiled.

“Would you care to join me?”

“Certainly.”

He fell in step with me and glanced at me sidelong.

“Though perhaps you might need a nap first?”

I licked my wine-stained mouth, tasting the heaviness of the drink and recalling the terrifying moment I’d shared with Aeric at the cathedral.

I couldn’t tell whether talk of kissing and the sight of his open shirt and bare chest, smudged with ink, had made me feel a perverse thrill or simply more fear.

Whatever the case, if I didn’t think about him staring at me with sincerity, telling me he would never kiss anyone else because we were betrothed, I would be fine.

That thought was much too mystifying.

“I slept in the carriage on the way back,”

I said.

The thirty minutes had been just enough to curb my dizziness.

I glanced at my reflection in one of the windows as we walked toward the garden.

No wonder Yorick thought I needed rest. My hair slipped free of its pins to wisp around my face. My skin, which had been flushed warm from wine and then pale with fear, was waxy and tight. The dress I’d picked so quickly clung tightly to my frame, another Acusan atrocity of too-thin fabric. The back, I saw for the first time, was cut practically to my tailbone. Thick sunlight enclosed my bare body, and I shrugged, as though I could cast it off like a shawl. No such luck.

“You’re embracing the stylish yet disheveled look,”

Yorick declared, as we walked down several flights of stone steps to the ground floor.

Most palace stairways were enclosed, but windows plated the right-hand walls all the way down.

Acusans never missed an opportunity to erase the lines between indoors and out, it seemed.

“Next thing you know, all the court ladies will be doing it too.

Though I’m not so sure I’ll join.”

He carefully ran his hands through his hair, also glancing at his reflection in another window.

“I must look nice for my books.

They feature many interesting and well-dressed characters within their pages, so they judge very harshly.

Also, my sincere congratulations on your betrothal.

You’re officially our soon-to-be-queen.”

I was about to say thank you, but my words left me as we exited the palace and rounded the corner to the royal garden.

It stretched out before us.

Most of the flowers were red in honor of Acus’s colors.

There were shades of oxblood, burgundy, wine, vermilion, scarlet, cardinal, reds with oranges in them, reds with pinks in them, reds with blacks in them, every variation I could ever possibly conceive. Intermixed with them were gold flowers, gleaming like flecks of treasure amid the red petals. The garden was laid out in flower beds shaped like sunrays, with heavily sculpted fountains serving as the sun at the centers. Though only one sun blazed above our heads, there were at least five earth-bound in the garden.

Unable to hold in my emotions, I frowned.

Acus’s garden was so different from ours.

Every bed was the same, every flower just like its fellows.

They were inert, making me think of creatures turned to stone. My heart longed for my grave flowers. Yes, many said they were only fit to adorn the resting places of our dead, but they were more alive than these flowers could ever be.

Gold-plated signs were staked into the dirt in front of the beds.

All the flowers had the same name and were differentiated only by numbers.

FLORA 4.594

FLORA 1.309

FLORA 2.349

The method was scientific, itemized, unreflective of the vast variances between the flowers.

Even where I stood, I could see the breed in the bed closest to me had tiny red styluses hanging from open buds, while the ones to the right had the most cupped petals I’d ever seen in my life.

Then again, maybe the technicality was fitting.

Their beauty was so perfect, it verged on uncanny, as though they had been forced into submission and lost their hearts along the way.

Closing my eyes, I pictured the lost souls, blood hearts, beauties, serpentines, starvelings, mad minds, and even the barren spot where immortalities had once grown.

Those flowers demanded their names and had acquired them long ago.

Their names were an oral part of our history, not marked on plaques, and we saw ourselves in them.

We, too, had lost souls and bleeding hearts. We, too, were vain, serpentine, and starving. We, too, had barren spots inside us where any notion of immortality—of being remembered past our miserable lives—had died. In a way, our grave flowers were our only hope for commemoration, and even then, they told our story exactly as it was, with no canonization, no soft hue of memoriam: just a tale told over and over with thorns and dripping salt water and poison.

I forced myself to open my eyes and push aside such reflections.

I must focus.

This was the last place Inessa had been alive.

Desperately, I hoped to find answers here, though perhaps I had another lead: Duke Cheston. He was preeminent enough to speak to the queen. He was loyal to King Claudius and, as such, Prince Aeric. In the coming days, I would arrange to speak with him.

Yorick followed me as I walked along the pathway.

A smaller garden was situated near a fountain with a statue of the Mother, which was odd, since the Father was Acus’s patron.

I went closer.

Three pairs of white marble wings rose from bases. The wings were polished. Fresh long-stemmed flowers were carefully placed atop them. I bent down to read the inscriptions, which bore the Acusan blessing o.

“light everlasting.”

LIGHT EVERLASTING—LAMBERT

LIGHT EVERLASTING—CHRISTIANNA

LIGHT EVERLASTING—CLAUDIUS

Dates were etched below the names, showing that they had died as babies.

“Who are they?”

I asked, glancing over my shoulder at Yorick.

He somberly surveyed the wings.

Clustered together, they appeared like doves.

“Prince Aeric’s brothers and sister.

This is a memory garden.

They are buried in the crypt beneath the palace with the royals who came before them, but this spot was where King Claudius came to sit and think.”

I turned back to the plaques.

Quickly, I calculated the dates once again.

They had all lived and died after Aeric.

My mind turned to Queen Gertrude. She had carried five children and buried four. It was why she had spoken so confidently about whether she was pregnant. She’d experienced it several times, and every time except once, it’d ended with a pair of wings in the garden and a tiny body in the crypt.

I couldn’t imagine her cradling a baby, yet she’d held five in her arms.

She’d lost almost all and, through her own plotting, was poised to lose her remaining son.

My frown returned.

Acus was esteemed and envied, yet it had just as much rot and heartache as Radix. Only, we didn’t hide ours.

“Now, then, I would like to see the flower berry my sister ate,”

I said, stepping out of the memory garden.

“Are you certain?”

Yorick asked.

“It might be troubling.”

“I am.”

He nodded and led me farther into the garden, toward the public-facing gate.

I stopped, eyes widening, gasping.

“What—How?”

I almost broke into a run.

Grave flowers lurked ahead, specifically starvelings.

They snarled and slashed at their fellow flowers, a blot of deep, blackish green staining the otherwise bloodred garden.

The starvelings were small, but they were vicious.

Around them, the other flowers turned their heads and leaves away, as though the starvelings might disappear if they were ignored.

“Those? Oh, your sister sent seeds ahead, and they were planted for her,”

Yorick said.

“I never knew grave flowers grew so quickly.

They sprang up almost immediately, and within two weeks, they were like this.”

“They do,”

I said, my heart leaping at the sight of the starvelings.

“If you plant any, they bud overnight.”

Yorick eyed the starvelings dubiously and ducked as one of them slashed at him.

“Are all grave flowers this … terrifying?”

“Yes,”

I breathed, finally happy.

The starvelings were of me, and I was of them, like air and water, the two forever converting back and forth.

I imagined this was what it felt like to run into an old friend on the street and to see your childhood reflected in their smile.

Cautiously, I held out a hand.

“Hello, dear ones.”

Would they know me? These had been planted from seeds, which meant they’d never known life in their natural habitat.

Already, I could see different characteristics resulting from too much sun and fresh water.

Their thorns weren’t as curved as they should be, and their tips were dry.

Their blossoms were practically nonexistent, and they moved close to the soil, unable to lift much higher. Poor things. I wondered what I might be like once I returned home. Would I, too, move differently? I hoped I would return braver—or, if not braver, simply less weak.

The starvelings bent forward as my hand extended.

One of them sliced at me but then docilely bent down.

“Oh, do you smell grave flower pollen on me?”

I cooed.

“I smell it on you.

It’s delightful.”

“I smell it too, and it’s killing me,”

Yorick said, as though his suddenly watering eyes and running nose were fatal.

I handed him a handkerchief.

As he dramatically wiped his face, I thought hard.

Inessa hadn’t mentioned starvelings, but her memory was unreliable, everything distorted from Bide. Perhaps she’d planted them out of caution in case she might need to get rid of a corpse. These starvelings were young and not nearly as strong as the ones in Radix, but they had the same instincts. Feathers caught in their thorns showed they’d recently devoured a bird.

Reluctantly, I turned back to Yorick.

“Lead on, before you die any further.”

Yorick led me to the public entrance.

It was closed and padlocked, but signs around the area indicated it was where visitors entered for tours.

A shed for gardening supplies was erected there, along with a small stand that had a spigot for pouring water.

Several shelves were stocked with translucent glass vases in different colors, intricate urns with two handles, and footed brass vessels so people could purchase flowers to take home. Velvet ribbons in red and gold hung from the awning, waiting to be cut and secured around fresh bouquets.

“Your Royal Highness!”

A woman in a grass-stained dress came bustling from around the stand.

Her hands and arms were dusted with dirt all the way up to her elbows, and her black hair, streaked heavily with gray, was pulled back.

A small arsenal of gardening tools hung from her belt.

She curtsied, making the tools clang.

“This is Annia,”

Yorick said.

“She’s the head botanist who tends the garden and served your sister the flower berry.”

“Hello, Annia,”

I said.

At that, the woman’s cheery expression disappeared and was replaced with gravity.

It contrasted with her ruddy face, which seemed meant for sunburns and smiles.

“Your Highness.”

She curtsied and sadly shook her head.

“I am terribly sorry for what happened to your sister.

It was so unexpected and tragic.

But it brought meaningful change, I tell you.

We’ve stopped serving any flower berries to visitors. What happened to your sister will never happen to any other person who sets foot in this garden, I assure you.”

“I’m pleased to hear it,”

I said, cutting off her passionate speech.

I paused, trying to determine if Annia might’ve been involved in a plot against Inessa.

My intuition didn’t think so.

She’d given Inessa the berry openly. Assassinations tended to involve secrecy.

“May I see the plant, please? And can you tell me how you used to serve it to visitors?”

“Of course, Your Highness.

It’s over here.”

Annia led me behind the shed to a bush covered in red flowers.

At the center of each was a berry.

A ribbon cordoned it off, and a sign declared NOT IN USE.

As far as I could tell, it was merely an ordinary plant with ordinary flower berries.

“Annia, I know you are the head botanist, but are there others who help you?”

I asked.

A garden this size would need many people.

Maybe someone who worked for Annia had poisoned the flower berry, knowing Annia would serve it to Inessa.

“Yes, I have a full team of botanists.

They are the finest in all the kingdoms.”

I nodded.

A full team of botanists.

Any of them would’ve had access to the flower berry at any time.

But—Inessa’s betrothal to Aeric had only recently been announced.

“It must be challenging finding people with the right skills,”

I wagered.

“I understand you have a lifetime appointment, like the sewists.”

“I do,”

Annia said proudly.

“There’s soil in my blood.

My family members have been botanists for the monarchy for generations.”

“If you’ve worked here the longest, then who has been here the shortest?”

I tried to sound lighthearted, as though I were only fancifully seeking trivia.

“We did recently hire a new botanist.

He came on, let’s see, only a few weeks ago.

I admit, he’s more fit for a handyman.

I have him do menial things like pull weeds and transport tools. He wishes to give visitors tours, though he really doesn’t have the personality for them. You see, I like to dazzle our visitors and he—well, I think a rock would have more dazzle. I have him helping in the background until I feel he’ll do better.”

“Oh?”

A botanist who had been hired after the announcement and had no personality for tours yet specifically wished to give them.

Finally, a suspect.

“What’s his name? I’m certain I’ll be hosting guests from time to time, and I want to make sure they don’t go on his tour.”

“Luthien.

He’s from Crus originally but came here to earn money to send back home.”

“Luthien,”

I repeated.

It was a common Crusan name.

Spies and assassins often used unremarkable names to avoid attention.

“Thank you.

I’ll take my leave.”

“But, Your Highness,”

Annia protested.

“are you certain you wouldn’t like a tour yourself? I do give the best ones, full of dazzle.”

“I’m certain you do,”

I said.

“When I have more time, I’ll come straight to you and prepare to be … dazzled.”

Yorick and I headed back to the palace.

The grass was springy beneath my feet, the blades popping up perfectly again every time my slippers lifted.

Yorick could’ve easily outpaced me, but he matched my speed.

“You seem to have found what you were looking for,”

he observed.

“There’s much more purpose to your steps now.”

“Perhaps.”

I glanced at my new bookish friend.

He appeared to enjoy my company, but there was the chance he was trying to befriend me to keep an eye on me for Aeric.

Or, for all I knew, he could be Inessa’s murderer.

If he was either of those things, all the better to keep him near.

“How long have you been a jester for the court?”

“She’s the queen of questions,”

Yorick said whimsically.

“No, I’m not.”

I allowed myself a wry smile.

“I’ve yet to be crowned queen.”

“Well, if you are the—pending—queen of questions, then I must attend you with answers.

I was originally a stable hand and then brought on to be one of Prince Aeric’s attendants because he asked for several more than King Claudius had,”

Yorick said.

“Soon after, he gave me the position as jester, saying he wanted someone youthful.

Young eyes in an old job.

He thought my bookish pursuits would lend to an intellectual humor and insight.

Honestly, I think he didn’t find me suited for his entourage and wanted to reshelve me elsewhere, as though I were a stodgy old text among his adventure storybooks. It was a mercy. I’m too skinny to imbibe at his rate!”

Typical Aeric.

Giving someone another position as opposed to dismissing them.

It was surprising the palace wasn’t overrun with stray dogs and cats.

Still, even as I wrapped my first impression of Aeric around myself like a comforting blanket, shivers pitter-pattered across my skin, one right after the other. In the short time since I’d met Aeric, I’d witnessed many examples of his foolery, and yet all those seemed buried by his eyes, pinning me like a knife thrower aiming for the throat after I mistakenly referred to Inessa in the present tense.

“Well, if it helps to know, I like you and require no alcohol consumption,”

I said.

“I don’t require much of my companions.

In fact, those who aide me might find themselves with lots of spare time.

Which they could spend in the library reading.”

Without missing a step, Yorick arched an eyebrow at me.

“Is that so? Is Her Highness wishing to steal me away from Prince Aeric?”

“I’m new to court, and I need friends,”

I said with a shrug.

“Intriguing.”

He fussed with his collar, straightened his gloves, and grinned.

“I have to admit, I like being fought over.”

“Then consider that I offer books and leisure, while Aeric’s requirements will have you drinking wine and swimming in a fountain with his other court boys until dawn.”

Yorick shuddered at the image and laid a hand over his chest at the horror.

“Her Highness makes a very compelling case, I must admit.

I would love to join your service.”

Carefully, he paused, reached for his jester’s pin, and undid it.

“I’m yours, forever and ever.

I’ll let Prince Aeric know and enjoy watching him pretend that he isn’t greatly relieved.”

He pressed the pin into my hand.

“Why, thank you,”

I said, touched.

Slipping my arm through his, I smiled as we walked.

He straightened, drawing back his shoulders, which always seemed pulled toward the earth.

I glanced down at the pin. It winked in the light, so I couldn’t see whether the face smiled or cried.

I squinted, a facial posture becoming more familiar to me since coming here.

I was faced with more light in Acus than ever before and was slowly coming to understand it better … though I found the revelations terrifying.

I’d always thought darkness obscured but light did as well and was more powerful than darkness—it burned, scorched, combusted, carbonized.

Even now, the palace loomed before me, drenched in sunlight.

It bounced off the long rectangular windows and carved out the walkways and balconies.

Despite the distance, I could see outlines of furniture and art and people moving about the different levels.

My gaze tugged upward even more.

It stopped.

There he was.

Aeric.

He stood atop the roof.

A thick ledge ran around it, a militaristic artifice on the otherwise stately palace.

Intermittently, stone guardians perched atop the ledge.

They were also there for defense, though not against enemy soldiers but rather evil spirits who’d abandoned the Primeval Family’s court. The guardians were terrifying brutes with heavy scowling brows and open menacing mouths. Aeric stood between two guardians. The breeze tugged his hair into disorder, and his shirt was untucked. Unsurprisingly, he cradled a wine goblet with both hands, elbows braced on the rail. It was impossible to see his expression from this distance, but he stared down at me and Yorick. Aeric’s shirt and hair were liquid in the open air, but he seemed made of stone and affixed to the palace like a guardian—forbidding, staring, immobile.

Then, as we walked, his head followed us, tracing our movements through the garden.

Suddenly, there wasn’t enough sunlight in all the world to warm me.