Page 2 of Grave Flowers
No one ever questioned him, lest they too find their necks wrapped in a drapery cord.
Morning fog, tinged a dishwater hue, exhaled heavily over Radix by the time King Rychard returned to the secret birthing chamber. The haze was accompanied by the fragrance of the grave flowers as they opened their blossoms with the dawn and spewed their perfume into the air.
“Well, I suppose we can split the name,” King Rychard said, his arduous chore complete. “Instead of Inessa Madalina Sinet, shall one be Inessa and the other Madalina?”
“I like it,” Queen Agathine said, giving each slumbering milk-gorged baby a kiss on the nose.
With the names settled, King Rychard clambered into the bed with the groan of an exhausted man. In an hour or so, he would announce the birth of the twins, but for now, he’d earned some rest.
“No, everything is covered in blood,” Queen Agathine protested.
King Rychard looked at his wife and twins. The babies had their mother’s dark hair. He appreciated how the tendrils made tiny spirals around the babies’ ears, curving like the spindled shells of snails.
“I don’t mind a little blood,” he said, and then the four of them drowsed amid the splattered blankets and sheets while the waterveins dripped nearby.
ACT I
Curtain Rises
“Natura nihil frustra facit”
Nature does nothing in vain
A Guide to Grave Flowers for Tortures and Torments
A Compilation for Radixan Monarchs
I, King Llyr from the House of Sinet, am setting forth to apply our ancestral invocations upon our divine grave flower gifting.
When my parents ruled, they lived in fear of the grave flowers and never applied the invocations to them. I am not afraid—I am curious. My people have been particularly unruly and unhappy since the recent famine and Great Sick, so the prisons have been bursting! Which means I have ample souls to use for my experiments. It couldn’t be better. I’ll record the results here so my progeny may rule over the grave flowers instead of fear them. I announced this plan to my council and my wife and my son. They all said it was a most wonderful idea. And it is true, because all my ideas are most wonderful.
These experiments are being conducted in the royal solarium, where charts of the stars and paintings of the celestial bodies shall inspire my own venture into the unknown: our grave flowers. I gave a speech to the guards and prisoners assembled to help with the process and wore my most bejeweled crown.
BEAUTIES
Grave Flower Experiment One
Appearance
Bluish petals that are so thin, you can see right through them. Shiny silvery leaves that function as tiny mirrors, which the beauties often stare into.
Behavior without invocation
Attention seekers. They love real mirrors and being complimented more than anything else. They are easily upset and don’t like it when other pretty things are nearby. They also seem to have a highly inflated sense of their own beauty because they deem all the other grave flowers as inferior in aesthetics. However, when a beautiful piece of jewelry or colorful bird is near, they turn inward to each other and refuse to turn back until the competition is gone. They seem to think their beauty is a blessing and that, by withdrawing, they are punishing us.
Invocation
O Primeval Mother and Daughter,
let us borrow your beauty
so we may do our divine duty.
Though don’t let us be too stunning,
lest we stare too long in the mirror and lose all cunning.
Results
