Page 3 of Grave Flowers
After the invocation was said, the beauties twined their way to a prisoner and climbed up her body to her face. They lay gently upon it, spreading their thin petals over her forehead, eyes, nose, and mouth. The prisoner began screaming. The petals turned red. I thought the beauties themselves were changing color, but it was the prisoner’s blood, and the beauties were soaking it up. When the petals were lifted, the prisoner’s skin came with them. The beauties seemed very refreshed and renewed.
Complications
The petals latched on to the arm of the botanist who applied them. He tried to claw them off, but they slithered up to his face with the same results.
Applications
They have the prettiest scent of all the grave flowers, which might make for a lucrative perfume that we can export to other kingdoms. However, all attempts to extract their essence failed. Of course, they work well for torture … however, once the invocation is said, they can’t be controlled. They attacked the botanist just as they attacked the prisoner. Come to think of it, the botanist was a handsome fellow. However, they didn’t show the least interest in attacking me, which was good but also … did they find my appearance lacking? That can’t be it. I know I’m handsome. I’m the handsomest king to ever rule!
Chapter
ONE
Ihad never wanted the throne.
But it seemed to want me.
The thought hung heavy in my mind as I entered our royal garden, ducking around the rusty signs with warnings like VICIOUSFLOWERSand BEWARE, HEAVYPOLLEN—VISITORSMAYHAVETROUBLEBREATHING. For a moment, I was distracted from my misery. Something was amiss. The grave flowers were furious, which was odd because the day was perfect for them: weak, drained of sunlight, and laundered in heavy, dripping gloom so it was hard to see despite the daytime hour. Fat pockets of fog and floral vapor sat close to the ground, too dense to rise. This type of weather was usual for Radix, our kingdom, where grave flowers thrived
Warily, I stepped onto a low marble flower bed, one of the few empty ones. When the grave flowers were angry, it was best not to walk along the paths, since those gave them easy access to cut at your ankles. I swept across the marble with ease. Endless years of dance lessons made spinning, sashaying, and springing as natural as walking to me—ifnot more so. Though most people enjoyed things they were good at, I loathed dancing with my entire being.
Reaching the end of the flower bed, I took a small leap onto the rim of the fountain. A chunk of marble came away beneath my leather boots and clunked onto the ground. I ignored it and twirled along the curve of the basin. The brine in the air granulated my skin, overpowering the grave flowers’ scent. I got to the other side of the fountain and jumped off. The urge to curtsy and signify the end of my dance came over me.
I winced, even though I hadn’t been hurt.
“Are we angry as well as hungry today?” I asked the starvelings. They swiped at me, and their thorns caught on my dress.Ms were embroidered in black pearls around the hem of my skirt for my name, Madalina. The thorns severed one of the pearls. The beauties tried to reach it to bury—they always jealously buried pretty things—but they couldn’t quite grasp it. “Look what you’ve done!”
Of course, the starvelings were pleased they’d caught me unawares. I shook my head at them. They muttered and clicked their thorns together. They had purple blossoms, but those seemed to be an afterthought to their curved black thorns.
Something was agitating them. But what?
I frowned and scanned the other grave flowers. They grew unrestrained over the marble beds and decorative columns intended to keep them contained. Mirrors sat at various points in the garden. Father had ordered them placed throughout the palace and its grounds so you could always see if someone snuck up behind you, but their decorative gold frames and surfaces were overlaid in grime. Despite the difficulty in seeing an actual reflection, the beauties used them obsessively. But they didn’t today. The entire garden writhed in fretful waves, except for the nocturnal moonmirrors, which slept, and one small barren patch of dirt. Immortalities were supposed to grow there, but, ironically, they had died out long ago.
“You aren’t the only unhappy ones, my loves.” I sighed. “Maybe you already heard? Inessa is engaged to Prince Aeric. It means”—it was still hard for me to believe, much less say—“I’m Father’s heir and will one day be the queen of Radix.”
It was a shocking turn of events, especially because my twin sister, Inessa, had always bled queenship more than blood. Conversely, if you cut me, I would bleed inferiority coupled with the intense desire for solitude and perhaps a good bath.
Of course, the true horror was the cost of the betrothal. In accordance with its terms, Radix would become a vassal state to the much more powerful (and haughty and detestable) kingdom of Acus. Everyone had always assumed Inessa and I would marry nobles from Radix. Our motto, after all, wasus alone,so much so that we even had bedtime terror tales involving outside monarchs dissolving into flower nectar if their gaze lingered too long upon our throne.
Betrothing Inessa to Prince Aeric was not veryus aloneof Father. Displeasure filled the court. I understood. We didn’t have much aside from our independence. Once we became a vassal state, our freedom would be an illusion.
I tried to shake off my distress. I couldn’t calm the Radixan court or myself, but I could calm the grave flowers. I turned the wheel of the irrigation system. It shrieked as I forced it to twist. Copper pipes, oxidized into a blue green, shook beneath the soil as water was released from the reservoir. Spouts of water shot up from the holes drilled in the pipes at a myriad of heights and angles.
Our grave flowers drank salt water, something visitors found particularly unnatural and alarming. The flowers would drown themselves in it if we let them. They were watered frequently, but they were never quenched.
I knew the feeling well.
I didn’t thirst for salt water like the grave flowers, but my soul always felt itchy and dry. There was salt water to ease the grave flowers, but Ididn’t think anything could settle my soul, especially now that I would someday be queen and inherit the throne on behalf of my family. The one time I’d ever had to do anything significant for my family, I’d failed.
Mother had died.
“Since your cups aren’t filled with nectar,” I said to the enmities, “at least they can be filled with salt water.” Enmities were a single stalk with two branching stems topped in blackish-blue blossoms, each forming a perfect, albeit empty, cup. Whenever there was the merest drop of nectar in their basins, the other grave flowers slurped it up. “Now, now—stop it!”
The starvelings, who cared not for their fellow flowers, slashed the others aside to guzzle from the largest spout.
“You’re being beastly! And right in front of the Daughter.”
I glanced at the statue positioned across the way. Every kingdom on our small continent of Minima worshipped the Primeval Family, and it was common to have statues for the various figures: the Mother, the Daughter, the Son, and the Father. Radix didn’t regard the faith with any sincerity. One had only to see the deep cracks running through the Daughter’s plaster and the skeletal piles of dead grave flowers at her feet to see no one tended to her. In fact, one hand was missing after being carried off during a particularly raucous court revelry years ago.
