Page 43 of Grave Flowers
Chapter
TWELVE
Nighttime in Acus was beautiful.
In Radix, the moon was always a sliver of itself, a teardrop crescent blading its way through angry knots of clouds. Even when it was a full moon, it was veiled with a cloak of gray. Our moonmirrors were more moon than the moon itself.
As I made my way down the night-hung halls, the Acusan moon was a coin of pure silver in the windows, perfectly round, bright, and attended by stars. I reached the ground floor and pushed out to the stairs leading down into the garden.
Everything was peaceful. Except me. Fear and strain set my nerves to strident heights. My heart raced and my teeth clenched. Danger lurked. I was its originator, the one bringing it to the garden. But danger was a slippery thing. No one could truly possess it. It could easily entangle you as you laid traps for others. I might end up dead tonight, not Luthien. I fought against my own memories. The last time I’d tried to kill someone, I’d failed, and Mother had died.
The memories overcame me. I could feel Mother’s arm around me, pressing me close as our family moved quickly and stealthily to escape through the garden after rebels had breached our palace. The gates leading out of the garden appeared just ahead, and I thought we were safe. Father twisted a key in the padlock and swung it open, just enough for us to slip out. He shoved Inessa through and then turned to beckon me and Mother forward.
A figure detached from the bushes near the gate and lunged forward. Silvery-white light from the moonmirrors dashed over us, making it seem as though the garden were full of flashing knives. The rebel misjudged the gate and slammed into it. The night had been full of sounds—shouting and things breaking in the palace, Father yelling, the moonmirrors letting out their ghostly wail—but I’d heard only one: the click of the lock as the gate swung shut, sealing Father and Inessa on one side, and me and Mother into the garden with the rebel.
“Madalina?” A voice reached me in the present, and for a moment, I was confused. I was standing on the Acus palace steps, and someone lurked just ahead. Aeric. Panic chased away the memory of Mother’s death. Why was he here? “Is that you?”
“Yes, but whatever are you doing out here?” I rushed to question him before he questioned me, but my voice was as fragile as newly settled frost. “Isn’t there a wine bottle somewhere you should be imbibing?”
Aeric climbed a step but stopped while still below, staring up at me. Even at night, the light sought him. Moonlight encompassed him like a shroud made from shiny silvery moth wings. It bounced off his hair and highlighted his form with glossy brushstrokes. To my surprise, he let out a soft laugh and lifted his hand. He clutched a bottle of wine by its neck. Nothing about him should’ve been impressive as he stood on the lower step, dressed in a loose shirt and an equally loose pair of trousers—and without shoes—holding a wine bottle. Yet he seemed to rule his spot, as though the steps were his throne and the bottle his scepter.
“I’m glad it’s you, Madalina.” I listened closely to him. There was no waver or slur to his speech. He was sober. “When you first appeared on the steps, you looked like a …”
“Ghost?” I supplied. The word almost made me shiver. Aeric swallowed hard and fought off a shiver of his own. Liquid gurgled against glass as he took a deep drink from the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I wondered which ghosts he thought about. While a literal one plagued my life, metaphorical ghosts did as well. Strange spirits of Father, Mother, Inessa, and Radix and dancing shoes filled with blood and flowers barbing themselves into my flesh. Just as I had mine, I imagined Aeric had his too.
“Yes,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.
Sudden guilt made me wish to look away from him. I wondered if this image of him, as one with the night as a blue-winged moth or red-eyed bat, would haunt me forever after I killed him. I sensed it would. That when he lay dead by my hand in our marital bed, I’d still see him here on these steps, a prince of the moonlight, staring up at me.
“I can assure you I’m not a ghost,” I said around the tightness in my throat. Since I couldn’t look away, I wished he would. The warm air turned hot between us. Mercifully, he broke first. He took a drink, and when he lowered the bottle, the force was gone. I pressed, “Where are you off to?”
“Up.”
“Up?”
“To prowl about the palace roof. I … couldn’t sleep. I thought maybe I’d sit in the memory garden, but it’s particularly macabre at night. So up I’ll go. My father used to take me to the roof often when I was little.” Panic stabbed me. If he was up there, he would have a full view of the garden. My plan was already underway. If I had to revise it, Luthien would get suspicious.
“May I have a drink?” Abruptly, I held out my hand.
“You’re quite confusing, Princess.” Aeric considered me carefully. His hands meditatively twisted about the wine bottle, wringing tighter and tighter as though it were an enemy to strangle. “Half the time you’re decrying my drunkenness, and the other half you’re trying to get drunk yourself.”
“Allow me a little hypocrisy,” I said. “I’m Radixan, after all. It’s one of our virtues. And at least we embrace it, unlike you Acusans.”
“Oh? Does it seem like we try to hide our sins?”
“Not so much as hide them as burn them away with sunlight.”
“We’re to blame for our sun?”
“Yes,” I said. “Now, will you give me the wine or not?”
“How could I refuse such charm?” Aeric climbed the next steps to hand me the bottle. I thought he might stay near me, but he retreated to the one he’d left. Lifting the bottle to my lips, I pretended to lose my grip. Glass smashed against stone. Shards formed a chaotic constellation in opposition to the ones in the sky. Wine splattered across my skirt and slippers, as red as a pool of blood. It waterfalled down the steps in long thin drips, thickening into fat puddles on each step before running down to the next.
It reached all the way to Aeric.
“I’m terribly clumsy,” I said. “Would you get another bottle? Perhaps we should have a drink together, and you can regale me with details about how your play is coming along. The big balcony on the second floor is lovely. Would you forsake your parapets and meet me there? I’ll need to change.”
There was a pause. I wondered if he might decline, if he suspected me too much to leave me to my own wiles.
