Page 51 of Grave Flowers
“An act?” The nothingness faded away, replaced by a tightening in my chest.
“Yes, an act to cover his uncertainty over things.” An image rose in my mind. Aeric, sitting at the bar outside the Oscura, shoulders hunched and confusion in his eyes, every defense peeled back, and his true fear laid bare. “He suspects his mother’s plot but has no evidence and worries that, without undeniable proof, he won’t succeed in stopping it.” Everything was too loud. Or perhaps too quiet. I swore I heard spiders in the corners, the dripping of wax from the candles, the trickle of sludge down Inessa’s cheeks. “He sees how Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert have integrated themselves into court and gathered support. It makes him waver. In fact, if he accuses them of treason without proof, they can claim he is unstable and unfit for the throne. Didn’t you mention he’s obsessed with a play? Maybe his plan hinges around it.”
“The play is merely a religious retelling,” I protested, refusing to accept Inessa’s words. “How could a night at the theater secure his rule?”
“Wait! I remember something else!” Inessa gasped and clasped her hands over her mouth. Slowly, she lowered them. Her eyes no longer danced. Instead, fury filled them. “Mads, he handed me the flower berry. He took it from Annia and gave it to me, telling me about how his father gave one to his mother when they were first betrothed. The poison—it must’ve been on his palm. Maybe he found a poison that imitates an allergic reaction and causes swelling in the throat.”
“But Annia gave you the flower berry. She told me so,” I said. My chest grew tighter, and my breath caught in my lungs, my body compressing against the truth.
“My sweet sister, she lied to you. Aeric probably bribed her with gardening tools or whatever such pastoral people desire. Thinking upon it, I imagine she’s a strong supporter of the Capelian house, given that her family served them for generations as botanists. Only Aeric and I were on the tour, and no one else was around, aside from Luthien knocking over watering cans.”
Annia, who seemed so straightforward, had lied to me? I shouldn’t be surprised. None of it should surprise me at all. Frenzy loomed over me again. I’d just kissed Aeric, but if Inessa was right, the kiss had been as fake as the tin crown he’d placed in my lap. My own thoughts turned against me, racing, proving Inessa correct. Aeric had gone to the Oscura. He said he’d followed me there to make certain I was safe, but maybe he’d gone on his own. To get poison to kill me, just as he had Inessa. He was at ease on the swinging stairs. Perhaps he’d been several times before.
I didn’t dare speak the incriminations aloud. I wasn’t ready, not yet.
Inessa mercilessly continued. “Prince Aeric probably thought that if he killed me, Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert might grow more cautious, giving him time to accumulate evidence and gain his own support at court,” she said. “But then you were sent in short order, forcing him to continue his ruse. It’s good, though. He needs a solid case against Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert because she is the queen mother, and he is a Capelian prince. It protects you. If it were merely you acting against him, the Acusan court would require far less evidence because you’re a Fely princess from an inferior kingdom.”
I felt as I did in the ballroom back home, with strange hands hot and sweaty around my waist as I was spun about. Humiliation washed over me when I thought about how I’d clung to Aeric on the balcony,drinking in his lies just as much as his kisses. No wonder Father and Inessa doubted me. Weakness coursed through my veins, as irreplaceable as my blood.
“Should I kill him now?” I asked. Coldness rang through my voice, and I tried to form myself to it, to let it replace the lack within me.
“I understand the desire,” Inessa said. “But think. Everything is in place for the wedding night, when you can make it look like you were poisoned too. If you murder him now, there will be an investigation, and Queen Gertrude and Prince Lambert will most certainly use it to their advantage. They will say you pursued the quest alone, so you will take the blame, and they won’t have to pay Radix. You must kill him on the wedding night, as planned, to protect yourself. That way, everyone will think you were poisoned too.”
“But what if Aeric tries to kill me before then?” My wet hair dripped down my back with the slick sensation of blood or tears, while my clammy skin pimpled with goose bumps. The discomfort heightened my distress. Pathetically, I drew the blanket around myself.
“Be careful around him,” Inessa ordered. “Don’t eat or drink anything he offers. Don’t be alone with him. Don’t touch him or let him touch you. The wedding is next week. You must survive only until then.”
“It shall be easy,” I declared. “I don’t wish to do any of those things with him.”
“No?”
“Of course I don’t! Why would I?”
“Oh, simply because I saw you kissing him on the balcony earlier. My dear sister, it was quite the passionate scene.”She had seen.Horror ran through me, constricting my throat and settling like a rock in my stomach. I had to tell her it had meant nothing. It was merely strategy. I’d kissed him to lower his guard, draw him near, weaken his will. If I said it forcefully enough, I might even believe it myself. “Madalina, beware the line between lust and love. You might find yourself on the wrong side of it.”
“Love?” I sputtered, the defenses I’d planned undone by shock. “I don’t love him!”
I reeled, bitterly marveling at the horridness of it all. I had been sent to kill him, and he was planning on arresting or murdering me. It was bizarrely fair. The world never gave justice, yet, in this, it gave me perfect justice: my murderous intent versus Aeric’s murderous intent, a perfectly balanced scale, If I loved him, I would tip the scale in his favor, and he would exploit me. He already had.
“I don’t love him,” I repeated harshly. “I hate him.”
“Settle, Sister.” Inessa was reassuring, but there was a brutal glint in her eyes. She was glad to have gotten such a rise out of me. It enraged me further. She was acting as though everything I said merely proved her point and like she knew me better than I knew myself. How dare she say I loved Aeric when I’d come to avenge her? My anger grew, fevering through me. I embraced it. If I let it consume me, it would blaze in my ears, and I wouldn’t have to hear the quiet whisper under it all, the one deep inside me that said I was the weakest Sinet … and that I’d lost something tonight, something that had never been mine to begin with. “Whether you love him or not doesn’t matter.”
“But I don’t.”
I thought she might say something cutting. Instead, there was a slight give in her face, a softening around the rigid edges of her mouth and eyes. She put her hand on top of mine. An instant stab of panic overtook me. Last time she’d touched me, she’d revealed herself as a ghost. But this time, nothing happened. Her hand was hard, as though the skin were too thin and there was nothing between it and the bones. Black sludge curved beneath her fingernails and crusted her knuckles. But even though her hand belonged to a night terror, her touch was gentle.
“I’m not sure what love is, Mads, but I think I understand it best when I’m with you.”
I didn’t know what to say. Her harshness had filled my girlhood. Yet I wasn’t the only one who suffered. She did as well. I knew her pain. She’d been born into her own isolation. She didn’t feel love yet knew it existed for others. The night had been long, but for all its darkness, I’d never seen things more clearly. I’d had a moment of weakness with Aeric, but it was over and done. Inessa might not be able to love as others could, but I did, and my love for her would make a bridge, one out of Bide.
Maybe, somewhere in the afterlife, there was a place for hollow hearts.
“I’ll set you free, Inessa. I vow it.”
“I know you will,” she said. “And wherever I go after Bide, I’ll remember it. For all eternity, I’ll know it.”
“But I don’t want you to go,” I said suddenly. “I wish you could stay. You could be queen of Radix once Father passed, and I’d … I’d be there, somewhere. Maybe teaching dancing lessons.”
