Page 80 of Grave Flowers
I got lucky, though. King Llyr needed the knowledge living inside my head. Only I could tantalize him into killing himself so he might be brought back as an immortal. Of course, he isn’t senseless. He threatened to murder my family if I didn’t bring him back.
So I did.
It grants me joy to think of it. He drank the moonrain poison confidently, with not a waver or inkling of doubt. As he died, he said the roundaboutinvocation while crushing the immortalities and, as I suspected, was sent straight to Bide. The spirits attending the Primeval Family would never grant him more mortal years here, but they must honor the invocation—so to Bide he went. His body pitched forward. I pretended to catch his large bearish frame to ease it to the soil, but I did so to steal his dagger. I was ordered to plant the portrait.
I placed King Llyr’s portrait in the roots of the immortalities and said the roundabout invocation.
But just as King Llyr learned from me, I have been learning from him. I didn’t stop there. I said every invocation I could think of, shouting them to the grave flowers. The guards ordered me to be silent, but it was too late.
The grave flowers roused from their flower beds.
And all bewitchments broke forth.
The starvelings began devouring the guards, the mad minds spouted their venom, the serpentines coiled around the palace pillars, the lost souls plunged up and down—then, finally, the moonmirrors woke and, confusing the sun with the moon, blocked it out so cold and darkness fell upon us. I thought I might’ve ended the world and that certainly I had ended my own life.
Ironically enough, it was King Llyr who saved me from being crushed to death. The roundabout invocation worked, and a tunnel opened between Bide and the royal garden. Grave flowers spilled out of it, ones I’ve never seen before, and there he was. King Llyr, in the form of a specter.
“What have you done? Where is my body?” he demanded.
“There.” I pointed.
Overhead, the serpentines coiled around it, snapping its bones. They tossed it to the starvelings, who devoured it. I’d known they would.AsKing Llyr watched, I slipped up to the starvelings who gulped down his body. I drew the dagger I’d stolen from him as he lay dead and sliced the pouch of acid just behind one of the mouths in the stem.
I barely managed to jump back in time to avoid the bubbling corrosive white liquid that poured out—all over King Llyr’s body. His ghost screamed,eyes big and mouth blubbering as he watched his body dissolve into nothingness. As it did, his ghost became a strange jiggling mass. I thought I’d like to see him suffer, but terror filled me to see such a desecration of a soul. I stomped him out, sending him back to Bide.
Then, while chaos still reigned and the grave flowers clawed their way toward the palace, I escaped with this—the king’s book—and new hope.
Chapter
TWENTY-THREE
Ididn’t understand.
Why did the monasticte look so much like Mother? And what letters? I hadn’t even known he’d existed.
“What do you mean? I—I’ve never written to you,” I stammered, as I removed the plaque from my pocket. “Are you Alifair? Does this belong to you?”
“I am Alifair.” The monasticte tucked the knife into his belt. Stepping forward, he squinted at the plaque. “That did indeed use to be mine, except I haven’t seen it for decades, ever since I gave it to my sister as a gift to remind her of home.” Reaching out a finger, he reverently stroked its surface. “We put prayers inside our holy images, and I put a prayer for her safekeeping inside it. I remember it like yesterday. But tell me, are you not Princess Madalina Sinet?” His voice was still weak. I remembered he spoke to others only once a week and, aside from that, was alone.
“Yes, but I’ve never written to you.”
Consternation settled over the monasticte’s face. He walked to a cabinet and pulled open a drawer. Young beauties growing insidesprung up along with mismatched gardening gloves. He shook his head, closed it, and opened another. Stakes, twine, and trowels mixed with parchment. He rummaged about, muttering to himself. The mutters were words, yet they tipped up and down in inflection, as though they were halfway a song. Finally, he found what he was looking for. He returned to where I stood and held out a letter.
“Didn’t you write this?” he asked.
“No …” I snatched it from his hand. I recognized the handwriting, just as I had earlier when I found the address sewn into the red dress. “My sister did. Princess Inessa.” My eyes jumped to the bottom. “She signed it in my name.”
At that, the monasticte drew his fingers through his beard, curling the ends. Despite his raggedy appearance, his beard was oiled, and it held the twists. He shook his head once, then twice, as though wishing to deny what I’d said.
“Who are you, exactly?” I asked. “What did my sister’s letters say?”
“Your sister requested the guide.”
“The guide?” Every turn of our interaction brought more confusion. “What guide?”
“The ancestral guide for Radixan monarchs.A Guide to Grave Flowers for Tortures and Torments.” He spoke the title with practiced familiarity and blinked at me expectantly. He crossed his arms, hesitated, then lowered them, as though he’d forgotten how people stood when engaged in conversation.
“I—I’ve never heard of it. A guide? For grave flowers?” The mysteries only deepened, so much so that I felt as though I were drowning in them and would never resurface.
