Page 89 of Grave Flowers
At midnight, I snuck out to our royal garden with the sketch of King Llyr in my hands. Sea fog and salt filled the air. I dug deep around the immortalities’ flower bed and, as Alifair said, I found them thriving within the soil. They are beautiful, as delicate as butterflies’ wings with translucent petals and thin scaffolding holding them together. How ironic that they were there all along, just under our feet. They quivered as I set the sketch among them and carefully patted the dirt back in place.
Then I said the roundabout invocation.
The dirt around the immortalities lifted. It hung in the air, delicate particles that startled the moonmirrors. Then it sprayed forward as though it had been sneezed. It splattered across me. I watched. Waited.
First, blossoms burst from the dirt. They were the immortalities. As they crested through the soil, their translucent petals fell open as though the dirt had bound them closed. They twirled on long, thin stems, and a peculiar feeling came upon me. It seemed to come from outside me, like a draft drifting over my skin. I had the sense that I did not want this sort of immortality, even as beautiful as the grave flowers were.
A strange, groaning jellylike substance pushed up underneath the immortalities. The blossoms crowned it, and its roots stretched around the blob, forming a cage around it. Some of the roots stabbed right through the mass, causing great streams of fluid to leak from it. Lesions floated on its surface, and it shook and shivered. It sat like a fat raindrop before me.
“Please!” Its voice was whistly and faint. There was no mouth or place for the voice to come from—it seemed to come from every part of the globule. “Bring me not here any longer! I may have done wrong in my mortal life, but please do not torture me so. Send me back, send me back, send me back.”
I picked up a stick and poked it. The whistling moans grew louder, and it seemed to be in great pain. “I’ll stomp you out shortly. First, I have some questions about Bide and how it works.”
Conclusion of experiment: The roundabout invocation and burying a person’s likeness among the immortalities works to bring a soul back from Bide … but how might one avoid the liquified condition?
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Grave Flower Experiment Part 2
Perhaps the immortalities simply haven’t been used to their full capacity and we are supposed to use them to keep our bodies so when we are brought back, we may enter them and not be… so amorphous.
Remedy: I’ve done hundreds of secret tests trying to preserve the body postmortem. Finally, one has worked. I tested it on a bird who’d been slashed by the starvelings and lay dying. I soaked seeds from the immortalities in its blood and then let the bird ingest the seeds prior to its death. The bird died. The immortalities took root within the bird and eventually grew from the ears, eyes, and beak, surrounding the body and keeping it from decay due to their magical properties. And given the connection to the blood, I was able to use the bird’s blood to mark certain places, and the immortalities returned to those spots, carrying the body. I imagine it’ll work similarly with a human.
The blossom in Inessa’s chambers held a body. If she’d poisoned herself after swallowing the immortalities’ seeds soaked in her blood, her corpse would’ve looked normal … until the grave flowers sprouted inside her. But if they hadn’t flowered until after her corpse had been examined, no one would know when the immortalities slipped free of the casket, taking her body with them before the casket was shipped to Radix. Royal caskets were exceptionally heavy on their own, which masqueraded whether a body was in them, and we Radixans had no tradition of displaying the deceased in the way Acusans did. A splotch had stained Inessa’s ceiling. If her test with the bird was any indication, she’d swathed the ceiling with her blood to guide the grave flower to hide there until she needed her body again. My mind swam as though it were panicked and trapped within my skull. I made myself keep reading, even as I wished to dissolve.
The next portion didn’t have any words. It was simply an illustration featuring a crude outline of a girl lying on a bed. Several limbs were circled, with notes about which scars were there.My scars.Not just the one I’d gotten at birth, but long after. Every scar was accounted for, from childhood scrapes to cuts from the starvelings that had required stitches.Inessa must’ve snuck into my chambers while I slept earlier last year.The thought elicited a sound from me, one much heavier thana mere gasp, a respiration of horror and shock. I had slept while she’d stood over me, making notes of every marking and then … replicating them on herself?
Inessa was dead, yes, but she was going to return, and … I almost dropped the parchment. There was only one reason why she’d need to note and replicate my scars.
In returning, she wished to switch with me.
I thought about everything she’d suggested. She told Aeric to kill Prince Lambert before the wedding and then instructed me to kill Aeric after it, in our bedchamber, as Father had planned. Queen Gertrude was already dead—likely through Inessa’s orchestration. One by one, she was eliminating everyone in power in Acus from the safety and secrecy of Bide. If all three were dead, then only I would be left, queen consort of Acus.
And she would switch with me, tomorrow night, after I’d killed Aeric.
I didn’t know how she would switch with me. There were many complications. How might she get me to say the roundabout invocation? And how might she cement power in Acus, considering she didn’t have a legitimate claim to its throne? Despite it all, I knew, deep inside, she had a solution for those problems and her ambitions would be fulfilled.
She’d have her crown, throne, and kingdom to rule.
Alone and in control of Acus and Radix.
Setting the parchment aside, I stumbled to my armoire. I took out my Radixan dress, the one I’d worn when I arrived in Acus, and tore open the hidden pocket deep within its thick layers. The vial sat within the fabric. I stared at it, heart racing. If I poisoned Aeric, I would fulfill Inessa’s plan, and she would move to the next phase and switch with me. If I didn’t, he’d be alive and well to arrest me. Then there was Father and Prince Lambert, figures whose wills were also woven into my future.
I picked up the vial and clutched it tightly. It was cold in my hands, so cold that it felt as though I held my own fear in my palms, that it was made from glass and ice and would shatter at any moment. My mind raced in tempo to my heart, the two spiraling from my control and speeding headlong away from me. I thought my heart might explode or my mind would incinerate, simply from the agony.
I tried to take long, slow breaths so I might reason because, no matter what, I needed a plan before morning.
Dawn came quickly, spilling bright light into the sky.
Aeric would be coronated at the ninth morning hour, our wedding would be at midday, and the play would be at the eighth nighttime hour. As dictated by tradition, I wouldn’t see Aeric until the wedding, which meant I wouldn’t attend his coronation. Rather, I’d see him as a king moments before taking him as my husband.
I was subjected to a retinue of treatments, thoughts racing as my body was slathered, combed, and perfumed. Face cream—reeking of sesame seed oil, beeswax, and honey—was applied to my cheeks and forehead. A burning concoction of rose water, lemon juice, eggshells, alum, and mercury were daubed onto the freckles I’d acquired from the Acusan sun, the sting serving only to emphasize my frazzled and fearful condition. My hair was washed, raked with a comb made from bone, and brushed till it shone. I relished every tug and jerk, anything to sharpen my focus and draw my panic into submission.
Gwenllian and her fellow sewists arrived to help me into my wedding dress, their faces glowing with excitement. Undergarments were placed on me first, and under the guise of fetching a handkerchief to dab my nose, I went to my vanity and discreetly tucked the poison vial into the corset. I was glad I did because after that, I was under too much attention to have done so at any other point.
One final stitch was made in gold inside the wedding gown’s hem, where none would see it. Myth said the stitch was blessed by the Primeval Family and that, as you were wed, it became true gold from their celestial halls. Then prayers to the Daughter were said as the gown was placed upon my body.
The prayers were soft and gentle, a severe contrast to my agony. I tried to remain strong and plot, but despair seeped through my will, weakening me from the inside out, so much so that I wobbled as the gown was laced up. Eventually, I found my mind drifting as the prayers continued around me. Maybe I was delirious, all the terror unbinding my mind and sending it somewhere else. The past mixed with the present.
