Page 99 of Grave Flowers
“Very good point. I’m unforgettable.” He smiled impishly, grandly, and took one step backward. Like Inessa, he was gone, disappearing as the opening did, the final grave flowers swept away.
I staggered to my feet and sank down next to Aeric. His head tilted to the side, and his pulse was faint in his wrist, each throb drifting further from the one before it. Death was taking him slowly, inevitably. He would be gone. Just like all the others. I would be alone, a girl with a crown on her head and a kingdom in her hands but nothing in her heart, a copy of Inessa. I lay across Aeric’s chest. A sob rose in my throat, but I turned it into a scream at the last moment. It surged raggedly from my lips. Most screams released energy and let go of emotion. This one wasn’t that. This scream held all my rage and despair and returned it to me. I wouldn’t let him go. I couldn’t.
Guards and nobles hurried onto the stage around me. They reached for Aeric but I lifted a hand, holding them back. As queen regnant, I was the highest-ranking authority present, and they obeyed.
One of the immortalities I’d shorn out of my hand lay nearby, a tattered remnant of itself, its translucent petals wrinkled like worn satin. I picked it up, crushed the petals, and in a ragged voice I didn’t recognize as my own, I said, “Left, right, up or down. Let me use a roundabout so I may in right time be found.”
My blood mixed with the immortalities as they crumpled apart in my fingers. I closed my eyes, hearing Father’s mantra as he’d tried to help me save Mother, how he’d repeated it over and over. Someone whispered, “Madalina.”
It was Aeric.
I lurked in my chambers for the next few days. No one came to attend my hand, so I wrapped it in a strip of sheeting. My girls were gone. Servants entered my chambers only to leave food and then immediately left. Every sound terrified me. I kept thinking guards would appear to arrest me on Aeric’s orders. Even in sleep, I was in a panic, growing alert in my dreams and waking to find myself soaked in sweat and gasping. I needed to flee. I needed to get home—but my chambers had become my den. Somehow, in the darkness with the faucet dripping, I felt like I might forestall what was to come and that if I set foot outside, I’d be detained or perhaps even conflagrated by sunlight.
On the third day, I decided. I’d take a horse, just as I had before, and I would ride alone to Radix. It was an arduous journey, but I inadvertently had sustenance. Unable to eat, I’d stockpiled the loaves of bread the servants had brought me to avoid attention. They were stale, but they’d last, and there were plenty of freshwater creeks running across the countryside as they tumbled toward the ocean.
I dressed quickly, swathing myself in Yorick’s cape and putting on the one Radixan dress that had remained in my wardrobe. It was the green gown I’d worn when I’d arrived. I strung the thick bodice tight about myself, feeling its security, its comfort, its snugness. I wavered. How could I leave my grave flowers here? Once I left, they’d be in the hands of the Acusans. I should set them afire and destroy them. They were still young and weak and wouldn’t be able to fend me off. In fact, the fire would be a good distraction as I fled … if I could bring myself to do it.
The grave flowers lifted their heads as I came. I tried not to look at them. For the first time since I’d left Radix, tears filled my eyes. Hands shaking, I removed a matchbox from Yorick’s cape. I struck a match. Its head burst into flame. I held it out toward the delicate petals of the beauties. The grave flowers became quiet. They had no eyes, yet they seemed to watch me, their blossoms turned quietly to me. Even Inessa’s starvelings fell silent, as though my presence were a spell. The flame ate its way down the match. I needed to protect the grave flowers. I must do it because it was best and because I loved them.
I blew out the match.
Smoke stung my nose.
I couldn’t do it. When I’d sat on the stage next to Aeric’s body and said the roundabout invocation, I’d seen a flicker of something other than brutality, something luminously beautiful yet as thin and obscured as a sickle moon in the foggy Radixan sky. I wished I’d never glimpsed it. The tears in my eyes rolled down my cheeks. Furiously, I dashed them away.
A hand touched my shoulder.
Panicked, I pulled away.
Aeric was there.
“Going somewhere?” he asked.
I gathered Yorick’s cloak tightly about myself. “Merely cold.” It was preposterous because the day, just like all the other Acusan days, was perfect.
“Hmm. Last time you said you were cold, you stole a costume and undermined a vital scene in my play.”
“I think I improved it,” I said. I wished to keep my face hidden within my cloak so he wouldn’t see the tears on my cheeks, but his familiar voice, full of confidence verging on cockiness, drew me out. He considered me with the same reluctant fascination I felt. He was pale, and his arm was wrapped in a bandage, but he was otherwise well. Somehow, we’d defied fate. All the supposed benefits—coronation, marriage—had been bestowed upon us, and all the dangers—his death at my hand or my arrest, trial, and execution by his—had passed over us, for now. It defied everything I knew about the world. Perhaps the Mother had heard my rash plea at the altar and had snatched it from the air to turn things about. I shifted at the thought, relieved but also terribly frightened by it.
“May we speak frankly?” Aeric asked.
“I always do,” I lied.
“As do I,” he lied back. “I wish to ask you something. My mind has been filled with fog. I think you saw this, in my mind, when we drank from the enmities. There was a spirit who spoke to me about my father’s murder and told me to kill my uncle before the wedding … only, when I tested it by trying to change the timeline or do things in my own way, it became enraged, making me doubt it. My mother had just received her inheritance and wed my uncle, which made me suspicious of their plans, particularly once my mother arranged my marriage to your sister. Then, once King Sinet sent you as a replacement bride, I was convinced you’d been sent to finish your sister’s job. Yet you saved my life. Why?”
“I think …” I took a breath. “I didn’t wish to kill you. I felt that if I did, I’d lose a part of myself I’d never get back. However, I’m queen now, not merely queen consort of Acus. I am queen regnant of Radix. I imagine I’ll have to do a great many more things I don’t wish to do.”
Silence settled between us. Aeric nodded heavily. “Only …” I should have stopped talking, but now that I’d started, the words kept coming. I dropped the match to the grass. “I found myself yet again drawn to do what I hate, and I—I don’t understand. Maybe I am what I am and can be nothing else. I’ll do terrible things to survive this world.”
“Then I will make you a new one,” Aeric said softly.
“Why would you want to?” My voice was as raw as Aeric’s was gentle, bordering on angry. “Even if you did, would I know how to live in it? I don’t know how to be loved. I don’t know how to change.”
“If you let me”—Aeric hesitated and then persisted—“if you let me, I’d spend a lifetime showing you how to be loved, and even if you never figured out how to let me in, it’d be all right. You could justbeloved with nothing demanded in return.” I stared at him desperately, confused by his kindness, especially after my true nature was revealed. “And as far as change goes, we can attempt to be different. Different than our parents. Different thantheirparents. Likely, we’ll fail over and over again, but eventually, we’ll have changed just enough to have made it far from where we started.”
“I hope so,” I said. From the bottom of my heart, I meant it.
“May I tell you something else?” Aeric asked.
