Page 71 of Grave Flowers
My thoughts dashed apart.Take her place.What did he mean?Marry him?Didn’t he remember our agreement? Radix didn’t wish to be a vassal. It was the whole point of our allyship.
“It’s the only option. Once you wed Aeric, you must kill him, as planned. Then you will wed me.”
“I—Why?”
“There’s nothing to fear.” Prince Lambert almost seemed to speak to himself. Queen Getrude had been his strength. Without her, he floundered, even as he plotted. He was stunned, grieving, and scared, all at once. “Your former marriage to the crown prince will add legitimacy to my claim to the throne.”
A tiring yet terrifying familiarity came over me. Everyone treated me like wine, expecting me to assume the shape of whatever vessel I was poured into from one cup to the next, never knowing which cup it might be or who tipped it one way or another. The more I tried to control my life, the more others swept in to do so instead.
“I’m honored by the proposition,” I said carefully. “But my father would never agree to such a thing. I am his only heir. I must return to Radix and, after he passes, rule.”
“You have less power than you think, Princess.” Prince Lambert’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not proposing marriage. I’m commanding it. Gertrude always loathed Claudius’s small ambitions and wished he would expand. Now I can make her dreams come true so her brilliance may live beyond the grave. Marrying you will grant me control over Radix in addition to Acus, making us truly preeminent over Crus and Pingere. From now on, I must be your only alliance, your only plan—not your father, or your Family-forsaken kingdom, or anyone else. You’llconvince your father to accept the marriage. Or, if he refuses, use your secret grave flower poison and kill him.” Convince Father or kill him? I listened in dismay, unraveling where I stood. “I shall give you good reason to comply.” He reached into his pocket. “Decima, your former lady-in-waiting, talks often with her cousin, Sindony, and had much to tell me about you.”
I’d never known Decima and Sindony were from the same house. All the improperly fashioned buns, too-tightly laced dresses, and hair-iron burns weren’t clumsiness or inexperience—they were subtle revenge because I’d fired Sindony’s cousin. I let out a breath of shocked annoyance.
Swiftly, Prince Lambert grabbed my wrist. I let out a cry of alarm. A small round object bit into my palm, digging deep into my skin. “Sindony told Decima that you converse with the owner of this constantly.”
He released me. I looked down.
Yorick’s pin.
The one I’d left in Luthien’s grave in case I needed to blame someone for Luthien’s death. I almost threw it down, as though I might free myself by doing so. Somehow, it had resurfaced, a buried secret seeking the light, seeking discovery. The starvelings, still too young to properly function, must have shuffled it to the surface of the dirt as they devoured Luthien’s body. Their acid clung to the metal and stung my skin.
I needed to use the pin against Yorick as I’d planned. It didn’t seem like Prince Lambert knew about Luthien’s death. But Sindony had told him I was seen often with Yorick. If I didn’t do what he said, Prince Lambert could accuse me of conspiring with Yorick against the Acusan crown. The court was wary and torn about replacing Aeric with Prince Lambert, but when it came to me, an inferior Radixan princess, they’d execute me easily, no true evidence needed.
I knew what I had to do.
Betray Yorick and make Prince Lambert think Yorick had pursued me to advance himself and threatened my well-being if I didn’t obey.
But simply saying it wouldn’t be enough. Prince Lambert wouldn’t believe me. I’d need to prove it. I’d have to tearfully ask Prince Lambert to arrest Yorick for manipulating me and testify to it in court. The best I could do for Yorick was ensure he had a skilled executioner. I closed my hand around the pin. I didn’t want to see it, not as I betrayed the boy who had worn it, who’d danced with me, who had been my first true friend.
Yet, even as my mind spun with solutions, I knew something, just as strongly as I knew I stood in a dress picked for me with care by Yorick. It wasn’t that I couldn’t betray him. I could. My Sinet blood and sense of self-preservation writhed through me. But I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t betray him. And there was a difference betweencouldn’tandwouldn’t,a difference that didn’t feel like the weakness I loathed.
“Yorick is a friend,” I said, and I was surprised at how calm I sounded. “Nothing more. Nothing less. Perhaps he lost the pin on a stroll.”
My fingers loosened around Yorick’s pin and opened, revealing it. It sat in my palm like a petal on the surface of a pond. I didn’t regret my choice because it meant I had one, that I wasn’t simply wine poured into cups or a soul driven only by instinct and survival. For once, I’d decided to do something purely because it was right.
Prince Lambert was deathly still. Then he lashed out. He smacked the pin out of my hand. It pinwheeled across the ground. He grabbed my arm. Yanking hard, he jerked me to him. I steeled myself, resolve giving way to panic, certain he would accuse me of conspiring with Yorick.
“You’re as mad as they say,” he said. I stared blankly up at him. He thrust me against the bench, and I collapsed onto it, gripping the head of the arrow piercing the heart to steady myself. “I heard the rumors on the night you arrived and danced alone in front of the court. Most said they were stunned by your skills, but it struck me as amiss. Then Decima asks Sindony about you, and she says you seek the shadows and send everyone out of your chambers. She says she hears you speakingto your dead sister through the door. I thought it might be grief. But then she also hears you speak to Yorick. She’s seen you walk through the garden, arm in arm with the air. That you’ve rested your head on nothingness.”
A wave of shock claimed me. Every thought my mind tried to form was torn apart.
“What—what do you mean?”
“You speak to the dead jester.”
“The—thedeadjester?”
“Yorick.” Prince Lambert stood over me. “He was found in the fountain shortly before you arrived. He’d drunk himself into oblivion, drowned, and since no one claimed his body, he was buried in the common grave.”
Yorick … dead? But—but I saw him. Spoke to him. So did everyone else—didn’t they? Our encounters ran through my mind. I’d danced with him at the ball and—and—the next day, Sindony had said,The way you danced … everyone is talking about it. It seemed to defy gravity. You looked like you walked on air.
More. There was more. When Yorick asked me to dance, he said,You’ll dance with no one.I shook my head. I clung to the bench like a drowning soul. But nothing could save me from this truth.
Yorick was a ghost, a shade, a spirit absent of its flesh and bone.
Just like Inessa.
