Page 96 of Grave Flowers
Left, right, up or down!
Let me use a roundabout so I may in right time be found.
I saw Aeric standing on the palace steps with a wine bottle in the moonlight. Staring at me as I descended into the court party. Kissing me with no fear or guise or deceit when it was all around us, all around me. There were … there were things I still wanted to say to him. Things I wanted to know about him. Things I wanted him to know about me. Father and Inessa would insist it didn’t matter. They would declare that my heart was weak, that I was weak and always had been.
But I wasn’t so certain, not anymore.
Perhaps love—or whatever emotion I felt right now—wasn’t weakness. Perhaps it was the most powerful thing in the world. Otherwise,how would anything explain this? Death tried to claim my enemy, but I wished to save him. Such a mystery would perplex me forever, I sensed, but I would happily spend a lifetime wrestling with it because it would mean there was something somewhere to gently sweep the dark away.
I shouldn’t say a roundabout. Not when Inessa might use it against me. But it was the only thing I had to save Aeric. I whispered, “Left, right, up or down! Let me use a roundabout so I may in right time be found.”
My scar flared on my hand. Pain riddled it. Once again, something moved within it, swimming beneath the skin. I clutched it with my other hand. Whatever it was, it was much bigger than anything that had surfaced from it before. It pushed against the scar, reaching through its seams, finding the spongy parts to slip through. A bizarrepopresounded across the stage. Thin green tendrils burst from the scar, dripping with my blood. Grave flowers. Growing from inside my hand. They blossomed, translucent petals opening like lips. I recognized them from Inessa’s description.
Immortalities.
A crash followed. Spiderwebs of cracks fractured along the theater wall, leading to the ceiling. They splintered their way across the ceiling and tore the brass stars off.
White roots slithered through the cracks, thin and stringy. They reached about and felt their way along the ceiling. More and more appeared, and with a final crash, part of the ceiling fell away in a crescendo of dust, broken beams, and mortar. Petals rained down into the theater, bringing the dense scent of grave flowers. A rush of wind gusted through the theater, and then the grave flower from Inessa’s chambers dropped. It pushed itself across the theater seats with its roots and scuttled onto the stage.
The doors to the theater flew open. The head general and the guards had heard the tremendous crash. Their eyes widened at the sight. Before they could rush in, a bright gray light burst across the stage nextto me. I was knocked off my feet. My breath was punched viciously from my lungs at the impact. Disoriented, I held up my hand, trying to see.
The ball of gray light took a shape—a rectangle, almost the exact size and height of a door. Fog, driven by a furious wind, circled inside it. Dark shapes approached from afar. Grave flowers. Ones I’d never seen before. They poured out of the opening and formed a thicket around the stage, blocking out the head general and guards.
Some of the grave flowers had buds like mouths with snapping teeth and were covered in spikes. Others had human hands for leaves, ears for petals, and eyeballs for pistils. They were bizarre colors I’d never known existed, ones I could never describe, odd mixes going beyond iridescent into another glowing category.
A figure in a red dress approached from within the opening. It reached the threshold and disappeared. The grave flower from Inessa’s chambers twitched and tremored. Slowly, delicately, its petals unfolded.
Inessa lay inside, and she sat up, blinking.
She was as I’d known in her life. Healthy, alive, and very much not a ghost. She clambered out of the grave flower and stretched. I rose to my feet and quickly crossed to stand near Father, lest Inessa see me by Aeric’s unconscious form and realize what I’d done.
“I’ve missed this body,” she declared. Her voice was scratchy. She coughed and cleared her throat. She put her hand on her chest and smiled triumphantly. “My heart is beating.” Her hands traveled to explore her other features. Delight filled her face as she touched her nose. She looked around. “What’s happened? I’m … on a stage? Did you—did you say the roundabout invocation?”
“I did,” I gasped. “I found it in your journal.”
“You read my journal?” Inessa scowled. “I’ve told you to stay out of my things.” She stalked around the stage, peering at Prince Lambert, Aeric, and Father. She knelt by Father. “You look well.”
“I feel well,” he choked out. His face already held the pallor of death. “You found a way back?”
“I’ve been in Bide this whole time, of my own volition. I ate a flower berry but also secretly mixed in a poisonous leaf that made me look as though I were having an allergic reaction. I had to go without a nose for a bit, but now I’m back!” Inessa picked up her skirts and swept into a curtsy, a remarkably fitting posture, since we were onstage. “It’s been the perfect plan.”
“Clever girl,” Father murmured. “Do you have any way to save me?”
Inessa approached him and knelt. She touched his arm. “No,” she said simply. “But put your mind at ease. The Sinet house shall prevail now that I’ve returned.”
“I am certain it shall,” Father said. “In your hands, our throne will be stronger than ever.” Even as Father died, he thought of power. I glanced down at my hands. I’d never been the daughter he wanted. It stung, one parting hurt from him. “Do a dying king a favor—let me sleep quicker, Inessa. A man like me needs to either be dead or alive.”
“Shush,” Inessa said. “Rest.”
Father looked around, his gaze passing over me. I wondered if he missed the smell of salt in the air or the richness of the grave flowers he’d always hated. He squinted, as though trying to see through fog.
“I’ve always wondered if my ghosts would come to my death,” he said. “I’ve killed so many. But I don’t see them. Not a one. Perhaps they’ve …”
A puff of air forced itself from his lips. Startlement passed through his eyes, even though he’d asked Inessa to release him. His face and body slackened together, and he dropped limply down. Never had I seen him so still.
Inessa stood. She tossed her dagger aside, its blade red with Father’s blood at his own request. Blood slowly pooled around him. I stepped back but not in time. It stained my slippers.
“So, Sister, you said the roundabout invocation all on your own.” Sharply, her gaze cut between Aeric’s limp body and Father’s corpse. “By the Family, you said it for Aeric, didn’t you?”
