Page 19 of Petals for Vicious Secrets

Hope took a step forward and looked at the roses in front of her, and then she saw it. She saw her name elegantly written in dark green ink ink on a petal of a beautiful blood-red rose.

Hope Nevada

Traders around Hope showed recognition on their faces as they read their names on the petals or stems of their respective flowers. Some villagers grabbed theirs and started moving across the crowd to leave. The crowd was pressing around the Table, everyone eager to find their assigned rose.

Hope couldn't see her mother or Nina from where she stood. People around her were bending to get their own.

A teenager on the other side of the Table looked at his rose from a very short distance and frowned. He went to remove a petal of the flower.

He vanished at the same moment the petal left the rose. Completely gone, flower with him, as if he never had stood there. A young woman who had stood next to him screamed, wide-eyed and fear in her eyes as she looked around to see where he'd gone.

It is imperative that you partake of this gift in privacy, the voice had said. Hope felt anger rising inside her.

The teenager was gone. Gone. Because he hadn't listed to the Rulers' cardinally stupid conditions.

Hope carefully placed her rose inside her cloth bag. She was expecting its petals to bend or even break in pieces as soon as she wrapped it as best as she could, but the rose didn't seem to break at all. It looked as perfect as it had on the table. Suspiciously perfect. Which reminded her of...

Hope looked at one side of the Table. She saw a head full of white hair moving between the people and felt a small bit of relief at locating Nina in the crowd.

They reached the treehouse in silence, but Hope didn’t place her dagger in her belt until the three of them were inside. She had noticed the tension on her mother’s shoulders and neck all the way through the woods. And how she didn’t leave the daggers at any moment. Nina, walking behind Hope, hadn’t barely made any noise either, just the movement of some rustling leaves here and there. Mother and daughter moved like silent gazelles in the woods, thanks to all the years of practice and preparation they had endured. But they didn’t find anyone on the long way home. Or anything.

Nina sighed, sitting on a chair, and leaving her bag on the oval table. “What the Fifth was that Trading about?”

Aurora walked towards the table and opened her bag, taking her yellow rose out. “I have two theories. I don’t know which one I like less.”

“And they are?” Hope asked as she took her own rose to inspect it. It didn’t look like any rose she had ever seen. It looked much more sturdy, perfect and special. As if the flower had its own characteristics.

“One is that the Rulers are extremely bored in Thyria and they want to play with Verdania’s villagers. Which would mean trouble after trouble because believe me when I say the minds of those people are not in the right place,” Aurora said, and Nina nodded vigorously at the last bit. Aurora continued, “They are sick and evil, and if they want entertainment… That will not end well for us.”

If one thing Hope had learned in her life was that the Rulers, and anything related to them, were meant to be feared. Her mother had told her countless times that fear was a feeling that she had to learn to overcome and live with, not a feeling that would lead to paralysis or subordination. Yet, a beautiful display of roses was not exactly fearful. Even with that teenager disappearing in the middle of the Trading because he hadn’t obeyed the voice’s rules.

“And the other theory?” Hope asked impatiently.

“The other,” Aurora swallowed and continued in a quieter voice, “Is that a Ruler wants to communicate with someone here.”

Hope didn’t understand why the Rulers would want to say something to someone discarded, and why would they go through all the fuss of making a Trading like today’s in order to say whatever they had to.

As if reading the impatience in Hope’s eyes, her mother headed towards the bedroom and said, “Let me check mine out first.”

In case it’s poisoned, or I vanish, Hope knew she thought. But she knew there was no point in arguing with her to take the first place. No way in all the Cardinals would her mother allow Hope to risk her life for her.

Aurora closed the curtain between both rooms, and silence followed.

For a moment Hope feared she would have vanished exactly as that teenager had, the Fifth knew where. But a second later her mother appeared, with her nostrils flared, tearful eyes and pale face. She sat down in the free chair. Hope noticed her mother was clenching her fists.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

Aurora nodded, looking at a spot on the oval table. She slowly opened one of her fists and revealed a small paper note. A handwritten note with dark green ink. Hope picked it up swiftly and read it.

It's time.

Time for what?

“I’ll go next,” said Nina. The worry increasing in Hope’s chest was about to break some record.

Instead of silence, this time Hope heard a surprised gasp on her friend’s throat. Nina entered the room almost running, despite only a few meters of distance between them. She held a square of rusted paper in her hand. Nina laid it flat on top of the oval table. It was a map of Thyria: the four petals marking the delimitations of each House, with the central circle uniting them all. The same shape they had seen at the cave, symbol of the Rulers. The same shape that apparently panoms bore on their skins.

Nina put a finger on top of a spot marking the West Petal, and tears started pouring out of her eyes. And then Hope saw it: right in the middle of the West House, next to a small cross, there was an even smaller name handwritten in dark green ink.

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