Page 47 of Petals for Vicious Secrets

Hope had a clear memory engraved in her mind. In her heart. A memory a few months after she went to hunt for food for the first time. Of looking at her own hands and wrists and poking at the meat in them. The meat, instead of the shape of the bones, peaking through her skin.

And it might have been there and then, when she realized she didn't need anyone to survive. It might have been there and then, when she realized that waiting for other people to act was a waste of time and a risk to her own life. It might have been there and then that she realized she could do anything. She could fight the world by herself. And no one and nothing could stop her.

And even if Hope would say she was hungry now, sitting on an empty crate in the roofless cellholt that had been taking them to Thyria for over four weeks, this was a different type of hungry. It was a I'd like some food hungry, not a I'm going to actually die here if I don't eat hungry.

“Recount finished,” Jessica said from the middle of the cellholt, and everyone quieted for her to continue, dread already set in many faces. “You want the bad or the worst news first?”

“Fucking Llunal,” Aridian said, covering his head with his hands from where he sat next to Nina and Hope. Many other courtrades echoed alternative swearings.

“On with it, Jess,” Marcus ordered, frowning. “Worst first, so we think we are not so fucked when we hear the bad ones.”

“Almost three quarters of the food we have left has worms inside,” she gagged as she said so, intentionally avoiding looking at the rear of the cellholt where a pile of bags with multiple knots sat.

“How did that happen?” Marcus’ voice was sharp as a knife.

Jessica turned her serene face to him, her eyes narrowing as if she was trying to figure out whether he was trying to blame her for this. “How would I fucking know, Marcus?”

“You were the one responsible for sorting out the subsistence for this mission.” Marcus crossed his arms over his dark clothes. “Were you not?”

Jessica’s lips were a thin line, and her eyes still narrowed, looking at Marcus. She nodded quietly, her expression becoming more angry as each second passed.

“That was a question,” Marcus insisted in the middle of the silent courtrades. “Were you not the responsible for subsistence and therefore the one who should know precisely why the fuck we have fucking worms in our fucking food?”

“You can shove all your fucks and fuckings up your ass, Marcus,” Jessica spat, not backing down. “That right there is your fucking problem.”

Aridian said quietly next to Hope, “Here we go again.” Hope didn’t need to see him to know he was rolling his eyes. But only Nina and she seemed to have heard him.

Jessica continued, “You always rely on the shadows, telling you every single thing before you make any decision. Before you make all your big plans. But they don’t know everything, Marcus. They don’t always get it right. Life happens. Mistakes happen. You can’t plan your life based on whispers of night. You sometimes have to take a risk.”

Marcus inhaled sharply, his fists tightening in his still crossed arms. Hope wasn’t sure if there was a hint of hurt in his eyes. He said, “My fucking problem right now is that I have twenty-five people to feed, and no food to do so.”

Jessica put a strand of blond hair behind her tan ear. “As a matter of fact, you do. If you could have resisted the urge to spill your blaming shit on me, I would have already told you the bad news.” She turned to face the courtrades around her, Nina, Aurora and Hope sitting amongst them.

“There are four rations of food per person, and we have four days left until we reach the vessels underneath Corentre,” Jessica explained, and lifted her eyebrows with intent as she added, “Be thankful that we found out before we ate everything edible, so at least we won’t be semi unconscious by then.” And with that, she stormed into the changing room of the cellholt. One of the very few spaces that provided any privacy in this place.

Nina did not need any reminder to think about her brother. Hope saw it in her face every single time she was staring outside the cellholt, the unavoidable frown in her pale face. It might have been the fact that Jessica had mentioned being semi unconscious, or simply that they were four days away of finally reaching the island her brother was in.

“I can’t believe we will be in Thyria so soon,” Nina said, putting one hand atop the other and stroking her own thumb. “When I was discarded, I never thought I would see it again.”

Hope made space for her friend on the blanket she was on the floor. Nina sat next to her, both looking at the blue waters behind the glass walls of the cellholt and the vessels.

“You never told me,” Hope said as she finished polishing one of many blades. “How you did you get yourself discarded but not killed?”

Nina half-smiled. “I was caught short, to be honest. The Organ’s heir sometimes visits the Houses to discard beings, so I waited for him to pay one of his visits to the West House and I stole something from him.”

Hope’s eyebrows lifted. “Stealing from the Organ House’s heir?” She chuckled. “I didn’t take you for a thief.”

“Well, I am not a good one, and that he caught me before I even started proves it,” Nina clarified.

“What did you want to steal?” Hope asked.

“The servants he brings always carry his belongings. I wanted to find a compassom, to make it harder for him to know who to discard,” Nina explained. She exhaled deeply before adding, “Even though, knowing his reputation, he would have probably ended up killing the people, or discarding twice the amount of people he had doubts about instead. So maybe it was a good thing that I never got my hands on one.”

Hope waited for her to continue, so Nina did. “He found me poking around in the guest rooms he always used. He had returned sooner than I had expected him to. I think he had forgotten something. Or he just knew someone was there.” She shrugged. “With panoms, it’s difficult to tell which things are just a coincidence.”

“What did he do when he saw you?” Hope asked.

Nina swallowed. “He asked why a moon-haired sweetheart was lost in his rooms,” she said, tensing. “He said something about a Cardinals’ attempt at blessing his night. For a moment, I thought he was going to… force me. Into pleasing him.” Nina swallowed and Hope felt the skin on her spine tense. “But he looked at me and he laughed, telling me he wasn’t interested in low beings. He told me he would make me pay for treason to the Organ House. And that the payment was going to be my life.”

---