Page 16 of Of Monsters Of Kings

“Redecorating?” I asked Stag, nodding at the statues.

The three skeletons exchanged a look.

“He sent her away,” Sand Cat said. To all appearances, he was unperturbed by carrying a rotting corpse, but very perturbed by the thought of escorting me within the building to his skull a second time.

Stag answered, “She held my gaze.”

“She held one before.”

“For longer this time.”

I didn’t have the heart or energy to tell them that I’d chosen to look away. I felt that would mean something to them. But that conversation didn’t operate in the confines of the world’s logical rules, either, because while they’d discussed a held gaze at length, they hadn’t discussed the rotting corpse or three-week slumber at all.

Ox unlocked the door. “We’ll take her.”

“We’ve taken her,” Sand Cat griped.

Stag tossed them a smirk. “We take her.”

Ox chuckled, then stopped a little after Stag joined him. Sand Cat relented and laughed with Stag for a time before Ox finished off their chuckle chime.

The matter seemed settled.

Up the stairs we went, just a skeleton crew, a nineteen-year-old woken from a three-week slumber, and her dead mother rolled in a blanket.

They’d redecorated in here too. Along with the statues at the entrance, the railings on the stairs weren’t painted steel any longer. Today, a weave of black metal twigs and branches formed the railing. The vicious ends of the twigs jutted in every direction, their points daring a person to use them.

“Why have a railing you can’t use?” I wondered aloud.

Another exchanged look.

“It’s usable,” said Ox.

My brows rose. “Not without great injury or great care.”

“What’s your point?” Stag inquired.

I fell quiet again, climbing higher as I studied the railing. How did they replace the old one? They must’ve ripped steel from concrete to do so, and I couldn’t see crumbling at the inserts or gaping holes. No dust from the extensive work. People in Vitale didn’t just redecorate on a whim like this. Not even skulls.

“What’s the flower on the railing?” I couldn’t help but ask after another few flights, though I’d resolved to only ask one question and had already asked several.

Sand Cat purred, “Gray lilies.”

Lily? “Lilies were my mother’s favorite. They aren’t lilies.”

Stag paused, and I nearly smacked into his back. “What do you see?”

“Rounded black petals, sepals,” I answered. “A yellow center with many styles and filaments.” While the first eight years of schooling in Vitale were really just childcare to enable adults to work all day, we did learn crucial life skills in that time, along with some reading and numeracy. Much of our learning—both earlier and later on—centered around the sciences of crop production. I’d learned to identify many flowers in that time, including lilies. Just never this one.

Pausing by a cracked window, I drew a likeness of the flower in the dust. “It’s like this.”

Ox’s voice drifted down from the next landing. “Hellebore.”

Stag gestured me ahead of him, and we continued to climb.

Hellebore. I’d never heard of it. Ox had, and yet he didn’t see hellebores on the railing. “Do you not see the hellebores too?”

No answer.

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