Page 31 of Those Fatal Flowers

As if summoned by my thoughts, Thomas breaks into our huddle, sliding an arm around Cora’s waist. She beams at his touch, and resentment stirs inside my stomach. Even if herexuberance is only a show to endear herself to him, it still makes me feel things I didn’t expect: possessiveness, jealousy. A darkness flickers across Will’s face as well, but he quickly masks it beneath a smile.

I’m reminded of the same reaction he had at my welcome feast. I thought his displeasure was directed at me, but what ill will could he hold against his sister? Unless…

“Care to join us for a walk, Lady Thelia?” Wenefrid’s voice materializes from behind me, and I turn to find the older woman with Emme in tow. Thomas snorts, and Emme’s expression darkens. Wenefrid acts as though she didn’t hear it, but the slight twitch of her hand at her side reveals that she did.

“Mistress Powell, don’t be sil—” Agnes begins, no doubt intending to chide her about how such an activity is below my rank. But the thought of returning home with them, with Cora as she watches Thomas with that glowing expression, makes my stomach twist.

“I’d love nothing more,” I interrupt, and though Cora opens her mouth in surprise, I link an arm into Emme’s. “Shall we?”

Wenefrid leads us both to the eastern gate. “Fun little secret for you, my lady.” The older woman’s eyes twinkle as she tilts her head up toward the empty post on the palisade. “The guards usually take their time returning to their posts after services.”

“Where are we going?”

“Into the woods,” Emme answers. “Wenefrid’s teaching me how to make bayberry candles.”

Wenefrid clicks her tongue, her features growing dark as she peers into the future that winter threatens. “The way we’re burning through livestock, there soon won’t be any tallow left.”

“Maybe if Sybil Browne would lift her curse from the traps…”

How strange memory is, that a name’s enough to transport you to a different time and place. I’m suddenly curled up at Raidne’s feet, flanked by Pisinoe and Proserpina. Raidne’s perched on an old rocking chair in Proserpina’s palatial room, a large book spread across her legs. It contains the story of Aeneas, and his desire to find his father in the Underworld. In order to reach him, he needed guidance from the Cumaean Sibyl, the only person capable of straddling the lines between the living and the dead.

Trojan, Anchises’s son, the descent of Avernus is easy.

All night long, all day, the dark door of Dis stands open…

But that’s where the story was wrong. We stalked the shores of Lake Avernus for months looking for Proserpina, watching as entire flocks of birds fell dead from the sky into its waters, but Dis’s dark gates never opened for us.

Wenefrid turns on Emme with an admirable fierceness for such an old frame; it takes the younger woman by surprise, but not me. I’m well aware of how far anger can carry an aging body. “Be careful how you speak about other women, Emme. With Sybil cast out, they’ll soon need a new person to pin all our misfortune on.”

Emme swallows hard, scarlet rising to her cheeks. “You’re right, Winny. I’m sorry.”

“Who’s Sybil?”

“She’s a skilled healer,” Wenefrid says. “One this pitiful city desperately needs. Her expansive knowledge of medicinal plants is why she was recruited to come here in the first place.”

“So where is she?”

Emme sighs. “A few days after we first landed, a scouting party reported that they’d seen natives circling the fort. Themen on watch fired shots into the trees but found no bodies. But Mistress Bailie noticed Sybil slipping out of the fort at odd hours and had her followed. She’d found an injured Croatoan man and was nursing him back to health.”

My brows furrow. Did I hear her wrong? “They punished her for helping someone in need?”

“Our laws forbid us from bartering with the natives without explicit approval from the Council. Mistress Bailie said the supplies Sybil used to treat him were equivalent to theft from the colony, and that by healing him, she’d traded those goods without permission. It’s absurd, of course. Everyone knew Mistress Bailie and Sybil didn’t get along. But both theft andbartering are offenses punishable by death. Agnes convinced the Council it was a mercy to simply exile her from the city.”

“That way, if someone is truly sick, they can still beg Sibyl for help.” Wenefrid’s features are pinched with disgust, and she waves a hand in the air to brush the conversation away.

A large, dense shrub appears before us, and we follow Wenefrid’s lead to separate its tiny blue fruits from its serrated leaves until our skirts are filled with them. The process is tedious but far from over. Next, we return to her cottage and boil the berries to coax their waxy finish from the flesh beneath. The concoction is then strained through a cheesecloth to separate the fruit from the liquid. As it cools, a light olive-green wax floats to the top, where it hardens, finally ready for collection. It smells of pine and winter.

“We were friends,” Wenefrid admits as she dips a wick into the remelted wax. “But I still let them chase her out into the woods.”

“Sybil?” I ask softly.

She nods. “Some days, I wish I’d left with her. Now it’s been so long, and I never tried to visit…I was too afraid tofind her when she needed me, and I’m still too afraid to go to her now.”

The admission stokes the embers of my own guilt. Although the novelty of being here allows me to temporarily forget, regret has been my most intimate companion over the course of my long life.

“If no one would punish you for it, would you go to her?”

“Of course,” she answers sadly. “But how could such a thing be possible?”

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