Page 60 of Those Fatal Flowers

My face flushes, and I’m thankful that it’s cloaked in shadow.

“What do you mean?” I try to feign innocence, but I hear the guilt that drips from every word. It paints shame across my features. These past weeks have given me practice at speaking tiny falsehoods and deceits, but I haven’t been confronted so directly. I crumble beneath Pisinoe’s growing anger. Thank gods she found me and not Raidne—her fury would already have me leading her to Jaquob like a dog with its tail between its legs.

“Stop. I know you’re hiding something. That you have been since the wreck. We’ve been waiting for you to come to us, to admit it, but our patience has worn out.”

“What are you talking about?” I squeak. “I’m around every day. I cleaned the wreck; I prepare meals. None of my responsibilities have fallen off. So what if I take a few longer walks in the mornings and afternoons?”

“Don’t. Even when you’re physically with us, your mind is somewhere else. Do you really think we can’t tell?”

“I told you. I’m looking for more clues from Proserpina—”

“And you found something. Now I’m going to finally see what it is.”

“I haven’t!” I try, but it’s too late. In my desperation to goad Proserpina, I let myself believe they couldn’t sense my deception, but of course they could. We’ve spent eons together first learning and then memorizing one another’s rhythms; they’ve known something was wrong since that very first morning. When, exactly, were they convinced? When I refused to go to the pool, or some earlier misstep? Were they able to see that my joy at my younger body was tempered by guilt? And still, out of care for me, they gave me space to lie, even as summer withered into autumn.

But now that well of tolerance has run dry.

Pisinoe pushes past me and begins toward Jaquob’s camp. My heart rises in my throat, and instinct takes over. I grab hold of her arm, but this only fuels her suspicion. She hisses and pulls herself from my grasp, hurling her body farther down the path.

“Pisinoe, wait!” I beg, following behind her, reaching for her wings, clawing at her shoulders, trying to trip her, but she barrels forward like an arrow toward its target. Screaming will draw Jaquob to investigate, and that’s the last thing I want.

She stops when she reaches the edge of the clearing. There, in plain sight, Jaquob sits with his back to us on a fallen log in front of his bonfire. Somehow, he hasn’t heard us approach, and the bottle of liquor at his side reveals why. He’s drunk.

All I can do now is watch in rapt silence as a tragedy unfolds across my sister’s features: First, her mouth slackens, and she blinks rapidly, as if Jaquob is no more than a trick of the light, a bad dream she can banish by refocusing her vision. But he’s no waking nightmare, and Pisinoe’s astonishment quickly deteriorates into disgust as she tallies each lie I effortlessly told. The wide O of her lips curls back into a snarl, and her eyes narrow into slits. Her attention is lockedon him, but I know her bright blue stare has turned to ice—the warmth that she usually radiates is gone. My throat tightens. Even at her angriest, I can usually dig to find a trove of compassion, hot soil buried beneath a blanket of snow. But now she assumes the posture saved for sailors: Her stance widens, her fingers turn to claws. She bares her teeth and draws back her shoulders, and the breath leaves my lungs.

Pisinoe is going to sing.

14

Now

Thomas gathers men to search for Will. They clamber through the streets, banging on doors and shouting among themselves, before finally stomping through the village walls into the wilderness beyond. A somber hush falls over the settlement in their absence, enveloping its buildings in melancholy and whisper.

I stand vigil in the kitchen with Margery, stalking back and forth across the room as I offer silent prayers to gods I know aren’t listening. Margery tries to busy herself with work, but her trembling fingers lose their grip on a large iron pot, and it crashes to the floor.

“God’s blood!” she curses, and my stomach sinks. I’ve barely heard Margery raise her voice, let alone curse.

A series of horrible, heavy booms punctuate the air, joined by frantic cawing as blackbirds undoubtedly flee from their perches in the surrounding trees. The sound is otherworldly, and my mind races to find an explanation for it—Titans? The gods?

Margery sucks in a breath. “They’re firing their muskets.”

“Their muskets?” I parrot, perplexed by the word. I recall the metal weapon that Thomas slung over his shoulder as he left this morning. “What for?”

“Maybe they found an animal. Or”—her face darkens—“maybe the Secotans.” After the first round of shots, the woods fall quiet once more. Somehow, this wretched silence is more agonizing than the volley of musket fire.

The men return under the banner of twilight. Like Margery suspected, Mauris Allen thought he saw a red wolf and tried to kill it. Apparently, the beast evaded not only his weapon, but Thomas’s, Charles’s, and Hugh’s as well.

But they bring no news of Will. There was no evidence of him, and that fact alone is suspicious. His disappearance is too clean, too illogical. There was no reason for him to leave the confines of the palisades at night, though even if he had stumbled drunk through the forest alone, surely there’d be proof of that. Some scrap of clothing snagged on a branch, wafting like a flag in the frigid air. If he’d walked straight into the sea, the waves would have returned his body to shore by now.

I confide my belief of the Bailies’ involvement to Emme, and she hushes me quickly, as if I’ve invited their Lucifer to break bread with us.

“Even if you’re right, nothing will come of it,” she cautions as she pulls me into an alley between two cottages, fearful that the others on the street might have read the accusation on my lips. “The Bailies are too powerful—such a statement will land you in the pillory if you’re lucky. If you’re not, you’ll find your neck kissed by a rope.”

I think of the pillory, the wooden contraption erected on a platform behind the meetinghouse. Intended for public humiliation, the device is little more than a wooden frame atopa post with holes for the punished to place their head and hands. No one has been forced into its clutches since I arrived.

Emme’s warning leaves me restless, disturbed by the knowledge that even if anyone else suspects the Bailies in Will’s disappearance, they won’t breathe a word of it. I must carry this suspicion alone, deep inside me at the base of my stomach, where it agitates to no end. The only way I can keep calm is by imagining my future revenge. After Agnes’s smug observation that Thomas is the next in line for my hand, I know she plans to join him on our trip to Scopuli. A scoutingparty is no place for a lady, but an exception can be made for the mother of Scopuli’s future king. So be it. I won’t stop her. Our vow not to harm women was never explicit, though we also never encountered one like Agnes, who so easily manipulates those around her into facilitating her own ascension.

A patrol of ten men, all Will’s compatriots, spends the following mornings marching up and down the frozen streets under Thomas’s orders, knocking on doors, asking questions. Watching them from my window brings the taste of vomit to the back of my throat. What a waste of time. By his own admission, Thomas was certainly the last to see Will alive, save for perhaps John Chapman, who was too drunk to remember. But this fact is never spoken aloud by anyone. Instead, his cronies perform the charade of grieving friends, forcing their way into people’s homes, demanding answers that only the Bailies have.

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