Page 61 of Those Fatal Flowers

Throughout all this, the Waters home remains as silent as a grave.

I try their door three times each day. Once, I’m certain that I catch sight of Cora sneaking a peek from a side window, but, painfully, the door remains closed. I press my palm tothe wood, willing her to speak to me through the barrier. She doesn’t come.

When I return home after today’s final attempt, I find Margery in the kitchen preparing a watery soup. She’s doing her best to flavor it with one of the few remaining bones from a long-dead sheep. Most of the town is eating much worse, if they’re lucky enough to have food gracing their bowls at all. Will I even survive long enough for the weather to turn, or will I starve before then? I take a seat at the table with an audible groan, and Margery looks at me sympathetically.

“She still refuses me,” I say, and Margery doesn’t need to ask me who I am talking about. She’s seen Cora and me grow closer; she’s seen how her absence has me on edge.

“Give her some time, Lady Thelia.” Her voice is kind, tinged with understanding. Every woman here is deeply intimate with catastrophe.

Tears well in my eyes. I know Cora is suffering, but I can’t help but wallow in my own losses as well. I think of our last true conversation, of her breath against my lips.

It seemed impossible that even then, I…

A mere few days ago, the world held more promise than I ever dared wish for, and now those dreams have burned into ash. Margery steps beside me, placing a hand on my shoulder.

“She’ll come around,” she whispers, but there’s an uncertainty in her voice that she can’t quite hide. Margery knows more than anyone how dogged Cora can be when she has her mind set on something. “She just needs more time.”

She’s right, but the sentiment doesn’t bring me any comfort.

“Do you think things would’ve been different if I had listened to you?” It’s a thought that I haven’t been able to shake.

“What do you mean?”

“Before the challenge. You told me to tell Thomas he couldn’t participate—” My voice cracks beneath the weight of my guilt.

Margery’s face crumples. “Oh, Thelia…Who can say? But whatever’s happened to Will, it’s not your fault…”

How many times have I heard those words before? How many times have I said them, more of a plea than a statement, desperate for them to be true?

Fault is a curious thing, too messy to trace. I can tell myself that I alone was not to blame for Proserpina’s abduction—Dis, certainly, bears the bulk of that honor. But does Ceres hold any responsibility for placing the care of her daughter in the hands of three young girls? Or perhaps it’s the fault of the oracle who visited us as girls for not warning Proserpina whose children she’d bear. Better yet, weren’t the Fates the ones to weave her abduction into her destiny, just as they wove my traitorous act into mine?

But all of that feels hollow in the memory of Proserpina’s screams. I was the one who was with her, and I was the one who gave her away. When determining true fault, all you can do is see who has the most blood on their hands, and I’m always covered in gore.

The Bailie home feels more like a prison than Scopuli ever did, with one notable distinction: No magic binds me inside its walls. Despite the cold, instinct draws me to the woods. Thomas will purposefully never find Will, or what’s left of him, and given how confidently he struts around the house when he returns from his patrols, he believes no one else will, either. But this is Thomas’s fatal error: He underestimates me.

And so, every day I leave the safety of the city walls tosearch for clues. Margery accompanies me as often as she’s able, waiting just outside the eastern gate. Cora has made it clear that she wants nothing to do with me, and our circle is too nervous to test her wrath. Margery’s the only one brave enough to defy her, but even she won’t walk beside me inside the palisades.

Which means I mostly explore the woods alone. Even the men don’t stray as far away from the settlement as I do, but there’s little reason for them to: Most have given up trying to catch anything in their traps, and the shadows that gather between the oaks and pines don’t feel like home to them. But they do to me, even though the oaks here have the curious trait of retaining their leaves. Winter has gilded them with hoarfrost, and overhead, branches of all kinds shimmer with delicate, sparkling icicles. When the sun hits them, they glitter just as brightly as Pisinoe’s jewels.

But there’s no sun today, and it makes an already cold day feel even more frigid. My fingers stiffen in the deep winter air until the ache sharpens into pain. I welcome it. This hurt is physical. Manageable, and within my control—at any moment, I can return to the warmth of Margery’s kitchen and end it.

The pain of Cora’s silence has no release.

I’m far enough into the trees now that the settlement’s sounds are lost to me. There’s only the crunch of my boots against hardened snow, and the occasional soft thud when a branch drops its powder collection to the ground.

A large, unfamiliar oak looms ahead of me on the path, signaling that I’ve reached an unexplored area of woods. In the dull afternoon light, the tree’s snarled branches look menacing, as if its arms are raised in warning. My gut tells me to heed it, but how can I? Frosted leaves shiver in the wind as I push forward into this unknown section of the forest.

Go back,they seem to whisper. Immediately, the trees feel wilder and the sky darker. This must be the section of woods that belongs to Sybil Browne. A shiver traces up my spine. Though I have no reason to fear her, when nature flashes its fangs, you should listen. I pull my cloak tighter to my frame to steel myself against the cold and defy every instinct that screams at me to turn back.

After a while, I ponder heeding the warnings, until I smell it. The scent is strange, a petrichor that has soured, a sweetness that masks something sinister. At first, it’s faint enough that I can pretend I’ve imagined it, but it intensifies the deeper I go into the labyrinth of trees.

What could cause such a foul smell? An animal?

It’s too cold for rot to touch an animal’s corpse, and my stomach growls at the idea. A haze of hunger descends, and inside its fog I let myself believe it’s a creature, perhaps even a buck, that the cold air has preserved enough to eat. Margery will be thrilled. For the first time in weeks, Jeremie will sleep with a full stomach.

Fallen branches claw at my wool cloak, as if the forest is begging me to stop. But the idea of fresh meat overpowers whatever internal warning mechanism the smell has activated. The scent is staggering now. It holds more decay inside its profile than before, and a warmth that’s reserved for rotting things. A wave of nausea rolls through my belly, and my hands move to cover my mouth. Then I hear it.

It’s the sound of beak tearing muscle, combined with a slowplip…plip…plip.The trees part to reveal a clearing. Directly before me, hanging from the limb of another ancient oak, is a body. A large, hideous turkey vulture sits on the corpse’s shoulder, and although the bird is obscuring his face, I don’t need to get any closer to know that it’s Will.

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