Page 62 of Those Fatal Flowers

The vulture lifts its head to appraise me with large goldeneyes. She’s already consumed Will’s, leaving behind two bloody voids that find me. But the worst part is his stomach. Someone has carved him open, leaving his intestines to spill out onto the snow. Pink ribbons, all tangled together in a heaping pile at the base of his feet, and although this scene should be familiar, it makes me want to retch. No one here practices haruspicy; only hate could drive someone to desecrate his body like this.

“Oh, Will,” I whisper. “What happened to you?”

Having decided I’m no threat, the vulture burrows her hideous, bloodstained beak back into Will’s neck. A primal growl rises in my throat as I rush forward. She raises her huge black wings, not unlike my own, and unleashes a hiss meant to ward me away, but she’s calculated wrong—Iama threat, and I grab a large stick from the ground to prove it. One violent swing through the air is all it takes for her to decide that Will’s body isn’t worth dying over. She’s a scavenger, after all. She takes to the sky, leaving Will and me alone.

A low wail rises from my gut and spills out from my lips. Will’s body swings gently from the force of the vulture’s ascent, his toes just barely caressing the red snow beneath him. The sight is so like the sailors I processed on Scopuli’s shores; the only difference is that this exact shade of gore now paints snow instead of sand.

My stomach growls. My mouth waters.

Once again, my hand is at my lips, although this time I’m not sure if it’s to prevent myself from retching or from drooling. Disgust and shame flood every part of me, and I turn away from Will. His shocked expression feels accusatory, as if he knows what my body, what my instinct, wants to do with him.

“This is Will!” The words come tumbling out in a desperate scream. But hearing them hang in the ice-chilled air isn’twhat makes the salivating stop—it’s that violent open gash across his midsection, the source of the fetid smell. His bowels are torn; the meat is spoiled. Instinct sorts him into the pile for burning. Hot tears pool in my eyes, and I rub them away with the backs of my hands.

Gods, I really am a monster.

I move to the rope tied around the oak’s trunk that keeps Will suspended. It feels like hours before I’m finally able to undo its knot, and when I do, he crashes into the snow. Another horrid, wretched sound tears from my throat. I wish it had its magic—the sorrow it carries would bring down the sky.

I nestle down beside him. His face, the face that holds so much of Cora, is mottled blue and purple, and I blink back tears as images of sailors twisting on the end of my rope flash before me. Will suffered the same fate, a realization that makes my hands shake. Ice crystals cling to his dark hair, and to his eyelashes, which still ring those hollow eyes. A bloated, blackened tongue hangs limp between his lips. Everything about his appearance is an affront to how he looked in life.

My fingers move to brush a tendril of hair behind his ear, and I place my head to his stiff chest, hoping against reason to find what I know I will not. No heartbeat drums, and my tears break free at this final injustice. The cold turns them to ice against my face.

The sun has fallen below the tops of the trees, and the temperature with it. I should go back, but the thought of leaving Will like this makes the tears come harder. Even in my dreams, I never turn around to help Proserpina. I can’t abandon another person I care about to the darkness, and Cora needs to know—oh, gods. This will destroy her.

“Get out of here, girl.” An unfamiliar voice cuts through the glen, as gnarled as the oak that held Will.

My head jerks from his chest to search the ring of treesthat encircles me, but I can’t find the source. It’s as if the woods themselves are speaking, ancient and all-seeing, though I know who the voice belongs to.

“Sybil?” I ask, pushing myself to my feet. “Sybil Browne?”

“If they find you with him, they’ll blame you for this savagery.”

“I could never—” The sentence dies in my throat, because of course I could.

I did.

Not Will specifically, no, but how many countless others? Did they have lovers they never returned to, who always wondered what fate they met, assuming the worst but never able to guess the true horror of it?

If Will had been on one of those boats, I would have killed him. Who knows how many Wills died at my hands. The thought is so disturbing that I let out another anguished wail as Sybil emerges from the trees. She’s tiny, her face hidden beneath the shadow of her cloak.

“No need for that. I know it wasn’t you.”

“So you saw who did it, then?” My eyes are frantic now. “Was it Thomas Bailie?”

“It was a man, that’s all I know. I heard him laughing.” She tips her head to Will. “But by the time I got here, he was gone.”

Grief sharpens into fury, an emotion I’m far more comfortable wearing. “He lured Will here on purpose. To do this.”

“No one ventures here unless they have good reason.”

“Because of you.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t leave him.”

“You must. How would it look, you dragging him back into town? Do you think they’ll believe you had nothing to do with his death?”

Of course they wouldn’t. It’s painfully clever, and equally devastating. Thomas hid his treachery in plain sight, knowing that I, with my frequent forest venturing, was the only one likely enough to find it. When he led the search parties, all he had to do was avoid an area of the woods that everyone already avoided. Either his secret would remain safe or I would dig my own grave by trying to return Will’s body to the City of Raleigh.

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