Page 69 of Those Fatal Flowers

16

Now

The City of Raleigh, filled with eyes loyal to the Bailies, doesn’t offer many places to hide from Thomas. But the forest does. Now that I’ve discovered their bloody secret, the trees grant their protection, but the comfort I once felt here is gone. These oaks, with their green winter leaves, remind me that I’m an outsider here, haunting the paths created by others. As I explore them, I find myself wishing for a miracle—the gentle curve of a trail opening to my meadow, erupting with lilies.

Instead, in the hush of the late winter woods, I’m granted a different one.

I’ve been spared from Eve’s curse for over two months now. When I first heard the turn of phrase a few days after my arrival, I didn’t understand it, but Cora’s Bible instruction offered the explanation:

I will greatly increase thy sorrows, and thy conceptions. In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thy desire shall be subject to thine husband, and he shall rule over thee.

Incredible that despite the passage of millennia, Cora’s god behaves in the same petulant ways that ours did. They all hate being bested by men, but they absolutely despise being bested by women. Like Jove, her god is laughably self-absorbed. Banishing his children from Eden was the only way to regain control, to ensure unending worship. It was a crafty decision, but it hardly inspires me to look to him for solace.

It seems all gods know that enlightened women are forces to be reckoned with, and that idea trickled down through the centuries. It’s why Cora is the only woman here who can read.

And so they banish us to the domestic realm, but that isn’t enough. Eve’s cursed, after all. Her ability to create life is never regarded as a gift. It’s a punishment, a way to make us ashamed of our achievements, heartbroken over the amazing feats our bodies can achieve.

Women can bear children.

And here, I’m a woman, too. In the safety of the trees, I cradle the swell in my belly, a child too small yet to be noticed by anyone else. The hours pass quickly with fantasies of returning to Scopuli, where there’s no husband to rule my future. Instead, we three will shower her with love and protect her from all the evils in the world. And there are so many evils.

Three weeks after his last visit to my bedroom, Thomas grows tired of waiting. When I wake to the groan of the door creaking open, I know what comes for me.

The chair I’ve propped against it does little to keep him at bay. If anything, the added obstacle only emboldens him as he shoves the weight of his body against the door to push it away. Within the span of a few heartbeats, he’s inside the room, taking in the space through hungry, narrow eyes. Whenhe finds me in my bed, he pauses to see if I’m awake. I keep quiet. Perhaps he’ll leave if he thinks I’m asleep, finding no sport in the act. My silent prayer goes unanswered.

“Ah, there you are.” Though he’s still across the room, the scent of ale hits my nostrils.

“What do you want, Thomas?” I try to keep my voice even, to project strength.

“You know what I want,” he growls, and it’s true. I do. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach. I don’t have the strength to beat him back, and I fear for the child’s life if he gets too rough with me. Instead, I lift the covers in hopes that my compliance will make it go faster.

He grins, a terrible thing to behold, then pulls off his shirt and undoes his trousers. Before I know it, he’s on top of me, lifting the hem of my nightdress to my waist so he can force himself into my most sacred space.

My fingers dig into the flesh of his back. The indignity of it all. If I were truly human, my heart wouldn’t be able to bear this. How he spreads my limbs apart like it’s nothing to invade the root of me, like my body was always just his to use. How could the gods be so cruel, placing our souls inside vessels that so easily crack? But Proserpina was a lesson—the gods are the cruelest of us all.

When it’s over, Thomas collapses on top of me. I feel his grin against my ear, and my fingernails dig deeper. He mistakes my grasp for pleasure, and in a way, he’s not wrong. But what he, this man who didn’t ask, assumes is from his body is actually from the image, a vision, that’s appeared in my mind.

My fingers are no longer fingers; they’re claws. The dark blue ocean unfurls beneath me, where Thomas’s head bobs desperately up from beneath the water only for a wave to force him below once more. Letting him drown is tempting, but no, his sins are too grave to simply allow him to sink intothe depths. That would be a mercy, one Thomas hasn’t earned. Instinct takes hold, and I dive for him. Talons meet flesh, piercing the skin and digging deep into his muscle. He screams as his body splits apart, and saltwater rushes into his open mouth, as if even the sea is tired of hearing his voice. With a single thrust, I heave him from the waves, and we begin rising, rising, rising, until we’re a silhouette against the sun.See my strength,I think.It was here this whole time.

He pulls out of me, and when he does, his eyes rush over the nakedness of my lower half, his conquest. He smiles. This final act of injustice seals his fate. In my vision, I let go. His body falls like a stone.

My body quakes with pleasure as I watch him shatter upon the cliffs.

The fifth full moon graces the sky, and I pray for spring. There’s nothing else that can be done, no more preparations that can be made until the weather turns. But though each passing day loosens winter’s jaws around our necks, its last weeks don’t leave the city unscathed. The day-to-day tedium is punctuated with a staccato of deaths as Morta’s shears sever thread after thread. Though most of the souls she calls to the Underworld belong to the city’s poorer settlers, the wealthy aren’t immune—Cora’s father is among them.

I agonize over her dramatic reversal of fortune. Without abrother, a father, or a betrothed, she’s all alone here. It’s a dangerous position for a woman to find herself in, and I feel useless in the face of a world that continues to take from those I love. When will their sacrifices finally be enough? Ithink of our years banished. I think of Job from Cora’s Bible.

I have my answer.

Losing Cora severs me from the rest of the women, save for Margery. Even Emme keeps her distance, unable to reconcile what I’ve stolen. Margery is kind when I encounter her preparing meals in the kitchen or hanging laundry on the line outside, but her days are filled with chores, and she doesn’t need me following her around like a fawn on its mother’s heels. She’d never admit as much, but I notice how her muscles tense in my presence. Despite the time we spend together, she still sees me as royalty, and she can’t fully relax when I am around. It hurts, but I remember what it felt like to stand before Ceres. There was such incredible beauty in her power, but that same power also sparked fear: One misstep could lead to an eternal exile, to a monstrous metamorphosis. I was right to be afraid of her, and Margery is right to be afraid of me.

I hoped Thomas’s appetite would be sated for a few weeks, but I’m barely granted one before he forces his way into my bedroom again. This time, I’m keenly aware of the blood coursing through the artery on his neck. Its pulsing is a clock counting the seconds of my violation. My eyes trace its trail to the place on his shoulder right above where his clavicle protrudes. The muscle there is flexed as he holds himself over me, and without thinking, I run a finger along the seam I’d cut if he were one of our sailors. What does he look like underneath his skin? What does he taste like?

I lift my head from the mattress and press my mouth to that quivering muscle. Thomas vibrates with pleasure. My lips part so that my teeth can find his skin, and I revel in the soft moan that escapes him, in the fact he has no idea what’s coming.

I clamp my jaws down as hard as I can.

The moan cracks into a scream, and his keenly attuned self-preservation instinct tries to retreat from my grasp. But Ibite harder, my hands snaking around his sides so my fingernails can claw into the flesh on his back. Only once I taste hot, slick copper on my tongue do I release him, and my head hits the pillow with a contented sigh. Thomas stares down at me in shock, unsure of what to make of my bloodstained lips, my gory smile. He can’t know that I’m imagining what he’ll taste like cooked into one of Raidne’s stews, but I am, and the thought makes me laugh. This time, he doesn’t linger in my bed to gloat. For the first time in this body, I feel a surge of power as he scurries from my quarters to lock himself back in his own.

---