Page 71 of Those Fatal Flowers

A lump forms in my throat. The men I’ve killed before were all strangers, but Jaquob isn’t. My fists tighten at my sides, forcing away the pleasant memories. If sacrifices were easy, they wouldn’t be called sacrifices. Perhaps that’s why all the others went unanswered—Ceres could sense the offerings were too easy to give. But Jaquob will hurt. Another reason why Proserpina chose him for me, out of all the others.

“Thelxiope.” He beams when he sees me. He sounds like he’s drunk, and in a way, he is, only this time it is on our voices and not on liquor. What future does he envision waits for him inside this cave? Pisinoe leads him into its maw toward the far left wall, where she slips shackles around his wrists and ankles, locking him in place, his body an X. He looks at the irons, eyebrows piqued. “What are these for?”

“Those women,” I begin, knowing that the magic of our song will prevent him from lying. I already have the answer I seek—I feel it in my bones. But I need to hear it from his lips. It will make what I’m about to do easier.

“Who were they?”

He groans, eyes rolling up to the vault of the cave. Even in his current state, he recognizes what he’s about to say won’t be received well. “I knew you would be mad.”

Every single muscle in my body constricts at the admission, so tight that I worry they might split my skin apart. “Who were they?” I ask again, my voice hard.

“Don’t look so upset. They were Iroquoian women who were gifted to us. We’re not barbaric like the Spanish. We were taking them back to France.”

“Not barbaric? They were bound!”

“That was unfortunate, but we couldn’t get them onto the ship willingly. They were too ignorant to recognize the gift they’d been given—the chance to be civilized!”

Revulsion skitters across my skin. His enchanted eyes are bright, pleading—Jaquob desperately wants to believe his own words, to ignore the hypocrisy they carry. He’s trying to reassure himself that stealing the women from their homes, their families, and spiriting them across the sea wasn’t an act of savagery simply because somewhere in the world, the Spanish are treating people worse.

“It was for their own good,” he adds, but his voice wavers. Jaquob knows, deep down, that something inside of him is vile, rotten. And he knows the importance of keeping that part of himself hidden. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have lied to me about their existence.

“You offered them a life in chains and wondered why they refused it. The only fool I see is you.”

“Thelxiope, you don’t understand.”

Rage blazes inside my chest, and I rush forward and grab ahold of his precious relic, the piece of his saint that he wears around his neck. He opens his mouth to protest, but I’ve heard enough. I tear the necklace from his body in one roughtug and throw it to the floor. The golden pendant clinks when it hits the stone, but it doesn’t break. Watching his most prized possession ripped from his chest makes his eyes widen. He calls out to me in alarm, but his words are incoherent.

“Bon Dieu, femme! Pourquoi fais-tu ça?”

I turn my back to him. He continues to babble, his tongue indecipherable. The words, devoid of meaning, wash over me with little effect.

“Let’s begin,” I say.

Raidne and Pisinoe say nothing as they follow me into the farthest recess of the cave to the small pool where salt water collects when the tide recedes. As much as I want to throw myself into its dark halo, to wash the filth of Jaquob’s admission from my skin, there’s an order that must be followed. Raidne doesn’t make me wait. She submerges herself first, taking care to rinse any dirt from her body. Pisinoe follows. I’m the last to be consecrated in this holy water. As I sink below its inky surface, it takes all my strength not to scream into its depths.

Pisinoe waits with a towel when I emerge. We dry our frames; we don our ceremonial garb. We wrap our lower halves in white linen, twisting the fabric around our waists and tying the ends behind our necks. It’s not the traditional style, but the open back leaves room for our wings, so it must do. I place a golden circlet on Raidne’s head. She places one on Pisinoe’s, who in turn places one on mine.

Once we’re dressed, Raidne passes me a pitcher of blackberry wine. I take the clay vessel and step toward Jaquob. Our eyes meet once more. One final test. If he’s meant to live, he will not flinch. He will not bow his head.

I dip my fingers into the sticky dark liquid. They’re instantly stained black, and I pause to look at them. I have played this role countless times, but it feels different as Iraise my hand and sprinkle the droplets onto Jaquob’s forehead. He doesn’t know the significance of the act when he lowers his head to shield his eyes. He doesn’t know our ways, doesn’t understand that he’s now consented to this.

It’s settled. He must die.

Pisinoe begins to beat a makeshift drum, which is no more than a large bowl with a deer hide spread across its breadth. The beat is steady, syncopated, like our pulse, and for the first time in a decade, I feel the blood pumping through my veins. A throbbing begins deep within my stomach, and I’m hungrier than I have been in ages. My body starts to sway. Raidne fans her wings and then I’m fanning mine as well. Our wings fuel the fire, and the smoke billows up through a tiny aperture in the cave’s ceiling before escaping into the moonless sky.

“Thelxiope?” Jaquob tries again, my name the only word I recognize in another garbled sentence. It’s no use. Raidne and I circle the fire, lionesses stalking their prey, faces locked on Jaquob’s. He frowns, his eyebrows furrowed with confusion. My pulse and Pisinoe’s rhythm quicken in sync, and all three of us are swaying, frenzied. The bonfire roars. We three become one: a singular, insatiable beast.

Raidne unsheathes a long blade from its scabbard and approaches Jaquob. This blade, like our butchering tools, has a sole purpose. It gleams in the firelight, its iron edges lusting for blood. The sight of it shatters his reverie, and for the first time since entering the cave, he lets out a long wail. I feel no sympathy. The women he captured float before me. I remember their decaying mouths and rotting fingers. I remember their empty eyes.

He’s no longer Jaquob. He’s a gift to Proserpina. A good one, too.

With a swift and powerful movement, Raidne digs theblade into the skin beneath his ribs and pulls it down to below his belly button, opening him like a present. His scream is shattering, projected by the cave onto the waves.

Entrails spill out of the wound, a dark and tangled gore. With surgical precision, Raidne, our haruspex, slides them through her fingers, checking for imperfections, for bad omens. When she looks up from the intestines with a rare smile upon her lips, I know she’s found no damning messages. Jaquob shrieks, unable to believe this is happening. Raidne hands me the blade.

I approach him one more time, resting a hand on his cheek. He leans his face into my palm, wailing. With my other hand, I place the knife against his throat.

“S’il vous plaît…” he says between sobs. I don’t need to speak his language to understand the meaning.

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