Page 9 of Those Fatal Flowers
“The six of us who govern this colony.”
“I’m coming with you. I want to explain—”
Thomas holds up a hand to silence me, then extends it to Mistress Bailie for the letter. “No need, Lady Thelia. Everything we need to know is right here.”
“But—”
“There will be plenty of time for business. Relax today, and ready yourself for a celebration tonight.”
I don’t have time to protest before Thomas is gone.
“A princess!” Mistress Bailie’s voice slices through the air. “I can hardly believe our luck.”
“I understand this must be strange,” I offer, this time my tone a little kinder. I allow a shred of vulnerability to coat my words, trusting that she’ll latch on to it as something she canmanipulate. Antagonizing her, while tempting, would be a mistake. If I push her too far, too quickly, she’ll gladly lock me away. “It’s been an extraordinary couple of weeks for me as well.”
“I can only imagine,” she responds measuredly. “Given what you’ve been through, you should return to your room and rest. Tonight will be a big night.”
I look behind me to the kitchen, to the door that offered such a tantalizing promise: the flash of pomegranate lips, the spark of green eyes. “I’d really love to see more of the city—”
“Absolutely not, my lady. After the journey you’ve had, you must gather your strength.” The words alone are friendly enough, but I hear the secret meaning layered beneath them:You won’t cause me any trouble. Do you understand?
Back in the safety of my quarters, I pull a chair to the window. If I can only search for her through this small aperture, then so be it; I’ll do it.
The slightest movement above its frame catches my attention. A tiny spider weaves a web in the corner of the ceiling. Her movements are delicate, as if it’s yarn she spins and not a net. She looks like her sisters on Scopuli, and in this strange new place, her familiarity is reassuring. I smile. I’ve always admired the gracile beauty of their spindle legs, the plump roundness of their bodies. I’ve always admired their cunning.
I’ve seen humans recoil from spiders, disturbed by their craft. They’ve tricked themselves into believing there’s no honor in how these arachnids feed themselves, building traps and lying in wait, but they never bother to analyze their own actions through the same lens. After all, they eat animals bred too docile to ever imagine death at their hands. Where’s the honor in that?
I admire the spider’s ingenuity, and perhaps envy it a little. As a predator myself, I feel like its method is divine, as ifwhatever lands in its web was destined to end there. Then again, we must have seemed divine—no, profane—to those we lured to shore, with the voices of angels and the bodies of monsters.
The divine, the profane. They’re two sides of the same coin.
The marble hall of Ceres’s throne room is barren, save for the boughs of dead poppy stalks that still adorn its walls. Their petals, once red as blood, collect in decaying piles along the hall’s edges. No new blooms have grown these past few weeks to replace them, and Ceres refuses to take them down. The flowers’ shriveled corpses serve as a reminder of what was lost.
What I lost.
I swallow hard, risking a glance to Pisinoe beside me. I’ve never seen the hall like this, so devoid of life, so solemn. This place that has always been a joyous one, where music constantly plays, and ambrosia always pours. But without Proserpina, it’s a tomb.
The Lady of Grain perches on her golden throne, and my sisters and I drop to our knees before her, folding our wings to our backs and pressing our foreheads to the cool marble floor in submission. My face flushes hot with shame.
“Well?” Her voice reverberates through the hall’s columns. It’s laced with anger, yes, but also the smallest dash of hope—that’s what brings the tears to my eyes.
“We couldn’t find her,” Raidne begins.
“We scoured the earth; we spanned the sea…” Pisinoe continues.
It’s up to me to deliver the final blow. “But she’s…she’s gone.”
We moan in turn, telling the entire tale together, one picking up when another fails. Our voices are a song, its tone silvery, tiny bells caressed by a gentle breeze. We pour our heartbreak into it, but, though it may win us some sympathy among Ceres’s court, it does nothing to soften the lady’s anger.
“You three had one task, and that was to protect her. And when you failed, I gave you a chance to redeem yourselves by finding her.” Rage brings her to her feet, and my eyes fall closed as I steel myself for what’s to come. She’s already cursed the land—entire fields of crops lost to blight, both men and livestock murdered in fits of rage. How quickly the giver of life can take it all away.
“And now you grovel before me having failed again.”
“We went to Lake Avernus, my lady, but the door to the Underworld wouldn’t open for us—” Raidne begins, but Ceres cuts her off with a cruel laugh.
“How is it that mortals are constantly wandering into Dis’s realm, but you three can’t find your way in? Not that it matters now. That vile god tricked my sweet child into eating from his garden. Six pomegranate seeds, and now not even Jove can bring her back to me.”
My hands press back into the marble floor to steady me as the world begins to spin.