Grave Flowers Excerpt by Candlewick / Holiday House / Peachtree

GRAVE LOWERS

AUTUMN KRAUSE

Published by Peachtree Teen

An imprint of PEACHTREE PUBLISHING COMPANY INC.

1700 Chattahoochee Avenue Atlanta, Georgia 30318-2112

PeachtreeBooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher. Additionally, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artiﬁcial intelligence technologies or systems, nor for text and data mining.

Edited by Ashley Hearn Design and composition by Lily Steele

Printed and bound in July 2025 at Sheridan, Chelsea, MI, USA.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition

ISBN: 978-1-68263-649-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Krause, Autumn author Title: Grave ﬂowers / Autumn Krause.

Summary: When her murdered twin sister's ghost appears to her, begging to be freed, Princess Madalina poses as Inessa, her more ruthless sister, to marry and assassinate Prince Aeric and solidify a pact between her family and his uncle.

Identiﬁers: LCCN 2025008580 | ISBN 9781682636497 hardcover | ISBN 9781682636503 ebook

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025008580

EU Authorized Representative: HackettFlynn Ltd, 36 Cloch Choirneal, Balrothery, Co. Dublin, K32 C942, Ireland. EU@walkerpublishinggroup.com

For Mark

Anytime I write about someone who is noble, good, and true, I’m writing about you

Author’s Note

This story draws on my love for Hamlet and my fascination with amlet and m the Boleyn family. I intermixed the ﬁctional pathos and story the Bo of the play with the real-life ambition of the Boleyns to create a p story drawn between the poles of love and betrayal, family and self, king and country, good and evil. Grave Flowers is a fantasy, but I approached my historical research very seriously.

In it, you will explore kingdoms inspired by the Tudor period, particularly as it pertains to its concurrent Elizabethan era, albeit with anachronisms to emphasize various cultural aspects, allow unique worldbuilding, and—because I could not resist—instill a little humor and extravagance (for example, you’ll ﬁnd a bathtub with taps and audacious fashion much more like modern couture). I studied the English rules of succession, royal titles, inheritance, the impact of marriages between courts, the interconnection between the crown and the church, and the roles of royal women in patriarchal societies. You will encounter it on the page, with some changes for storytelling purposes.

As a mixed-race author, I also write through the lens of my heritage, and I delved into the lives of minority communities under such rule. Creating Madalina, the mixed-race main character, was very close to my heart, particularly as she faces a unique set of struggles, even as a princess. Unlike me, who grew up immersed in the culture of the Japanese and Mexican side of my family, Madalina does not have access to her heritage and must choose to uncover it on her own.

Though familiarity with Tudor history or Shakespeare’s canon is not at all required to enjoy this book, lovers of both will ﬁnd much to appreciate. Hamlet is my cornerstone inspiration, but I also drew on amlet is m aspects from other Shakespeare plays I love, such as Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, King Lear, and Henry IV. y I hope you will enjoy this twisty ghost story of vengeance. My characters are eager to share their tales of woe and wonder, ﬂowers and fate.

Royal Terms for Assassin Princess Brides

queen regnant: a queen who rules a kingdom in her own right and has titles, power, and rank equal to a king

queen consort: the wife of a reigning king

queen dowager: a former queen consort who is the widow of a deceased ruling king

male primog an inheritance rule prevalent in medieval England created to maintain the strength of the family name by giving the eldest son the right to inherit his parents’ entire estate

Prologue

Two babies lay on stained sheets like overripe prunes in a dirty napkin, baggy skin puckering their brows, elbows, and knees. nap

If King Rychard Sinet hadn’t seen them delivered by his wife R moments before, he might’ve doubted the revolting little monsters were human. After Queen Agathine’s curses during labor, the silence was so thick, he swore he could hear it. He cocked his head to the side, trying to clear his ears of it in the way he might clear them of water.

There wasn’t supposed to be silence.

There was supposed to be the crying of newborns.

“Alive?” Queen Agathine rasped. She managed to prop herself up on an elbow. “Healthy? Male or female?”

Everything hung on the three answers. King Rychard, who’d been alarmed by his twins’ aesthetic deﬁciencies, bent over them to assess. One was bigger than the other. It’s the stronger twin, he thought. Tend to it ﬁrst hit it on the back like the physician would. He grabbed the baby under its arms and lifted, hoping it would show an indication of life, a whimper or a cry.

But he was the one to let out a cry.

“What is it, then? Rychard! What is it?”

Few things startled King Rychard. Other monarchs did things a certain way: Expectant queens entered confinement and, when their time came, allowed access to physicians who would ensure the health of a newborn heir, along with monastictes and nobles who would bear witness to a royal birth. But King Rychard had needed to make sure everything went just right first, and so only he, the queen, and the babies were in the room—along with grave flowers, which had snooped their way into the room uninvited through the cracks in the walls.

But though he’d tried to think through every possibility of the birth and prided himself on having a plan for each outcome, he hadn’t anticipated this.

When he’d picked up the strong baby, the other one had come with it as though they were links on a chain made from mottled baby skin and twiggy bones. Roughly, the king dropped the ﬁrst baby back onto the sheets.

“Attached.” The word tasted metallic in the king’s mouth, like a rusty coin no one wanted. “The babies are attached at the hand. They’re female and have all the beauty and vigor of a rotten tooth.”

A drop of water landed on King Rychard’s forehead. He let out a half sigh, half hiss. The grave ﬂowers prying their way into the room were waterveins. They were a leaky sort, always weeping pinky-red liquid. Their drips added insult to the grevious injury he had just suﬀered: his twins failing to meet a single tittle of his heir requirements. Not only were they ugly, unwell, and not male, but they were attached.

With great effort, he forced himself to stay calm. It wouldn’t do to upset Queen Agathine after all she’d been through. He wiped the drop off. Waterveins were harmless at first touch, but continuous exposure led to weakening bones and watery blood, making one bruise and bleed at the slightest friction.

“May I see them?” Queen Agathine asked. Her black hair was shinier than usual due to sweat. She looked cautiously at her husband.

“In a moment.”

The twins hadn’t made a sound, even as their limbs ﬂailed haphazardly about, seeking the walls of the womb that had released them. Death was lurking, waiting for the mysterious secret permission to snatch them both. Death, though, hadn’t met King Rychard. Others might be able to count these babies as a loss and start over, but it’d taken too long for the queen to even fall pregnant. He’d heard the rumors. They always danced just ahead of him, slipping into ears before he could execute the lips whispering them.

In a way, it was his own fault that the country doubted the strength of his line. He’d married a Fely woman, to the horror of his council. Felys, the only minority in Radix, had paid higher taxes and had fewer rights—until King Rychard had married Agathine. Upon second reﬂection . . . no, King Rychard thought, the situation isn’t my fault. It’s the council’s fault. They had tried to force him to marry the daughter of an uncomfortably powerful baron. To prove they couldn’t control him, he picked the unlikeliest wife of all and then had to stick with her. Of course, infertility always stemmed from the woman, and the court spent the past ten years begging him to abandon her for a more fruitful queen. Their pressure had only made King Rychard resist more, though it was frustrating because he was most fecund. His bastards from his visits to pleasure houses proved it.

However, he did need an heir.

With renewed purpose, King Rychard picked up the babies. How odd it was, to hold the slimy little things and not know where one ended and the other began. Firmly, he struck them on their backs as he’d ﬁrst planned, his large hand spanning both. Silence persisted. Again, he struck them.

Two congested wails warbled through the chamber.

Queen Agathine smiled and held out her arms, but King Rychard still wasn’t done. He examined their connected hands. Only a thin bridge of skin linked them. There was no overlap of organs, no shared musculature, bones, or veins. Merely skin. Finally, something goes my way, he thought. He handed the babies to the queen and kissed her on the forehead. She had done well, hiding the labor pains until they could slip away to one of the palace’s hidden chambers for the birth. Tomorrow, he would announce that the queen had gone into labor too fast to call for help, but all was well, thank the Primeval Family:

Twins had been born, healthy as they could be.

“I’ll be back,” he told Queen Agathine.

çThere were many secret passages in the Radixan palace, but King Rychard didn’t require any now. It was a direct path to the royal physician’s room. As he brushed by the halls, moonlight shone on the silver tracks snails had paved down the giant paintings of grave ﬂowers lining the walls. Their tracks made it look like the paintings wept. At least it was snails and not the bloodsucking black slugs often found wedged between the damp palace stones.

King Rychard scowled. If one paid attention, one quickly realized nothing was quite as it should be in Radix. Everything teetered on the verge of snapping, molding, or shattering—and, if one looked even closer, one would see part of the palace had been rebuilt centuries ago, original stone clashing against brick, stucco, and wood. No one knew why. Radixan records weren’t so much history as love letters written by past monarchs to themselves, detailing impossibly impressive triumphs. Most had been lost to time. But it was evident the palace had been almost destroyed, and King Rychard resented it. It

made him feel uneasy, because what on earth might have caused such damage?

He put his hand in his pocket, ﬁngering a thick, braided drapery cord. It was his weapon of choice. Slit throats bled, poisons often caused vomiting, and defenestrations made terribly messy splats below. And grave ﬂowers . . . well, they were so uncontrollable, the attacker would likely die alongside the victim. Strangulation with a drapery cord was neat and clean.

It wouldn’t be di cult to strangle the physician after he separated the twins. He was a thin, jaundiced fellow, always giving glowing diagnoses regardless of the patient’s state. King Rychard’s fingers tingled in anticipation. Nothing was quite as exquisite as strangling someone. It made King Rychard’s blood thicken and sent euphoria racing through his veins like white lightning. The physician will be easy to carry to the garden. The starvelings were the one flower he’d found use for. They were a thorny, carnivorous breed that buried their prey in their soil. They laced their roots through the carcasses or corpses and fed off them for weeks, though they’d be disappointed the physician was so skinny.

It didn’t take long.

The physician, who’d been nearly scared out of his skin to be roused from his sleep by the king himself, separated the twins with a lancet. He remarked on the fact that the babies must’ve faced each other in utero because their connected hands reached across to each other. Once separated, he marveled, they’d have identical scars on the same hand. While the physician attended the babies, King Rychard measured him up and toyed with the drapery cord in his pocket. Once the physician’s task was done, no one would know the twins had ever been born attached. The king would blame the hand gashes on a broken crib edge or some sort of thing.

No one ever questioned him, lest they too ﬁnd their necks wrapped in a drapery cord.

ç

Morning fog, tinged a dishwater hue, exhaled heavily over Radix by the time King Rychard returned to the secret birthing chamber. The haze was accompanied by the fragrance of the grave ﬂowers as they opened their blossoms with the dawn and spewed their perfume into the air.

“Well, I suppose we can split the name,” King Rychard said, his arduous chore complete. “Instead of Inessa Madalina Sinet, shall one be Inessa and the other Madalina?”

“I like it,” Queen Agathine said, giving each slumbering milk-gorged baby a kiss on the nose.

With the names settled, King Rychard clambered into the bed with the groan of an exhausted man. In an hour or so, he would announce the birth of the twins, but for now, he’d earned some rest.

“No, everything is covered in blood,” Queen Agathine protested.

King Rychard looked at his wife and twins. The babies had their mother’s dark hair. He appreciated how the tendrils made tiny spirals around the babies’ ears, curving like the spindled shells of snails.

“I don’t mind a little blood,” he said, and then the four of them drowsed amid the splattered blankets and sheets while the waterveins dripped nearby.

ACT I

Curtain Rises

“Natura nihil frustra facit” Nature does nothing in vain

A Guide to Grave Flowers for Tortures and Torments A Compilation for Radixan Monarchs

I, King Llyr from the House of Sinet, am setting forth to apply our , K ancestral invocations upon our divine grave ﬂower gifting. ancestr

When my parents ruled, they lived in fear of the grave ﬂowers and never applied the invocations to them. I am not afraid—I am curious. My people have been particularly unruly and unhappy since the recent famine and Great Sick, so the prisons have been bursting! Which means I have ample souls to use for my experiments. It couldn’t be better. I’ll record the results here so my progeny may rule over the grave ﬂowers instead of fear them. I announced this plan to my council and my wife and my son. They all said it was a most wonderful idea. And it is true, because all my ideas are most wonderful.

These experiments are being conducted in the royal solarium, where charts of the stars and paintings of the celestial bodies shall inspire my own venture into the unknown: our grave ﬂowers. I gave a speech to the guards and prisoners assembled to help with the process and wore my most bejeweled crown.

B EAUTIES

Grave Flower rave F Experiment One

earance

Bluish petals that are so thin, you can see right through them. Shiny silvery leaves that function as tiny mirrors, which the beauties often stare into.

vior without invocation

Attention seekers. They love real mirrors and being complimented more than anything else. They are easily upset and don’t like it when other pretty things are nearby. They also seem to have a highly inﬂated sense of their own beauty because they deem all the other grave ﬂowers as inferior in aesthetics. However, when a beautiful piece of jewelry or colorful bird is near, they turn inward to each other and refuse to turn back until the competition is gone. They seem to think their beauty is a blessing and that, by withdrawing, they are punishing us.

Invocation

O Primeval Mother and Daughter, let us borrow your beauty so we may do our divine duty. Though don’t let us be too stunning, lest we stare too long in the mirror and lose all cunning.

Results

After the invocation was said, the beauties twined their way to a prisoner and climbed up her body to her face. They lay gently upon it, spreading their thin petals over her forehead, eyes, nose, and mouth. The prisoner began screaming. The petals turned red. I thought the beauties themselves were changing color, but it was the prisoner’s blood, and the beauties were soaking it up. When the petals were lifted, the prisoner’s skin came with them. The beauties seemed very refreshed and renewed.

Complications

The petals latched on to the arm of the botanist who applied them. He tried to ed claw them oﬀ, but they slithered up to his face with the same results.

Applications

They have the prettiest scent of all the grave ﬂowers, which might make for a lucrative perfume that we can export to other kingdoms. However, all attempts to extract their essence failed. Of course, they work well for torture . . . however, once the invocation is said, they can’t be controlled. They attacked the botanist just as they attacked the prisoner. Come to think of it, the botanist was a handsome fellow. However, they didn’t show the least interest in attacking me, which was good but also . . . did they ﬁnd my appearance lacking? That can’t be it. I know I’m handsome. I’m the handsomest king to ever rule!

Chapter ONE

Ihad never wanted the throne. But it seemed to want me.

The thought hung heavy in my mind as I entered our royal garden, ducking around the rusty signs with warnings like Vicious Flowers and Beware, Heavy Pollen—Visitors May Have Trouble

Breathing. For a moment, I was distracted from my misery. Something was amiss. The grave flowers were furious, which was odd because the day was perfect for them: weak, drained of sunlight, and laundered in heavy, dripping gloom so it was hard to see despite the daytime hour. Fat pockets of fog and floral vapor sat close to the ground, too dense to rise. This type of weather was usual for Radix, our kingdom, where grave flowers thrived

Warily, I stepped onto a low marble ﬂower bed, one of the few empty ones. When the grave ﬂowers were angry, it was best not to walk along the paths, since those gave them easy access to cut at your ankles. I swept across the marble with ease. Endless years of dance lessons made spinning, sashaying, and springing as natural as walking to me—if

not more so. Though most people enjoyed things they were good at, I loathed dancing with my entire being.

Reaching the end of the flower bed, I took a small leap onto the rim of the fountain. A chunk of marble came away beneath my leather boots and clunked onto the ground. I ignored it and twirled along the curve of the basin. The brine in the air granulated my skin, overpowering the grave flowers’ scent. I got to the other side of the fountain and jumped off. The urge to curtsy and signify the end of my dance came over me.

I winced, even though I hadn’t been hurt.

“Are we angry as well as hungry today?” I asked the starvelings. They swiped at me, and their thorns caught on my dress. Ms were embroidered in black pearls around the hem of my skirt for my name, Madalina. The thorns severed one of the pearls. The beauties tried to reach it to bury—they always jealously buried pretty things—but they couldn’t quite grasp it. “Look what you’ve done!”

Of course, the starvelings were pleased they’d caught me unawares. I shook my head at them. They muttered and clicked their thorns together. They had purple blossoms, but those seemed to be an afterthought to their curved black thorns.

Something was agitating them. But what?

I frowned and scanned the other grave ﬂowers. They grew unrestrained over the marble beds and decorative columns intended to keep them contained. Mirrors sat at various points in the garden. Father had ordered them placed throughout the palace and its grounds so you could always see if someone snuck up behind you, but their decorative gold frames and surfaces were overlaid in grime. Despite the di culty in seeing an actual reﬂection, the beauties used them obsessively. But they didn’t today. The entire garden writhed in fretful waves, except for the nocturnal moonmirrors, which slept, and one small barren patch of dirt. Immortalities were supposed to grow there, but, ironically, they had died out long ago.

“You aren’t the only unhappy ones, my loves.” I sighed. “Maybe you already heard? Inessa is engaged to Prince Aeric. It means”—it was still hard for me to believe, much less say—“I’m Father’s heir and will one day be the queen of Radix.”

It was a shocking turn of events, especially because my twin sister, Inessa, had always bled queenship more than blood. Conversely, if you cut me, I would bleed inferiority coupled with the intense desire for solitude and perhaps a good bath.

Of course, the true horror was the cost of the betrothal. In accordance with its terms, Radix would become a vassal state to the much more powerful (and haughty and detestable) kingdom of Acus. Everyone had always assumed Inessa and I would marry nobles from Radix. Our motto, after all, was us alone, so much so that we even had bedtime terror tales involving outside monarchs dissolving into ﬂower nectar if their gaze lingered too long upon our throne.

Betrothing Inessa to Prince Aeric was not very us alone of Father. Displeasure ﬁlled the court. I understood. We didn’t have much aside from our independence. Once we became a vassal state, our freedom would be an illusion.

I tried to shake oﬀ my distress. I couldn’t calm the Radixan court or myself, but I could calm the grave ﬂowers. I turned the wheel of the irrigation system. It shrieked as I forced it to twist. Copper pipes, oxidized into a blue green, shook beneath the soil as water was released from the reservoir. Spouts of water shot up from the holes drilled in the pipes at a myriad of heights and angles.

Our grave ﬂowers drank salt water, something visitors found particularly unnatural and alarming. The ﬂowers would drown themselves in it if we let them. They were watered frequently, but they were never quenched.

I knew the feeling well.

I didn’t thirst for salt water like the grave ﬂowers, but my soul always felt itchy and dry. There was salt water to ease the grave ﬂowers, but I

didn’t think anything could settle my soul, especially now that I would someday be queen and inherit the throne on behalf of my family. The one time I’d ever had to do anything signiﬁcant for my family, I’d failed.

Mother had died.

“Since your cups aren’t filled with nectar,” I said to the enmities, “at least they can be filled with salt water.” Enmities were a single stalk with two branching stems topped in blackish-blue blossoms, each forming a perfect, albeit empty, cup. Whenever there was the merest drop of nectar in their basins, the other grave flowers slurped it up.

“Now, now—stop it!”

The starvelings, who cared not for their fellow ﬂowers, slashed the others aside to guzzle from the largest spout.

“You’re being beastly! And right in front of the Daughter.”

I glanced at the statue positioned across the way. Every kingdom on our small continent of Minima worshipped the Primeval Family, and it was common to have statues for the various figures: the Mother, the Daughter, the Son, and the Father. Radix didn’t regard the faith with any sincerity. One had only to see the deep cracks running through the Daughter’s plaster and the skeletal piles of dead grave flowers at her feet to see no one tended to her. In fact, one hand was missing after being carried off during a particularly raucous court revelry years ago.

If it wouldn’t cause an uproar, Father would have had her smashed to smithereens. He hated having a statue of the Daughter and how Radix’s divine gifting was grave ﬂowers, a long-ago mythology that followed us no matter how much time elapsed between us and the old stories. He would’ve much preferred the gift of our enemy to the north, Crus. Metalwork. According to the myths, they were supposed to use their forages for chalices, sensors, and sacred emblems, but they primarily used them for stocking their armories. That was the thing about the divine gifts: most could be used so well as weapons.

Though no other giftings were quite so . . . alive. Our grave ﬂowers prowled about with minds of their own. Supposedly, combined with

the right invocations from the holy writ handed down long ago, the grave ﬂowers could be very powerful. But the invocations had been lost, and even if they hadn’t been, the generally accepted wisdom was that using them would cause your own destruction and put you in a grave. Hence the grim name.

Leaving the irrigation system running, I made my way over to a bench. My gardening supplies sat by it in a basket. I loved gardening and sinking my hands deep into the soil until it coated them like regrown skin. But I didn’t pick up the basket today. Instead, I took a wedding invitation out of my pocket.

It had come into my possession only this morning, and it was odiously beautiful.

One of the beauties drew close. I tried to hide the invitation, but it was too late. Immediately, the beauties turned inward to each other, shaking with envy.

“Oh, come on, now,” I cajoled. “It isn’t that pretty.” I glanced at it again. “Fine, I confess, it’s very pretty.”

The formal invitation had been sent to Father, but he’d handed it oﬀ to me. It was particularly elaborate since it had been made for us, the royal family. Embroidery formed a tapestry across the letter’s surface, noting the wedding details. Acus’s gifting was vestures, and it was said their pens were sewing needles and their ink was thread.

Looking at the invitation, you’d never know that their monarch, King Claudius, had died only a month ago in his garden and had been buried for no more than a week before his widowed queen married his brother, Prince Lambert. Radix loved gossip more than anything and had been feasting oﬀ the morsel. Then the betrothal and vassal plans were announced.

The fun and frivolous gossip had ceased.

“Acus isn’t as perfect as it seems—only you are,” I cooed to the beauties. They persisted in ignoring me. “But don’t worry. I would never leave you. Ever.”

Acusan wedding invitations often had portraits painted onto them, enhanced with their embroidery thread. But Radixans, steeped as we were in lore and superstitions, were forbidden from having portraits painted, so there were only names.

The writing across the top announced our soon-to-be overlord: His Royal Highness, Reigning Sovereign Aeric Capelian, Ruler Prevailing of Acus. Next to it, Inessa’s name twisted across the invitation. I still couldn’t fathom it. How could Father give up our freedom? To make matters worse, he’d been tucked away within the palace’s secret passageways, inaccessible to any who might question him. And, perhaps, any who might resort to more drastic measures to force a change of heart, such as stabbing it through.

I turned the invitation facedown. The beauties nodded approvingly. I wished to forget it all. To simply lose myself in the garden until I became a statue overgrown with vines. But while the Sinet way was to take what you wanted, I wasn’t Sinet enough to do so. I would never have more than lost longings.

Toward the front of the garden, I heard footsteps come from behind the bushes. Immediately, I stood. My ladies-in-waiting knew I liked solitude in the garden and would always announce themselves if they needed to disturb me. Either all four of them were suddenly neglecting their duties . . . or someone had secretly slipped inside.

On the middle finger of my left hand was a ring bearing our family’s royal crest: serpentines wrapped around dragonslips, our tiny firespitting grave flower, amid the words us alone. The band was forged into a silver stem with miniature leaves sprouting from it. I flicked open the crest. A needle, as thin as it was sharp, shone like a single strand of spiderweb silk. A chamber filled with moonrain, a poison that dripped from the moonmirrors, lurked beneath the needle. It was strong enough to instantly kill two people.

But, as I’d been instructed ever since Father had gifted me the ring on my thirteenth birthday, the generous amount was to be used on

myself in the event I failed to stop the attacker with the ﬁrst dose or if I found myself in a situation where I shouldn’t be taken alive. He’d given Inessa one as well.

Quickly, I retreated behind one of the large mirrors. It might simply be a gardener who had gotten past my girls, or it might be someone with much more serious intentions than weeding. Whoever it was, I would see them before they saw me.

I listened, trying to track the intruder’s movements through the garden. Footsteps crunched across the loose sea stones and crushed snail shells ﬁlling the pathways, but it was hard to distinguish the direction over the rattling irrigation system.

“Madalina?” A familiar voice cut across the garden. “Are you here?”

The last person I expected to hear was my sister. I stepped around the mirror. “Inessa?”

“There you are.” Inessa—who was very much supposed to be in Acus, preparing to walk down the aisle to her prince—stood across from me. “Hands in the dirt again?”

I fought the urge to sigh in relief. Sinets never showed weakness, especially not with each other. The grave flowers gave her a wide berth, leaning away. They remembered her. Once, I’d come to the garden to find that she’d goaded the serpentines and the lost souls into a fight. I’d cried for her to stop, and she’d said, Don’t you see? I set the grave flowers against each other and watch. Father sets us against each other and watches. The Primeval Family sets him against the other monarchs and watches. It’s walls of eyes, and behind each one, more eyes. I never knew what was more unnerving: when Inessa told me the strange things she was thinking, or when she didn’t and only gazed at me with a vacant expression.

Discreetly, I slipped the crest over its stinger and walked to her.

“The grave ﬂowers were disturbed, so I was calming them,” I said.

“Why are you here?”

“I forgot something.”

“Whatever did you forget?” I couldn’t hide my confusion. “Isn’t Acus over a week’s travel away? No one said you were coming. The coronation and wedding are in less than a month.”

I hadn’t seen her since she’d left for the betrothal service, and I stared at my double. Sometimes it was uncanny to have another moving about the world with my face. But then, it wasn’t my face any more than it was her face. It was our face, each the selfsame of the other. And it had its beneﬁts. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw only blueish gullies beneath my eyes, an unruly cowlick, and skin that ﬂushed ruddy at a single sip of wine. But when I looked at Inessa, I saw a chin curving into the bottom half of a heart, eyes so dark that they must have stolen the color from our grayish soil, and a silky mane of black hair, a gift from our Fely mother.

In myself, I saw our flaws. In her, I saw our beauty. Through the two images, I figured we were somewhere in between. Those trying to flatter our family often said we were the sun Radix had never had, but I didn’t agree. Not only because it didn’t make sense—we weren’t blond and didn’t have sunny dispositions—but because it was so ludicrous, given who we were.

We weren’t the sun.

We weren’t even the stars.

We were the thick web of night trying to reclaim the world after light had burst into existence.

“Gracious, calm yourself, Sister.” Inessa walked over to the bench I’d abandoned and sat. She glanced down at her wedding invitation and ﬂipped it over, to the distress of the beauties. She smiled slightly at her name.

Fear abated, I realized she was wearing practically nothing. Her red gown was as airy and unexpected as a startled gasp. The fabric ran up to her clavicle, but once it crested her shoulders, it hooked around her neck with a thin strap and then stopped, as though too frightened to cover her back. Her spine shifted beneath her skin, the notched

vertebrae reminding me of the knobby pearls that form a scorpion’s tail. Embroidered scrolls, perfect copies of the ones on the invitation, spilled heavily across the skirt and gathered into a riotous display at the hem.

“Whatever are you wearing?” I asked, shocked.

“This? Oh, it’s all the rage in Acus. I think it’s the sunlight there. It makes people wish to wear less clothing. It was startling when I ﬁrst arrived. There were so many body parts! Shoulders, thighs . . . even ribs, because it’s the style to wear garments with pieces completely missing.”

“Sounds dreadful.” I brushed my hand across my thick Radixan skirt. “How could you hide a weapon?”

“It’s impossible. And you can’t even have a dagger in your boot.” To illustrate her point, she lifted her skirt. A thin satin slipper encased her foot. Ribbons wrapped around her ankle and tied oﬀ in a bow. “There’s no room for it. And the ribbon wrapping is so elaborate that it would take much too long to take it oﬀ and strangle anyone.”

“You’d be doomed,” I agreed. “Perhaps you could sew in a hidden pocket?”

Contemplating, she ran her ﬁngers over the skirt and then shook her head. “No, the silk is too thin.”

“Thwarted again. At least you have your poison ring.”

“This old thing?” Inessa held up her hand. “It’s most bothersome. I keep using it and having to reﬁll it. At least blades can be wiped clean and are ready to use again.”

“So you’re the reason why we are so low on moonrain,” I teased. We had a stockpile of bottled moonrain from generations ago, making me assume we’d once known how to harvest it. Hopefully, we’d ﬁgure out the practice again because our stockpile was almost depleted. I paused, then asked, “And Prince Aeric? What is he like?”

“A prince, as you’d expect.” Inessa brushed her betrothed aside like an errant crumb.

“How odd he’s still called a prince,” I mused. For all the kingdoms, kingship or queenship transferred immediately upon the death of the previous ruler. In Radix, we would instantly refer to the next monarch as king or queen. In Acus, though, the term was prevailing, just as it was noted on the wedding invitation. Prince Aeric was the ruler, but he was the ruler prevailing until the coronation. To streamline aﬀairs, the wedding ceremony would follow the coronation service. By the end of the auspicious day, Prince Aeric would undergo the title change to king and have his wife, Inessa, at his side.

“It’s utterly ridiculous,” Inessa agreed. “They say it’s for holy reasons. For the new monarch to reﬂect and prepare his soul for the sacred ritual of coronation. It’s all well and good, but it gives too much time for others to plot. To be king in everything but name is a weakness. If I were Prince Aeric, I’d demand my coronation the very next day, royal mourning or not.”

“The people would ﬁnd it terribly disrespectful,” I said. “They’d worry you were power hungry and desperate.”

“True.” Inessa pondered it. “Well, I would make very certain to look sad and humble as I was crowned.”

I winced. If anyone could act, it was her. Inessa and I had been good friends until Father told us whichever twin he deemed the best would be named his heir. Inessa changed. While I longed to be in the garden, she longed to be in the future, sitting on the throne. You don’t wish to rule, she would say. So help me and you won’t have to. You must never say a bad word about me, not even in front of the servants. Whenever I tell you something, you must do it. Show obedience so others do as well. Copy my styles but without any personal touches or imagination so everyone knows you are the imitation, not the original. Oh, and leave dark green for me alone. Standing in front of any mirror, she’d stare at herself. Sometimes she practiced crying; other times, she practiced giving orders or, as we got older, whispering to a lover. I was there to conﬁrm whether her

performances were authentic. If ever my gaze strayed, she’d pinch me hard, then snap, Watch me.

Inessa tossed her head, oblivious to the bleak memories she’d stirred. “How has Father been?”

“Absent,” I said. “I think he’s taken to the hidden passages like a mouse, lest someone threaten him and demand he terminate the betrothal. Did the terms not take your breath away? We’ve always defended our right to be as we are.”

“What we are is poor.” Inessa snorted.

“What we are is free,” I said. “How could we let such a thing trickle through our ﬁngers? Being a vassal is worse than being conquered.”

“Terribly dramatic, Sister.” Inessa remained unmoved. “I have a request. I was wondering if I could sleep in your chamber tonight.”

“Sleep in my chamber?” If she’d asked to borrow my head, I’d have been less surprised. “Where would I sleep?”

“With me, silly.” Impatience tightened her voice. “For old times’ sake.”

Perhaps being a bride had turned her sentimental. Love changed people. Or so I’d heard. Love was an aﬀectation in the theater of my life. I playacted it to get loyal courtiers, to elicit secrets, to win favors. My heart was kept in a vault. I’d long lost the key, and I could feel the lock rusting like the chains around our unused gardening shed. It was for the best. I’d always known I’d be married oﬀ to someone I didn’t choose. My only hope was that whoever I wed wouldn’t mind that I spent most of my time in the garden. “We haven’t shared a meal in years, much less chambers.”

“Oblige me,” Inessa said. “On the trip back, I couldn’t help but remember how we’d slept together when we were little.”

It was true. Silly things, we’d been. We had canopied beds as huge as carriages, but we always ended up in the same one, with me going to hers or her going to mine. There, our whispers and giggles knit a new world over us, as real as the blankets we tunneled beneath. We would lie close,

as though trying to re-create the closeness we’d shared inside Mother. It was an old memory, one I’d forgotten, and now that it was back before me, I didn’t know what to do with it. The years in between had corroded the recollection, giving it edges that could hurt me because of what we’d become. Warily, I walked over to sit next to her.

“You’re wearing green.” She eyed my dress.

“You aren’t here anymore to tell me not to.”

“True.” Her eyes ﬂicked up to my face and then back down. Her lips stretched thin across her face. Whenever she was irked, she looked pinched, as though she had a pain in her side. Then the expression vanished, replaced by a bright toothy smile. “I’ll make sure you have a lovely dress for my wedding, one made by the ﬁnest Acusan sewists. They are remarkable. It’s a lifetime appointment for them, so they are quite old and are revered almost as much as monastictes. They’ll create a stunning gown for you.”

“Oh, it’s quite all right,” I said, still watching her carefully. There had to be something she wanted from me. A test was in order. She was as vain as the beauties, so it wasn’t hard to come up with one. “I shouldn’t, not on your wedding day. You can be the prettier twin for once.”

The insult was bitter on my tongue. I never enjoyed being unkind, but Inessa laughed, the sound as eerie as a moonmirror wail carried on the night wind. There’d been a time, long ago, when I could tease her or even give her a playful verbal jab, but not after Father set us against each other. Anytime I did, she would scowl and ruminate, digging through any jest for the whiﬀ of a threat. It didn’t matter that I was her twin; beyond that, I was me—the weak Sinet. To Inessa, I was the soft spot in our family’s mortar, and I might bring everything down by wavering at the wrong moment.

But the worry painted too grand a picture of me.

“I won’t hear of it,” Inessa said, her lightheartedness only furthering my suspicion. “I’ll have you dressed in the ﬁnest creation you’ve ever seen.

None of these sober blacks and dark greens. You’ll be resplendent in red and gold, the colors of Acus. Anyways, I wish to tell you something.”

She pushed herself up, her hand coming near mine. Our scars were as identical as our faces, the two threads of tissue running from our little ﬁngers down to the bottom of our right wrists. It was strange to think we’d been once attached, that we’d grasped hands in utero and simply never let go until skin grew over our bones like moss over rocks. How quickly we’d gone from that to fearing a stab in the back from the hand we’d once held.

Mother had been the one to tell us we’d been attached at the hand. She’d whispered it in our ears when we were eight, telling us she wanted us to know something true, something real, and to never mention it to Father.

“We were born into this life of shadows and secrets.” Inessa spoke slowly, as though examining each word before saying it to make sure it would do what she wanted. “We inherited it; we did not choose it. As I’ve been away and on the cusp of a new life, I can’t help but think I’d like things to be diﬀerent between us. Father is above us, and everyone else is below us, nipping at our heels, trying to drag us down so they can climb over us. But we are equals. Side by side, in life as in birth.”

“How would you want things to be diﬀerent?” Despite myself, I was drawn to the warmth in her voice.

“Well, for one thing, I would like for us to be friends.”

“Friends.” I stared hard at her, wishing I could look behind the reﬂective mirrors of her eyes to know what she really thought. “There’s no such thing for you.”

“I understand if you don’t trust me. Please, will you at least give me a chance? I’m leaving, Mads. For good. If we don’t change things now, we’ll fall beneath the waves of our lives and be estranged. I wish only to be close and to have you come and stay once or twice a year with me at court. You can even study the Acusan ﬂora. It’s much diﬀerent than ours,

bred and coiﬀed and spoiled and as devoid of life as rocks. I imagine it would make it much easier to garden, and you might enjoy it.”

My knees found their way to my chest. I wrapped my arms around them, gathering my limbs about me on the hard edge of the bench. Sisterhood. Flowers—and not ones that can hurt you. I dug my nails into my elbows. The ten points of pain cut into my skin, comforting for their realness, for their reminder. Nothing was ever as it seemed except pain. I needed to think. What could she want? What could she gain from this sudden oﬀer of friendship?

Slowly, my gaze traveled over her, trying to ﬁnd a clue. My eyes fell back to her hand. Normally, our scars were simply white ridges, an island of tissue ﬂoating on our hands. But hers was . . . lifted. Raised, as though something beneath it were trying to push it out.

“Your scar. What happened to it?” At the question, Inessa yanked her hand back. She wasn’t fast enough. I grabbed her wrist. Twisting, she tried to free herself, her hand ﬂopping in my unrelenting grip like a wild creature of its own. “Tell me.”

She was stronger than me. She always had been. Her free hand pushed hard against my shoulder, and she wrenched herself away. As she did, our scars touched, mimicking how we’d once been. I slipped oﬀ the bench. Sharp-edged gravel received my backside, and my teeth clicked together. Immediately, my own scar came alive. I’d never felt this before. It’d always been a separate thing from me—a patch of dead skin, something on me but not of me. Suddenly, a thousand tiny nerves awakened in the scar, the tissue singing.

Pain, I realized. The scar hurt with the brightness and ferocity of a wound just made. It poured into my hand like liquid ﬁre tipping onto dry kindling. What had Inessa done to me? With a cry, I stumbled to my feet to face her.

I was not prepared for the scene before me.

Inessa twisted on the bench; her bones bent at their joints within the pallid coating of her skin. A viscous blackness oozed from her mouth,

too slow and congealed to be blood. It creeped down her gown, where it mingled with the embroidered roses. Around us, the grave ﬂowers shook, buds opening and closing, leaves trembling. Jets of water from the irrigation system suddenly pitched much higher than ever before and in the same direction, toward Inessa, turning as black and thick as mud.

Help her.

The thought sent me toward my sister, despite my terror. Before I could move, she lunged at me. Cold, bony sticks latched around my arm. It took me a moment to realize they were her ﬁngers. She pulled me in. Suddenly, we were so close together, I could see only her eyes. They stared at me with the crystalline brightness of glass.

“I remember now, Sister,” Inessa said. Her voice was as watery and choked up as the congested fountain. “I was poisoned in Acus this morning. Mads, you are the only one who can help me—I’m trapped in Bide. Please, avenge me and set me free from this agony.”

Chapter TWO

Ablurry form slipped onto one of the mirrors directly behind blurr

Inessa. I spun around, certain another ghost approached. Inessa. I spun ar

“I beg your pardon, Your Highness, I announced myself, but you didn’t seem to hear.” Helena, one of my ladies-in-waiting, stood near the garden’s entry. “We need to get you ready for the party. You’re already late.”

I blinked. Helena belonged to the world as I’d known it, the one without ghosts and dead sisters and—

I looked around, bewildered. The grave ﬂowers were back to their normal activities. They sniped and grumbled and bullied each other as they would on any other day. The irrigation system coughed up its irregular bursts of water just as before. The bench was empty.

Inessa was gone.

I tried to collect myself, but I still saw her before me, bones writhing against her skin, beseeching eyes upon me. Had it been a nightmare? Or was I going mad? There was only one acceptable answer: nightmare, because madness in the royal bloodline was a liability. If discovered, I

would be dealt with, either mercifully by being installed in an enclosed holy order or brutally by having a fatal accident.

“Your Highness?” Helena prompted, waiting.

Whatever had just happened, I must appear nonchalant. Servants gave the corners and keyholes of the palace eyes and ears. Every single one reported to Father. I took a sharp breath and then another, stitching myself back together.

“Of course. Let’s depart.”

The party was feverish.

Faces spun past, planets in a dizzying orbit revolving around me. Usually, I was one with the motion. My heart’s kingdom was the garden, but my o cial one was the ballroom, where I oversaw the powerhungry courtiers for Father. Or that had been the case, when everyone assumed Inessa was the heir and I was the second princess who’d one day be married oﬀ as a reward to a loyal noble.

At the last party before Inessa’s betrothal announcement, I’d been everywhere and nowhere, drawing gossip and secrets out of the sycophantic partiers in the way a bee draws nectar from a ﬂower to take back to the hive. I’d known who I was and what future I faced. And so did everyone else.

But tonight, everything had changed. Older nobles joined the party for once, a certain sign that they resented the betrothal and wished to evaluate the circumstances—and me. Almost everyone wore Radixan green and gold. The musicians, I noted, began the party by playing a traditional folk song, one as old as our kingdom itself. The message was clear: No one was happy about Acus’s impending involvement in our kingdom. And, from the wary looks cutting my way, everyone doubted that I, the weaker Sinet twin, could eﬀectively advocate for us once I was queen.

Overwhelm beset me. Inessa lingered in my mind. Her face hung between me and the court, making it seem like she, the ﬁgment of my mind, was the only real thing and everyone else was made of grim, glowering gossamer.

I pushed to the edge of the party. Ropes of black and green sea pearls garlanded the ballroom, strung in loops above our heads. Chandeliers, crafted to be bouquets, twisted beneath the ceiling, which was painted in an expansive scene of sword-wielding armored knights being devoured by ferocious ﬂowers, some of which were transforming into dragons. The mural was dulled with time and dust, its livid greens and mysterious blacks turned into insipid pastels. It was old and trenched in cracks from some ruinous event long ago. The knights’ anguished expressions gave face to my own inner torment. I stepped around stacks of timber, sacks of plaster, and bales of hay. Last year, Father had made grand plans of ﬁxing the palace, but we’d run out of money, along with places to store the materials.

A window was open to offset the heat created by so many bodies. I headed for it. Tonight, the air was extra heavy with moisture and saline. I needed its bracing effects. As I moved, bodies followed, my shadow split into multiples. Overly sugary voices flooded my ears, and ingratiating smiles, plastered beneath angry eyes, surrounded me.

A bit of it was the same nonsense as always:

“Taffeta, Princess Madalina? I thought you didn’t like taffeta, so I ripped up my taffeta gowns. Do you like taffeta? Are you going to wear it often now?”

“I pine for you! Your Highness, I know I said the same about your sister, but her betrothal made me realize I truly love you.”

But more sinister sentiments mixed in with them:

“Is the king unwell? No? How odd. I thought perhaps he might have gout or sweating sickness or some such ailment because he hasn’t met once with his council since announcing the betrothal. Not once.”

“The treasurer says there’s no coin left. It’s been spent on building materials, yet crates of nails sit everywhere and not a new shingle has been laid . . . perhaps all King Sinet cares about is funds from Acus to make his palace grander?”

“I was just telling a terror tale to my daughter at bedtime—oh, what was it? The one about outside monarchs turning into flower nectar if they look at our throne. Only, I think there’s a terribly charming version where a Radixan king offered to subjugate us for resources during the Second Great Sick, and, well, he dissolved into flower nectar as well. An interesting twist to the tale, isn’t it? And then there’s the one about the lost flower crown summoning the ghosts of ancient Radixan monarchs to unseat any kings who don’t have Radix’s best interests at heart. Hmm, I haven’t thought of this before, but perhaps the same might apply to heirs? Especially if they do nothing to stop the threat?”

I tried to outpace the questions, but they pursued me across the ballroom. Unable to get to the window, I reached for wine. Three servants surged forward at once, each desperate to be the one to give it to me. I snatched the nearest goblet. It was a heavy thing crafted from pewter and glass and ﬁlled with our signature Radixan wine, which was tangy and sour with a hint of dark ﬂoral musk.

Pain struck.

White-hot agony filled my hand. Its origin was clarified: my scar. The loud clank of heavy iron striking metal rang out, and fine shards of glass exploded at my feet. A golden puddle of wine splattered the marble.

“Your Highness! Are you all right?”

“Blood! She’s been cut!”

“Quick—someone tell the king that his new heir is hurt.”

Turning around, I lifted my chin, assuming the Sinet ruthlessness. My gaze might as well have been a torch. Those nearest to me stumbled back as though they might be burned. Terror dashed through their eyes as they snapped their attention to the tips of their shoes and hems of

their gowns. Little did they know I was as afraid. Afraid of their discontent and afraid that I might be going mad. I hid my hand in my skirt.

“Who pushed me?”

Silence swept in and spread through the ballroom, a contagion borne on the air. Those nearest to me inhaled it first. It passed through the crowd in glares and nudges, spreading onto the dance floor. Guests jerked to awkward stops midstep, the women’s skirts fluttering as though their dresses still wished to waltz. Lastly, it reached the musicians. Jarring notes of bows scraping off strings and breath turning whistly in flutes rang out and then promptly died. The ballroom was full of people yet empty of sound.

“Someone pushed me and made me drop my wine,” I declared, trying to buy myself time as I chose a victim. I needed someone who didn’t have any close ties to the crown, someone others mistrusted and would be happy to see fall from grace. It was an easy decision. Baron Breton had nearly stepped on my heel as he’d loomed close, veiling threats in children’s terror tales to express his disapproval. By Family fortune, Father had mentioned a preposterous plan of Baron Breton’s at supper a few months back.

I took a quick breath. I always had to, before acting like the Sinet princess I was supposed to be. “I know who it was. Baron Breton, you mention regaling your daughter with terror tales, which is endearing . . . except last I was aware, nursemaids facilitate bedtime, not barons. And I found your choice of terror tale fascinating. It made me think of one. Once upon a scare, there was a man who asked his king if he might charge tolls from those who used the bridge that barely touches his land. Oh my, come to think of it, that isn’t a terror tale at all, is it? It’s what you asked my father. You proclaim to care so much for Radixan independence, yet you’d impede our own people’s freedom for proﬁt because one support of a common bridge is on the outskirts of your estate.”

Baron Breton shifted uncomfortably. He glanced around. Unfriendly stares fenced him in. He tried an uneasy smile. “I would never suggest

such a thing,” he said. “Not when everyone relies on the common bridge.”

“Now you deny my word?” No matter how many times I made them, accusations never streamed easily from my mouth. I’d seen the true cost of them too often, epitomized in imprisonments at best and slow walks to the executioner’s block at worst. “Be aware that I’m speaking as heir to the throne and on behalf of my father, King Sinet.”

“I’d never dare deny Your Highness’s word, but I would never suggest—so, as you say, I did have the passing idea about my bridge— but I—I—”

“Leave.” I pointed to the entry. The air crackled with new excitement, chasing out the dread that had hung so heavily only moments ago. Relief and gleeful satisfaction replaced it as the court reveled in Baron Breton’s disgrace. “I’m certain few would like to see you at the next party. Or any thereafter, lest you try to collect a toll from them for being in your presence.”

Baron Breton collected himself and tried to depart as elegantly as possible, but his steps were quick, and his neck was red. No one noticed my hand hidden in the silk cocoon of my skirt. I pushed forward through the crowd. They parted before me, and the sound of the musicians playing at diﬀerent times shook the discomfort from the room. My girls hurried after me, but I lifted my good hand to stop them. They knew not to follow.

I made my way into one of the parlors oﬀ the ballroom.

Quickly, I lit a candle and placed it in a brass holder in dire need of polishing. I peered at my hand in its thin, shadowy circle of light. I gasped. Pink streaks ran from my scar in jagged bolts. The skin around it was soft and spongy.

Nightmare. Madness.

Or was there really a ghost?

I pushed farther through the parlor and out onto the balcony. Wind, wet and full of salt, whipped through the night sky. It darted by to lick my face and dishevel my hair. I stared down at the garden, seeking peace from it, even at this height. At night, it was full of magic. Moonmirrors lifted their glowing silvery heads to the sky, their large discs projecting light. The other grave ﬂowers made guttural noises in their sleep. Their stems and petals were iridescent at night. Fog rolled about in the wind. Even more snails glided out at night, along with glittery-eyed bats and neck-twisting owls. For most, it was disorienting and even frighteningly chaotic, but I loved it.

The scene was almost enough to grant me comfort. But not quite enough. If Inessa had appeared to me as a ghost and not a vivid nightmare, then she was dead.

The thought was destabilizing. I made a fist, turning my hand into ridges of knuckles and a bundle of fingers. I clenched every finger as though life as I knew it were balled into the center of my fist and I might return to it, if I only held on tight enough.

Notions of Bide descended upon me. We’d been raised with the concept, told often how the spirits who’d left the Family’s court had set up a screen between our world and the next one to trap human souls with unﬁnished earthly dealings. It was even said they tried to lure souls into the net with sweet songs and shining lights. But once you were there, it was an endless note of static, a place with no light but also no darkness. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t imagine Inessa there. She was so alive to me, so unstoppable that even seeing her as a ghost couldn’t fully convince me.

A faraway clatter cut against the grave ﬂowers’ chorus, coming from the cobblestone road leading to the palace. It meant you heard people approaching before you saw them: a mixed rattle of jingling harnesses, creaking wheels, and clopping hooves, punctuated by men shouting.

An envoy was coming.

Sweat spread across my palms, moistening my grip on the balcony’s rail. The envoy crested the cobblestone hill, well lit by mounted lanterns and guards holding torches. Flickering tongues of ﬁre danced across the red-and-gold Acusan ﬂag.

An envoy coming at this time of night could mean only bad news— Inessa must truly be dead. The thought burned in my throat, making it feel like I’d drunk poison and couldn’t swallow it down.

Everything was about to change, once again.

I must help Inessa. She’d said I was the only one who could, and she was my sister and twin. For the sake of the little girls we’d been, the ones wandering through the palace with dirty faces and messy hair, scampering through the hidden passages together, I’d do what I could to free her. But how? I tried to think quickly. I needed to ensure Father investigated her death as an assassination so justice might be brought forth and she could ﬁnd peace, something she’d never had in this miserable world.

Despite my determination, my breath was already weak in my lungs. I’d never approached Father of my own accord, ever. For Inessa, though, I would. I’d failed Mother in the time of her death . . . I would not fail my family yet again.

Inessa was depending on me, and I’d save her.

STARVELINGS

Grave Flower Flow

Experiment Two Experime

Appearance

Black stems and thorns, tallest of all the grave flowers, with some stalks standing seven or eight feet tall. The flowers, which are purple, seem pointless in comparison to the dramatic thorns. They are long and curved at the tips and come in sequences of four or five, almost in imitation of human hands. Small slits that look like tiny mouths cover the stems, but they remained closed.

Behavior without invocation

Insatiable beasties. All the grave ﬂowers are often thirsty, but the starvelings rs thirsty are also hungry. They will eat most things yet only desire one: meat. Whether the prey is animal or human, they love to kill it with their claws. They bury their prey after they’ve killed it and have extensive root systems that devour the remains over time. It seems that they savor it. Oftentimes, they make the sort of low rumbling sound that a stomach does when empty. r

Invocation

O Primeval Family,

We are born in hunger. We live in hunger. We will die in hunger.

Please, provide us sustenance so we may be satiated— until we hunger again.

Results

After the invocation was said, the gaps opened in the starvelings’ stems. They revealed strange, almost-muscular systems and a chamber, most akin to a stomach. They began grabbing things with their claws and stu ng them inside the gaps. The gaps stretched, and the stems constricted as they swallowed item after item, not stopping to chew. I assume it was a way for the items to go directly to the root system through the stem.

Complications

They began to consume everything within reach. Chairs, paintings, prisoners, guards—they even slurped up chains. By Family fortune, the invocation did not last long, and their strength left and the gaps closed. We worked long and hard to cut the stalks open. Unfortunately, the prisoners and guards that had been consumed were dead. We were able to retrieve a chair in its whole condition. Though it will need a good cleaning.

Applications

I would love to see them tear through Acus like this! What a sight that would be. Yet, like the beauties, they don’t respond to direction. I ordered them, “Eat only the prisoners” yet despite my repeated commands, they ate indiscriminately. They would’ve eaten me too if I hadn’t been observing from the high tower overlooking the courtyard. I had a sense they might be frightful, so I’d made sure to be far out of reach. But Primeval pestilence. That was one of my favorite chairs, and now it’s covered in a disgusting goo. f