Chapter Three A Flower for the Villainess
CHAPTER THREE
A Flower for the Villainess
“Here, darling,” the Emperor said desperately to his queen. “Eat. Live.”
The scent filled the throne room with indescribably sweet fragrance.
Though he held the flower to her mouth, she did not part her pale lips.
She did not eat. She did not breathe. Even the Flower of Life and Death cannot save one who has passed beyond the door, into the world from which none ever return.
Excerpt from the Once and Forever Emperor series, now revised, ANONYMOUS
Rae left the palace proper and accelerated down the winding garden path with the velocity of desperation.
The Tower of the Maidens stood in a little circle of trees, an attempt to give the ladies a bower and mask the unsavoury fact these noblewomen were gathered there to please the king.
Much like the royal menagerie, as if women were rare animals to be hunted and caged for royal delight.
Rae slipped and almost fell on the blood soaking the garden path, but when she reached the door of the tower, a lady’s maid let her in.
Rae’s heart leaped at the sight of the blue dress and white apron, thinking of Emer, but all palace maids wore this uniform.
This maid’s apron wasn’t smeared with blood, this maid was not wearing a wry and forbidding expression.
This wasn’t Emer. Rae had sent her own maid far away.
This maid did look familiar. She thought the woman worked for the Nemeth twins, but she didn’t know which twin.
Rae was as bad as all the nobles who didn’t know servants’ names; she’d thought of servants as minor characters who weren’t important, since that’s what they usually were in fantasy novels.
When she recalled Hortensia, the elder twin who fell ill after a ghoul bite, and Horatia, the retiring younger twin who favoured pink, Rae remembered the same maid in attendance to each.
That couldn’t be right: why would the twins have twin maids?
Rae took a wild guess. “Do you work for Lady Horatia Nemeth?”
The maid tossed her head. “My family’s been with the Nemeths for generations.”
Well, that wasn’t a helpful response. Most of the noble servants had worked in their respective families’ homes for generations, only traded due to marriage or debt, because being a servant for nobles and trusted with enchanted objects was a hereditary position.
Though actually, Rae’s maid Emer and her guard Key both had mysterious origin stories.
Rae should have thought about that earlier, but she didn’t have time to think about it now.
She couldn’t stop picturing Key looming over that poor kneeling boy, Key’s face a desecrated cathedral haunted by horror.
Prime Minister Pio had clearly pitied Rae for her foolishness in believing Key might be merciful.
Nobody would have any mercy on Rae, neither the Emperor nor his court. Certainly not now she had dared to command the Emperor. The king’s ministers had always hated her. Rae had seen how they looked at her as she sat in a throne. If she stayed, Rae would be hunted on all sides.
Some people might feel bound by the promise she’d made Key, that she would stay.
Some people were suckers. Rae would get the Flower, get out, and feel bad about her crimes later, when she lived through this. Only survivors had the luxury of survivor’s guilt.
Rae intended to indulge in so much guilt one day. Not today. It was almost dawn, and she must be wicked enough to reach another world.
“Lady Hortensia instructed me to escort you to her chambers,” said the maid.
Rae followed the blue and white uniform up the winding staircase of the Maidens’ Tower.
It was doubly dark, enclosed by stone with only narrow chinks for windows, and by the still-enclosing shadows of night.
It wasn’t yet dawn. Thank you, fate, thank you, anyone listening: Rae had made it in time. She was going home.
She didn’t have far to go. Hortensia Nemeth’s chamber was only a few storeys up, indicating she wasn’t in high royal favour. Rae understood that much. Rae herself had been moved to the basement.
When the maid opened the door, Rae realized the Nemeth twins shared a chamber. The younger twin, Horatia, was still wearing a tattered pink gown with bloodstains and a breastplate, and Rae was totally and completely screwed.
The rooms were cluttered, overcrowded by too many belongings crammed into one space, and by the paraphernalia of illness.
When Hortensia had sickened after the ghoul bite, she’d been dismissed from the king’s ladies-in-waiting-to-be-queen, as a prospective queen must be in good health and prospectively fertile.
Hortensia must have moved in with her sister when forced to give up her chamber.
Alongside powders, perfumes and mending lay bowls of water with cloths half-drowned within, bloodstained lace handkerchiefs, cups of half-drunk teas and tinctures, and a terrible container of leeches.
Hortensia would no longer be needing her medicine.
Rae had entrusted the Flower to Horatia, saying that if she didn’t return before dawn, Horatia could heal her sister with its magic. She’d meant it by way of insurance. What a shame to waste the Flower of Life and Death if Rae died.
When last Rae saw Hortensia, the older twin was so wasted she was twisted, back bowed, skin turning from pink flesh to yellowed parchment.
A woman becoming a story, because when you died, all that remained was a story in the minds and on the tongues of the few who still loved you. After they forgot, you became silence.
Hortensia Nemeth had become myth. Overnight, her figure had unbowed and filled out, returned to youth and strength. The miraculous recovery wasn’t the most noteworthy thing about her.
She had been a pale, yellow-haired woman, but now both pink skin and lemon-coloured locks were overlaid with a sheen of silver. Only one other person in this world would know what Rae meant by this, but Hortensia looked like a woman plucked from a shimmering TV screen and placed among the living.
Horatia had already given her twin the Flower. Of course. She loved her sister. Hortensia was dying. The Nemeth twins owed Rae nothing. Why had Rae ever imagined they would act in any other way?
“My dear,” Rae mocked, imitating how the twins usually talked. “You’re glowing.”
Hortensia blushed under the silver overlay on her skin.
Horatia, the commander general’s daughter, stood as straight as a soldier in her pink gown. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “for breaking my word.”
Even in the midst of shock, Rae waved a dismissive hand. “Can’t blame you for that. It’s the kind of thing I always do myself.”
Fair was fair. If you became a villain, you couldn’t act all offended when people sinned against you. Well, you could, but you’d only succeed in making yourself look absurd.
Horatia pretended a different attitude. “I meant to save the Flower of Life and Death for you, Lady Rahela, but when I returned to the tower after slaying various marauding raiders—”
“My dear, must we talk about slaying in company—” Hortensia murmured.
“If the raiders didn’t wish to be slain, they shouldn’t have marauded, my dear!
” Horatia turned back to Rae, wringing her hands.
“Hortensia had one of her attacks, when she… she talked like a ghoul, all names and hunger, and her teeth snapped, and she shook until we feared her bones would shake out of her poor skin. Our Aileen stayed with Hortensia, doing what she could, but there was nothing anyone could do!”
“Our Aileen.” The Nemeth twins must have shared Aileen the maid between them, even before Hortensia got kicked out.
Each lady was allotted a stipend from the royal treasury to pay her personal maid and bodyguard, but the Nemeth family were in dire financial straits.
Sharing a maid meant they could live on the stipend.
With no maid they would have twice as much money, but the Nemeth ladies would never dream of life without a maid.
Servants collected their own pay, too. Aileen was in on the scheme.
Rae sneaked a look at the maid, grimly tidying the mess, and hoped she was getting a cut.
Hard enough to do two people’s work. Harder still to both do your job, and care for the dying. Rae had seen her own mother try.
Horatia continued, “Near dawn a rattle came from Hortensia’s throat. I was certain she was on her deathbed. So I gave her the Flower of Life and Death.”
“You couldn’t be certain,” Rae pointed out. “You could only be afraid.”
Silence followed Rae’s words. Horatia shrank back, as though she was still only the retiring younger twin rather than the intrepid slayer of raiders, defender of the Maidens’ Tower.
Hortensia spoke up like a good big sister. “Horry only broke her word for my sake, so it’s my fault. I regret what happened, Lady Rahela. I wouldn’t have eaten the Flower if I’d been in my right mind. As soon as I came to my senses and realized what was occurring, I stopped.”
The shimmering maiden crossed the floor and held out her silvery hands to Rae. Cupped within them was half of the Flower of Life and Death.
Rae remembered the incandescent moment when the Flower bloomed, as distant as if it had been a year ago and as vivid as if it had happened a moment before.
The petals were so delicate they seemed like lace, or the fronds of some frail sea creature, yet long enough to encase the whole flower.
When unfurled, the white outer petals stood out like spikes of bone around the pale cup of the flower, holding an inner layer dark as arterial blood, and the final silver-and-gold glow of its enchanted heart.
The pale cup was broken in half, the heart torn in two. Rae could see the imprint of hungry teeth on a mangled petal.
“I saved this for you,” whispered Hortensia.
Rae stared around the cluttered chamber to see if a luminous portal to another world might open. Just in case. None did. The room stayed as dark as Rae’s heart.