Those Fatal Flowers

Chapter 12 Now

Dread’s grip on the settlement is temporarily relieved at the end of the month by Yule. The holiday draws us to the meetinghouse, now adorned with laurel and holly leaves, to celebrate two nights after the solstice. Their green and red flashes are a welcome sight—they’re the only color that winter hasn’t buried beneath an unrelenting cloak of white. Candle flames dance in every window, and the air inside the meetinghouse is heavy with cinnamon, cloves, and wine. Alcohol warms my frost-kissed cheeks, and when I spy the rosy complexions on Margery, Wenefrid, and Rose, I find I’m not alone.

All around, the townspeople swirl in their finest clothes. There’s Agnes, her tinkly, forced laugh emanating from across the room as she speaks with Master Sampson. Rose stands by his side, doing her best impression of a captivated wife, but the way her fingers strum along the side of her mug reveals her boredom. When her friend Jane rushes past, dodging the obvious advances from Master James Lacie, Rose politely excuses herself from her husband’s side and inserts herself between the two, allowing Jane time to escape. The simple act of kindness makes me smile.

Thomas bursts through the large wooden doors with a piece of a tree trunk in his arms, its roots dangling near his feet. The colonists erupt into applause as he carries the log to the center of the room, where he makes a show of sitting on top of it. Everyone gathers around him, but I hang back, apprehension slowing my limbs as the comfort I felt moments ago dissipates like dew in the late morning sun.

My mind wanders to my sisters. Imagining them before a roaring fire inside our little hut as Scopuli’s fierce winter winds roar outside makes my chest ache with longing.

Thomas clears his throat, returning my focus to the scene at hand. Cora, dressed in emerald as his winter queen, hands him a mug of ale. Watching her with Thomas is worse than it was watching Proserpina with the potential suitors Ceres invited to the palace. Proserpina never reveled in their attention. Cora, on the other hand, radiates affection for Thomas. When he takes the mug from her and rewards her with a kiss on the cheek, Cora beams, sinking my mood deeper into shadow.

“Welcome be thou, Heaven King,” he begins to sing, and a hush settles over the room. Though I despise him, even I must admit that he has a certain charisma. I scan the crowd, and everyone’s eyes save for mine are locked on him. Their stares are carefree and jovial, unbothered by the fact that the hold he has over them is dangerous. It’s slower than a song capable of driving them into the sea, but just as deadly. Would they be fawning so much if they knew he refused to send the scouting party to Scopuli even after that first snow melted away?

“Welcome born in one morning.

“Welcome for whom we shall sing.

“Welcome for whom we shall sing, welcome Yule!”

He raises his glass, and the room joins him in the next round to finish the song. Thomas pulls himself from the stump and invites another to take his seat. Will steps forward, and everyone hollers and claps for him, despite the darkness that flickers between the two. The black eye that Thomas gave him has finally healed, but a deeper rift remains. Thomas has been cold to Will. Not in an obvious way, but it’s now Hugh Taylor whom he seeks to accompany him into the woods to hunt. It’s Charles Florrie who joins him in the tavern to drink. It’s Mauris Allen who’s constantly sidled up beside him. I’ve tried to broach the topic with Will, but he dismisses my concerns.

“He didn’t like losing in public,” he says. “But he’ll come around eventually.”

When Will starts to sing, his notes melt my anxiety away, replacing it with a stubborn sense of pride. His voice is betterthan Thomas’s, and relief that he won my hand washes over me.

No, he didn’t, a nagging voice scolds. I press my index finger and thumb to the bridge of my nose to steady my thoughts. How have I done it again? Will isn’t my betrothed, I’m not a princess, and my only reason for being here is to survive until spring so these men will follow me home. But the longer I’m in the City of Raleigh, the easier it is to forget.This life, so unencumbered by ancient curses, mythical beasts, and angry, vengeful gods, is starting to feel more and more real.

But it’s not. Not for me.

I have a debt that must be paid, and its price is blood. When the weather breaks and we sail for Scopuli, my betrothed will die alongside Thomas. And though my heart breaks for Cora and Will both, I can’t see a way out of this. Perhaps I’m the one who’s truly damned after all, and I’m too foolish to see it.

I take a large sip of warm wine, trying to push these thoughts from my mind and enjoy myself. Will makes that easy, his voice deep and rich. Like Thomas, he retires from his wooden throne after one tune, and the rest of the villagers take turns singing their favorite carols. Only once everyone is good and drunk do the men roll the log toward the large fireplace and set it ablaze. The meaning of today’s spectacles is entirely lost on me.

Emme, halfway through her latest mug of spiced wine, finds me. She laughs sweetly as she pulls me into an embrace. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” I whisper into her frizzy hair and produce a tiny present from my skirts. After the challenge, Mistress Bailie reluctantly gave me the key to the locked room where they put my treasure for safekeeping. With Will as the official winner of my hand, she lost the pretense of protecting it, though she did insist I ask Will’s permission before removing anything. When I broached the topic of giving gifts to some of the women over supper with the Bailies last night, Will simply laughed.

“We’re not married yet, my lady. Those are your riches, not mine.”

Rage ignited Agnes’s features for the span of a breath, but though she regained her composure quickly, I still saw the crack. I could’ve kissed Will for that alone, if there weren’t already a pair of petal-soft lips haunting me from across the table—a pair that was curled into a smile for someone else. Cora, distracted by Thomas, missed my victory over Agnes. My mood curdled for the remainder of the meal. Later that evening, I took great care sorting through the wealth, happy for the distraction of finding the perfect gift for each new friend, though the glimmering of gemstones and gold paled in comparison to Cora’s radiance. What a fool Thomas is for not seeing that.

A sapphire for Emme, a ruby for Rose, an emerald each for Margaret and Wenefrid. Gold bracelets for the young mothers, Elyoner and Elizabeth. An opal for Liz, and a golden necklace with a large lapis lazuli stone for Margery. She nearly cried when she opened it earlier this afternoon, clasping the chain around her neck and hiding it beneath the collar of her dress. Although it went unsaid, we both understand it’s best not to flaunt the gift in front of Agnes.

Emme’s eyes sparkle with an intensity to rival the jewel’s when she opens the small pouch, tears welling in them.

“Oh, Lady Thelia…It’s beautiful.”

“Come now,” I tease, bumping my shoulder into hers. “It’s just Thelia.”

When Emme looks up to meet my stare, she’s twinkling as bright as Venus.

Will slides behind me and smiles at her over my shoulder. Emme kisses the top of my head as if to say, Go on, then, and I laugh as Will extends a hand to invite me to dance. I still don’t know the steps, but this doesn’t faze him. He pulls me across the room in a series of spins and whirls, and we both erupt into laughter until the song ends and deposits us before the head table. Cora’s there, alongside Thomas, a soft smile splashed across her lips as she watches us. Our eyes lock, and my fingers tingle with the desperate urge to reach for her, to invite her to join me here, but she winks and turns back to Thomas, lacing her fingers into his. A twinge of jealousy slithers up my back, but I’m not alone: Will’s watching them as well.

It seems we both want what we cannot have.

“I need some air,” I say, squeezing Will’s hand before releasing it.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks with a sadness in his eyes, in the corners of his mouth, that he thinks he’s hiding.

I retake his hand in mine. “Come on, then.”

The night plants frigid kisses on my cheeks, but they sting less than watching Cora fawn over Thomas. Despite the cold these past weeks, she’s still sought me out to walk along the beach with her, dangers be damned. At first, our conversations centered around the Bible stories she’d read to me, but those inevitably led to more spirited discussions. And in all those hours spent together sharing abbreviated histories and hopes with each other, she never spoke of Thomas.

But she also kept the conversation lighthearted. There was never an excuse to reach for her hand again.

“How long have you loved him?” I say after a time, bringing my mug of spiced wine to my lips.

Will nearly chokes on his. “I— Excuse me, my lady?”

Those eyes, so like his sister’s that I could cry, are wide with shock. I give him a sad, knowing smile, and though he breaks his gaze away from mine, the tension in his jaw and shoulders melts away, leaving a softer Will before me.

“We’ve known each other since we were children. We’re like brothers.” His voice cracks on the last word, and I risk a hand on his shoulder. This moment is delicate, so much like the light snow that falls from above—beautiful and ephemeral, at the risk of melting into nothing if pushed too quickly. “He wasn’t always…like this. But I don’t know exactly when he changed.”

“Is it hard to see them together?”

He shoots me a mournful look. “You tell me.”

“There you both are!” Cora’s sparkling voice splits Will and me apart. Her eyes linger on our reddened cheeks and our guilty faces. “Supper is about to start.”

“Don’t be silly,” Will says with a grin, wrapping an arm around his sister’s shoulder and pointing a finger at me. “Agnes won’t begin without our guest of honor.”

I laugh bitterly. “I’m not so sure.”

Cora reads something on my face, and her brows crinkle with concern. “Are you having a good time?”

“Of course—are you?”

Her eyes wander past us to the snowy village, and she nods, a curious expression settling over her features.

“Will, would you check if Agnes started without us?” I ask. “I don’t want to miss a slice of Margery’s apple pie.”

Will accepts with a nod, and then it’s just Cora and me left in the falling snow.

“He’s been really happy these past few weeks,” she says, lifting her head to look at the sky. Tonight, Luna is nestled behind snow clouds, but Cora’s skin reflects the meetinghouse’s light as if she’s a moon herself.

“He’s a good man,” I concede. “I haven’t met many of those.”

“I think he’s in love with you.”

A surprised laugh escapes my throat. “In love with me? Cora, don’t be silly—we barely know each other!”

“All right, fine, I think he’s starting to fall in love with you. Is that better?”

“I don’t know, Cora…”

“What about you? Are you falling in love with him, too?”

My eyes snap back to hers. “What? I— Why are you asking me this?”

“It’s a rare thing for a husband and wife to love each other,” she says slowly, and there’s a glorious moment when hope blossoms in my heart before she crushes it in her hands. “I’m just hopeful you’ll both be as lucky as I am.”

Her words are like a slap in the face, and I turn away from her sharply, searching for a reply that might cut her as much as she’s cut me. “I think I might be.”

Her shoulders curl forward in my peripheral vision, a flower wilting. “Do you remember when you told me that he looks like someone you once loved?”

The question draws my focus back to her. A snowflake lands on her bottom lip, and another one catches on her eyelashes. My fingers twitch at my sides to brush them away, longing to feel her softness beneath them.

“Yes.”

“Is that why you’re holding back? Are you still in love with him?”

The emotion that washes over me has no name: sorrow at the loss of Proserpina and what will never be; joy at the thought of the moon reflected in her eyes, of the way her skin tasted on my lips. Guilt rises like bile into the back of my throat, and my arms snake around my stomach to steady myself.

“I’ll always love her.”

When I meet her gaze once more, those lovely emerald eyes are wide with shock, no doubt thinking of the laws pinned just behind us and their consequences— upon pain of death. Yet Cora doesn’t appear disgusted or frightened, only surprised that I dare to admit it.

I smile weakly. “We were only girls. She was my closest friend.”

“What happened to her?”

“What always happens. She married a man far too old for her, in a realm too far away to visit. Fate, some said. I don’t know what became of her after that.”

And I won’t until I die, when the gods grant my ravaged heart an answer.

“Is she the only person you’ve ever loved?” The question is spoken so softly that I barely hear it before it’s swallowed by the snow. Cora blinks the snowflake from her lashes. The other still graces her lip, and my entire world contracts until the City of Raleigh falls away. It’s just me, Cora, and that glittering crystal. I can’t help myself—I reach out to brush it away with my thumb, and when I touch her, every part of my body sings.

“No.” The answer leaves my mouth without my mind’s approval, and my heart twists at hearing it spoken out loud. But it’s the truth, isn’t it? Cora’s eyes flick between my thumb and my stare. Her chest rises and falls with quickening breaths. Hope can be the sweetest ache when you believe you’re on the cusp of attainment, but how quickly it darkens into misery once dashed.

“Thomas will be looking for me.” Cora guides my hand away from her mouth before dropping it at my side. “Let’s go back.”

I have never hated Thomas more than I do in this moment. Raidne, our brilliant haruspex, will soon dig her fingers through his entrails, and oh, how I’ll relish it.

At the head table, Mistress Bailie clinks a fork against her glass. Her daffodil hair is twisted into an elaborate bun on the top of her head, encircled in a crown of holly berries. Everyone’s attention turns to her except for Thomas’s, which finds its way to me. His stare makes my mouth run dry.

“Please, friends, find a seat,” Agnes begins, motioning to the tables around the room. The most food I’ve seen since arriving here is distributed generously across each—apples spiced with cinnamon, cheeses, nuts, and even a few roasted birds and pies. People sit in the chairs closest to them, paying no mind to rank. During Yule, the traditional class separations don’t apply. Will and I settle in beside Margery and Jeremie. I reach for her hand and squeeze it gently. The toddler giggles up at me from underneath a head of blond curls, the perfect cherub for the season. Despite my better judgment, the boy is growing on me.

“I know we’re all preparing for a very rationed winter, but we’ve worked hard these past few days to prepare this beautiful feast. Tonight, let’s enjoy the fruits of our labors as we celebrate the birth of our Lord!” Mistress Bailie concludes her speech with an exaggerated curtsy, and then everyone tears into their food.

“ We’ve worked very hard?” I raise an eyebrow to Margery, and she laughs. Mistress Bailie hasn’t so much as lifted a spoon, let alone helped prepare a meal.

The other women’s work is a huge success, a stark departure from the last few weeks of hardtack and gruel. I let each bite sit in my mouth, savoring the decadence of the meats, the richness of the cheeses, and I wash the food down with large sips of mulled wine. I’m drunk halfway through supper.

Too late, it occurs to me that I should be embarrassed, but when I look around, everyone is equally intoxicated. It’s almost pleasant until I catch sight of Thomas whispering something into Cora’s ear. Whatever he says makes color rise along her throat, and she pushes at his chest gently, turning a flushed face demurely away from him.

Thomas grins.

Will sees it, too. Perhaps it’s the drink, perhaps it’s the desperate need to feel something, anything, else, but he rests a warm palm on my leg beneath the table. My head snaps to face him, but he continues his meal with his free hand, engaged in a conversation with a man on his left. I can feel the heat of his fingers, even through my various layers of skirts. I know my cheeks must be turning scarlet.

Would it be so wrong to feel something other than guilt and loss for one night?

I could brush his hand away. Instinct tells me that if I did, he’d never touch me again. But there’s something far more intoxicating than the wine in letting it remain. A power, however small, I haven’t felt for centuries.

Memories of Cora’s breath on the back of my neck, of her fingers lacing me into my gown, rush forward, and I choose this: I won’t turn Will away. They have the same intense green eyes, the same night-black curls. Cora leads Thomas to the dance floor, and Will is here, extending an invitation. Is he not the safest way to be close to her? My punishment would be mild for lying with my betrothed—I’d hang if they discover it’s his sister I ache for.

When he finally shifts his focus back to me, those sparkling jade eyes officially ask the question. Behind him, Cora throws back her head and laughs at Thomas as he lifts her by the hips off the floor in sync with the music’s tempo.

I accept.

When we escape into the night again, I don’t have time to process the chill before Will presses me against the meetinghouse wall, his hands slipping beneath my cloak to find my hips. This is the second time I’ve found myself pinned in this shadowed corner, but I relish it now. Here, under the curtain of night, it’s easy to pretend it’s not Will’s fingers that press into the silk, not his soft curls in my hands.

But his lips are soft as they brush against mine, more of a question than a kiss, so tentative that I fear he might break away. Where would that leave me? Without this distraction, there’s nothing to keep my mind from wandering to Thomas’s hands on Cora, to how she tossed back her head with delight and put the low cut of her gown on full display for him.

My fingers tighten their hold on his locks and my lips answer his, banishing the possibility of a night spent yearning for another promised woman. The kiss is slow, deep but gentle, exactly the kind that two people each thinking of someone else might share. It’s not enough. I want, I need, to feel the pleasant warmth beneath my skin burst into flames.

“Like you mean it,” I whisper into his ear, my teeth grazing along the lobe. “Like I’m him.”

Will stills against me, and a painful moment passes where neither of us speaks.

“I’m sorry, I—” The words have barely left my mouth when he kisses me again, and this time, it’s a wave crashing against the shore. The hesitation has vanished, replaced by hunger—what else to call the way his tongue parts my lips to taste me, the way his grip on my hips tightens? He presses the entirety of his weight into me, and the delicate silk of my gown snags against the meetinghouse’s rough wooden walls, but I don’t care. In this moment I’ll let him consume every part of me, even my feelings for his sister, if it means she can’t haunt me tonight.

When he parts my legs with his knee, I gasp against his mouth, reveling in how easy it is to trick the body into trading one ache for another. And unlike the longing I feel for Cora, this thirst can be quenched.

“Take me home.” I barely recognize the sound of my voice, thick with longing.

Without a word, Will lifts me from the ground to spin me around. I can’t help it—I laugh, tilting my head up to the skyto catch falling snowflakes on my tongue. The hood of mycloak falls back to my shoulders, but the shock of air onmy neck feels incredible against the heat that radiates across my skin. When our eyes meet again, he pulls me in close once more and steals the snowflakes from my mouth.

There it is. The fire.

When we reach her— his —home, he pushes the door open so forcefully that the cottage shakes around us. My fingers find the clasp of my cloak before I cross inside, and as soon as the door clicks shut behind me, I drop the garment to the floor. It lies there unceremoniously, all the bed we need.

The room is dark but warm, the only light cast from the hearth’s fire. It crackles gently, ready for another log, but thatwill have to wait until we’re done. In its low glow, I linger on his similar features—the curve of his lashes, the gentle slope of his nose—as we close the space between us once more.

Our lips meet, and our fingers pull frantically at the strings of each other’s clothes with little success. But then Will breaks the kiss to spin me away from him, making use of the firelight to unlace the back of my gown. I close my eyes, trying to pretend it’s Cora who stands behind me now, but Will’s touch isn’t as delicate. The gown falls to the floor with a sigh, and then I’m before him in only my shift, hair still pinned beneath a simple white coif.

“Are you sure about this, my lady?”

His kindness catches me by surprise—I don’t want it, not now, when every moment our bodies lose contact is a moment when thoughts of Cora and Thomas threaten to slip in. One of my fingers finds his lips to quiet him, while the other hand moves to the band of his trousers.

“I’m sure. But enough talking.”

There’s a strangeness when we come together. The room’s low light does its best, but it can’t transform us into the people we truly seek. The more our bodies connect, the more a sense of desperation takes hold to try to defy this fact, to find pleasure in it anyway.

And pleasure there is—the lovely tingle of skin in the wake of a caress, the bittersweet ache between my legs. There’s a pleasant sense of fullness when he’s inside of me, but even after, when he teases that ache to release with his tongue, none of it’s enough to banish Cora.

A long silence settles upon us once it’s over, broken only when Will brings my hand to his mouth and places a warm kiss on my palm.

“You’re so lovely,” he says, but there’s a distance in his voice. A mist that gathers in his eyes at the second half of his thought, which remains unsaid. But…

My hand slides to cup his face, as I try to blink away the tears that threaten to gather in mine. In this moment, with our limbs still draped across each other’s, I must face the fact I’ve done my best to ignore these past few weeks—that Will is truly good. How can I possibly protect him from what’s coming when he’s the one who won my hand?

“I need to go.”

His eyebrows furrow as he helps me from the floor. “My lady, I’m sorry, I…”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Will.” I reach for his hands and draw in close to rest my forehead against his. We stand like that for a moment, hands clasped and foreheads touching, a new sense of understanding enveloping us in its embrace. “It was worth a try, right?”

There’s a faint crack in his smile, and something inside of me breaks at the sight of it. I wait for the safety of the darkened streets, still punctuated with the radiance of Yuletide candles in the windows, and then I let the tears fall freely.

“Where did you sneak off to?”

The question accosts me as soon as I slip into the kitchen, sending my heart into my throat. There, at the table where Margery prepares our food, Thomas waits. He’s leaning back in a chair, his dirtied boots propped up on the table’s surface, where they leave little puddles of melting snow.

“Good evening, Master Thomas,” I reply coolly. “I didn’t sneak off anywhere. I just wanted a bit of fresh air and to watch the snow fall.”

The confidence in my tone brings him to a standing position, and his lips curl.

“Oh, really? And your new prince wanted some fresh air as well?”

“I’m not exactly sure what you’re implying. I bid Will good night outside the meetinghouse.” I hang my cloak on its hook beside the door. “But do keep in mind that you don’t have the rank to question me.”

A low growl emanates from his throat. Thomas isn’t used to being below someone in class, to being put in his place.

“How can anyone be certain you are who you say you are?” An ugly sneer cuts across his face. “Never forget that you’re a guest in my home.”

“How could I?” I snap back. “And I’ll happily prove I am who I say once the weather clears. I would have already, if you didn’t stall our return.”

Gods, how I’ll relish cutting his throat, spilling his blood into the sand and sending his body on the wings of flames to Proserpina. His death will free my sisters from the chains of Ceres’s curse.

His death will free Cora.

“Royalty or not, I won’t tolerate you behaving like a harlot underneath our roof.”

I push past him toward the stairs, digging my shoulder into his chest as I do. The force catches him by surprise, and he stumbles, the backs of his legs hitting the table with a loud thump.

When I reach the first step, I turn around to face him once more.

“Then good thing we weren’t under your roof.”

Thomas does not follow me; he does not say a word.

The turn of the year comes and goes, taking my third full moon with it, though her image is lost to me behind a curtain of snow that refuses to lift. For the next three weeks, each time it seems as if the clouds might part, another storm darkens the skies to re-cloak the city in a fresh layer of white. Long gone is the sense of calm brought by Yuletide, replaced by a quiet desolation that’s fraying everyone’s nerves, mine included.

Will and I continue to steal moments together, though it’s not lust that draws us into each other’s orbits—it’s that we’ve somehow shared our silent truths. There’s comfort in that for Will, and there would be for me, too, if it didn’t complicate my plans for spring. I spend our time together praying for some sin to reveal itself, to justify what must happen to him, but one never comes. Will is as kind and as thoughtful as I feared him to be, and I have no way to keep him from voyaging to Scopuli.

When I’m not with Will, I’m with Cora. We spend most of our days together now, after I finally convinced her and Margery to let me help with the housework. My wealth and status have slipped just far enough into the fog of memory for them to allow me to participate in the mundane. As soon as Margery and I finish cleaning the kitchen after breakfast, I head to the Waters house, where I spend the day helping Cora tend her hearth, mend and clean clothes, and care for her ailing father.