3. The Damned Flowers
The Damned Flowers
Ianthe
There was something sweet and almost comforting about pain. Pain meant you were still alive to feel, that your skin could still experience sensation. Pain could be as much of a gift as it was a curse.
Or at least, that was what the old shamans said. After all the time I’d spent in constant torture, I’d never believed it. Back in my village, I’d have done anything to be free of it.
Perhaps that had changed, because when the pain woke me, the first thing I felt was relief.
The Thorn-Sickness had flared while I was unconscious, and the vines bulged under my skin, worse than before.
Every breath ground them against my ribs, turning even shallow inhales into something I had to brace for.
But I was alive.
I didn’t know where I was. The room was carved from pale stone, lit by death crystals growing on the walls in graceful clusters.
The bed beneath me was softer than anything I’d ever slept on.
None of it was familiar. The last thing I remembered was the obsidian stage, the roar of the crowd, and then nothing.
“Easy.” A woman’s hand pressed gently against my shoulder when I tried to sit up. “The thorns are agitated. You’ll make it worse.”
I flinched from the touch before I could stop myself. The woman didn’t pull back. She kept her hand steady and waited for me to settle. “Calm yourself, Ianthe. You’re safe now.”
I turned and tried to focus on her, on anything else that wasn’t the Thorn-Sickness. It worked better than it should have. She was beautiful and monstrous in a way only the Blighted Ones could ever be. When I met her eyes, they glowed a soft silver.
Her hair moved on its own. Slender bronze serpents, woven into braids, swayed as she leaned over me. One of them turned its tiny head toward my arm and flicked its tongue against one of the straining vines.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“My name is Iaso. I’m the chief healer of Asphodelia.” She lifted her hand from my shoulder only when she was sure I’d stopped trying to rise. “You’ve been in my care since the Agora.”
“The Agora,” I repeated, trying to get my bearings. “I don’t remember what happened.”
“The amphitheater was full. Hundreds of monsters, all radiating concentrated death energy.” Iaso pulled a low stool beside the bed and sat. “Your body absorbed the surge, and your condition reacted. The thorns erupted through your skin on stage.”
I looked down at my arms. New lines traced the surface where the thorns had torn their way out. Thin, raised scars, tender and red. I ran my thumb along one of them.
In all the years I’d carried the Sickness, the vines and thorns had constantly clawed at my insides but stayed beneath the surface. I’d learned to live with it, even as each passing day became more painful.
At one point, it felt as if the Sickness had become a part of my body. But that was clearly no longer the case. Whatever agreement my body and the thorns had maintained, the obsidian stage had torn it apart.
“Phix carried you here herself,” Iaso added. “The thorns retracted once the death energy withdrew, but the eruption left marks. We’ve since managed to stabilize your condition. Asphodelia never abandons its brides.”
She was right. The room was quiet around us, but beyond the walls, Asphodelia hummed. I could feel the death energy pressing softly against my skin, constant and low.
It was the same force that had quieted the Sickness during my walk through the Blighted Lands. Even now, with the thorns agitated and the scars still fresh, the hum was holding something back. The city’s energy was still suppressing the Sickness, placating it even though the crowd had triggered it.
I thought about the hundreds of monsters who had been at the Agora of Echoes.
I didn’t know what they’d seen, exactly.
Iaso had said the thorns erupted through my arms and shoulders and neck.
Charon had told me the Bride Market was the only way to stay in Asphodelia.
And I’d obviously failed to find a husband.
“The auction,” I murmured. “It’s done. Can I try again?”
Iaso studied me. Her serpents studied me too, half a dozen tiny bronze heads turning in my direction. “That is a question for Phix, not for me. She presides over the market and its laws.”
“But you have an opinion.”
“I have observations.” She folded her hands in her lap. “You walked into the Agora on your own feet. What happened on stage was a shock, not a sentence.”
A shock, not a sentence. That was the kind of thing a healer said to keep a patient moving forward. But Iaso’s silver eyes held mine with curiosity rather than pity, and that gave her words a different meaning.
“You don’t know what the Thorn-Sickness is, do you?” I asked.
“No,” she admitted. “I’ve never encountered it. It appears to be a parasitic growth that feeds on the host’s vitality, but its interaction with death energy is unlike anything I’ve experienced.”
“Can you treat it?”
“I can try.” She reached for a glass vial on the table beside the bed. The liquid inside glowed faintly with the same light as the crystals on the walls. “Condensed asphodel sap. It should calm the thorns, at least for now.”
She held the vial out but didn’t push it forward. It was an offer rather than a command. I appreciated that more than she probably knew. But I had no choice, not really.
I took Iaso’s vial. It was warm in my hand, and the liquid moved sluggishly when I tilted it.
I uncorked it and drank. The taste was cold and metallic, with a faint sweetness underneath.
The effect came fast. The vines in my arms stopped pressing outward and settled beneath the skin.
The pressure in my ribs loosened. The pain retreated to a dull ache, distant enough that I could draw a full breath without bracing for it.
I closed my eyes and let the breath come. A full breath. A real one. Air filling my lungs all the way down, pressing against ribs that didn’t grind back. I hadn’t felt that in so long that the sensation was almost unfamiliar.
My hands unclenched against the sheets. The constant tension that had lived in my muscles for months released all at once. What it left behind was so light I almost laughed.
“That’s the best I’ve felt since spring,” I said.
“Good.” Iaso took the empty vial and set it aside. “That confirms my assessment. With regular treatment and rest, I believe we can manage the thorns.”
“Manage. Not cure.”
“I won’t promise what I can’t deliver.” She met my gaze, and the unblinking candor in those silver eyes offered an unexpected calm. “But you responded faster than I expected. That’s a good sign.”
I leaned back against the pillow. My body felt lighter than it had in months, and the exhaustion that settled over me was clean. Not the draining pull of the Sickness, but the honest tiredness of a body that had been ravaged and simply needed to recover.
I didn’t trust Iaso. I didn’t know her well enough for that.
But she’d handed me the vial and let me decide for myself.
She’d told me the truth about what she didn’t know.
In my experience, honesty and patience were harder to find than skill.
Skill could be learned. The other two were either in you, or they weren’t.
“Rest,” Iaso said. “The elixir works best when the body isn’t fighting it.”
I closed my eyes. Sleep came easily, and the pain didn’t follow me down.
The next morning, Iaso helped me out of bed.
The elixir was still working. The thorns lay flat beneath my skin, and my legs held when I stood. Iaso had given me a simple grey dress that hung loose and didn’t press against the scars on my arms. It still hurt, but maybe not quite as much.
“Fresh air,” Iaso suggested. “The balcony overlooks the canal district. You’ve been in bed long enough.”
I didn’t argue. After a full day on my back, I was ready to see what lay outside these walls.
The balcony opened onto Asphodelia, and I stopped in the archway.
The city spread below me, three or four stories down. It was nothing like the grim necropolis I’d imagined during my walk through the Blighted Lands. It was quiet, full of a strange beauty that I hadn’t been prepared for.
Black marble avenues ran between buildings of dark, polished stone. Bronze braziers lined the streets, their flames steady in the windless twilight. Canals cut through the city, carrying sleek barges that glided on their own.
I gripped the railing and let myself look. I’d paid for this. A piece of me, cut away and swallowed by the lake. I still didn’t know if the trade was fair, if Iaso could find a real cure for my sickness. But the city was real, and that was more than I’d had when I crawled out of my cottage.
Then I looked down, and the flawless veneer of the city fell away.
Every surface I could see was covered in asphodels. The flowers climbed walls, choked brazier posts, spread in thick mats across the avenues. One of them had wrapped itself around a bronze pillar so tightly that the metal had begun to buckle.
I leaned forward and studied the growth the way Fera had taught me.
Wild growth radiated outward from a root source.
These asphodels didn’t do that. They moved in tendrils, reaching and probing, testing surfaces.
The stems found the mortar between the stones and pried at the seams. Even as I watched, a fresh shoot crept along a windowsill across the canal and began to curl around the frame.
“Asphodels have been here since the land of the Thanatos-blessed appeared after the Shift,” Iaso said, stepping onto the balcony beside me. “They bloom the way we do, from the Moirae’s hands. The whole city feels their grace.”
I watched the shoot across the canal wrench a chip of stone loose from the window frame. “This doesn’t feel very graceful.”
“Lately, no.” Iaso folded her arms and leaned against the archway. “They’ve been spreading faster than anyone can account for. They’re more aggressive. We’ve been forced to send our best guardians to solve the problem.”