Chapter One
The ancient Greeks believed that asphodel grew in the fields of the underworld. In herbalism, this small white flower is used to treat skin conditions and menstrual obstructions. In floriography, it means My regrets follow you to the grave.
Two months later, beneath the red sky of sunrise, along past the city and the moors and the ancient woods, a girl tied a ribbon in her hair.
She sat before a window in her dressing room in the crumbling manor that was her home.
The window—a weave of colored glass and tracing stone—looked out over the grounds of Elderwood House, now covered in January snow.
It had begun to fall the day they received news of Persephone’s death and had not ceased since.
Now it lay like a shroud over the grounds and the forest, even reaching the sea.
White waves lashed the shore, their sound repeating like a dirge.
Her handmaid laced Elswyth’s gown, pulling it taut—there was no resistance from her figure.
The dress, which had fit mere weeks prior, now slipped from her pale shoulders.
The gown was nothing extravagant: a black wool petticoat and jacket, set over a cotton shirtwaist. It was a scholar’s attire, modest, practical, and black.
Elswyth dressed for a funeral, after all, and so modest was appropriate, and black was expected.
But the dark dress managed to make her scar seem almost crimson in comparison.
Elswyth, looking out over the grounds, caught her reflection in the glass of the window, imposed over the snow and the dark wood beyond. She stared at herself, but did not meet her own gaze. Instead, she looked at her scar.
Without it, she was the picture of a young lady: pale, fine featured, chastely dressed.
But the scar changed that. It tore across her left side, arcing into rootlets.
Her left eye was gray, nestled in the branches of the scar, while her right eye remained a gentle green.
Her lip puckered at the edges where the scar crossed it, giving her a permanent sneer.
She almost never smiled, but if she did, the left side of her face was slower to respond than the right.
Elswyth brought her hand to the scar and then concentrated, secreting a layer of arrowroot powder from her fingers.
She rubbed it in, watching the red lines fade but not vanish.
That scar would always be with her, no matter how she tried to hide it.
And so—no matter the paleness of her skin or the fineness of her gowns—she would always be hideous.
Elswyth summoned asphodel to her skin: white petals and star-gold filaments. They appeared in bunches behind her ears, pricking through her skin as though it were soil. With a breath, she pushed vitae into the flowers, though not enough to drain her. She was frail enough already.
But Persephone had always loved asphodel. She had said the starlike blooms made her look heavenly. Elswyth never cared for floriography, but the meaning of asphodel in the language of flowers haunted her: My regrets follow you to the grave.
She faced her lady’s maid, who offered a black veil. Elswyth touched the familiar fabric, lace and silk organza woven with roses and ivy along the trim—roses for grief, ivy for immortality. The same veil she’d worn for her mother’s funeral, not ten years ago.
Elswyth kept her face stern as the maid placed the coronet of the veil beneath her crown of asphodel. The lace obscured her scar. For that, at least, she was grateful.
Her father’s coach waited on the gravel carriage circle.
Staff flanked the entrance as Elswyth walked through the great doors of Elderwood House.
Like the manor itself, the staff had seen better days.
Chamberlain, gardener, laundress, groom—all of them cast their eyes downward, as though they too believed the death of Persephone meant the death of the Elderwoods.
They bowed as she passed, and Elswyth did her best to keep her gaze forward.
They would never truly love her, not like they’d loved her sister.
All they’d ever see in Elswyth was her scar.
And who could blame them? If Elswyth was kindlier, more graceful, perhaps they would look past her deformity.
But she was not kind, and she was not graceful. Of course they preferred Persephone.
Elswyth stopped before the coach and then looked back at the house, once the seat of the Elderwood kings, now half a ruin.
The roof of the east wing had long since rotted through, leaving naught but stone walls and empty windows, their baroque tracery hinting at the former glory of the place.
Ivy had taken back what people had given up, and it curled through the broken stone, winter-dry and ancient.
The coachman cleared his throat, and Elswyth handed him her parasol before allowing him to guide her into the carriage. Inside, her father and grandmother waited.
Her father was an austere man, strong but bent by age, like an old oak.
He had a pronounced nose, proud and straight, and the rough-lined face of a wooden carving.
Two sprigs of rowan sat behind his ears, forming a funeral laurel.
Small details set apart his suit as that of a once-wealthy lord: embroidered branches along the cuff and a pocket watch sitting open on his lap, the golden case engraved with the crest of their house: a circuitous elderwood tree, its roots intertwining with its branches, with a lone eye at its center.
“You’re late,” he said, tapping the watch. He knocked on the wall of the carriage, and the coachman stirred the horses forward.
“Forgive my grieving,” Elswyth said, not meeting her father’s eyes. Next to him, her grandmother sat hunched, her face covered in a thick veil. Beneath her cloak, her body was lumpy, malformed. Her gnarled hands clutched a cane of elderwood.
“Elswyth?” her grandmother asked. Her voice was weak, like the creaking of a distant tree.
Elswyth put her hand on her grandmother’s. “Yes, I’m here.”
“A beast,” she whispered, “pale horses…”
Elswyth frowned. Little of what her grandmother said made sense these days. She patted her hand gently. The woman’s rheumy eyes gazed out from under the veil, barely visible through the cloth.
Outside, the carriage rolled down the hill, away from Elderwood House and into their estate. The ancient forest called the Wildwood sprawled over the valley behind the house, into the hills beyond. Before them, the road led downward, toward the village and the sea.
Her father cleared his throat. “You look lovely.”
“Loveliness was not my ambition for my sister’s funeral.”
“It was a compliment.”
“Find something else to compliment, if you must.”
Her father frowned and looked out the window. Her grandmother kept mumbling, “Little babes in the wood.”
“Has anyone tried to claim the reward?” Elswyth asked. She kept her voice steady, still avoiding her father’s eyes.
Her father shook his head. “Nothing. Perhaps that is for the best.”
Elswyth bristled at the look of resignation on her father’s face. She gripped her skirt so tightly that her fingernails bit through the fabric and into her palm. When she spoke, she struggled to keep the ire from her voice. “Would you not gladly pay that money to see her returned?”
“If I thought there was any chance of her returning.”
“Because you believe she is dead,” Elswyth said. The word dead came out like a curse.
“A labyrinth of bones,” her grandmother said. “An amber eye.”
Elswyth released her gown and took her grandmother’s hand again. She tried to find some softness for the old woman, even through the frustration she felt with her father. “Hush now, Grandmama.”
Her father looked at the old woman, visibly irritated, and then lowered his spectacles over his nose. “Because she has been declared dead, yes.”
Elswyth folded her hands in her lap and tried not to fidget.
They had had this conversation before, of course, and it had always ended in tears or shouting.
It was true that the Metropolitan Police had closed the investigation into her sister’s disappearance and declared her dead.
But only two months had passed since Persephone had vanished, and declaring her dead seemed conspicuously premature.
Elswyth sent daily letters asking why they had closed the investigation, but she received nothing but the standard responses for grieving widows in return.
Sometimes they even forgot to replace the word husband with sister.
“With what evidence? There is no body. She could have run away. She could have been kidnapped, or gotten lost, or—”
“For Eden’s sake, Elswyth! I am not having this conversation today. We are going to her funeral. We are laying her to rest.”
“A prince of leaves,” her grandmother whispered. “A mask of serpents.”
Her father rounded on the old woman and shouted, his face blooming red. “Damn it will you be quiet!”
Elswyth placed a hand defensively over her grandmother’s. “Do not scream at her,” she said. “She is ill.”
“Mad, is what she is, like all the women in this family,” her father said. He closed his eyes, letting his head fall back on the seat.
Elswyth said nothing. Instead, she watched the veins under her father’s eyes, the papery skin there stained with violet.
She listened to his ragged breathing and watched his eyes flicker beneath their lids like a man falling into dreams, and her rage subsided for just a moment, replaced by pity, and sadness, and fear—everything she had been hiding from herself since the day Persephone vanished.
Her father blinked his eyes open, and Elswyth thought she could see tears beginning to form.
But then he took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and sighed.
“I am sorry, Elswyth. I suppose we are both not in our right minds. But I do not care to hear any more of your conspiracies. For just today, let me mourn my daughter in peace.”