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Twisting vines strangled my insides in a sharp, violent burst, cutting off my breath as I coughed over and over again in vain. Something bitter travelled up my throat, my shoulders shaking as I took in steadying breaths.
You know what to do.
But I couldn’t. I stared at the lonely petal in my trembling palm. Something in me wanted to burn it, but I crushed it between my thumb and forefinger instead, feeling the soft texture turn to dust.
Get the surgery. Be rid of her.
I imagined a life without Mare all too many times in the night. Lonely, desolate, playing the role of a shadow in a world of stars. No one to ground me, no one to keep me sane.
This will kill you.
I laughed bitterly. Then let it.
Moments where I could savor her gaze were few and far between, passing too quickly for my liking but affecting me all the same. She was no longer the nervous girl who had trusted me blindly, wholeheartedly. Her eyes were a storm of hatred, raining ashes over the wasteland of my soul. I let my love ruin me.
I once heard someone say that people’s emotions, such as admiration and hatred, existed in a closed bubble, affecting themselves more than the person they experienced the feelings toward. If that was true, then I was drowning in obsession, a flood of my own making, the only way my broken mind knew how to love. I imagined threatening her with my begging, with my tears, with the flowers choking me alive.
Mother’s voice echoed what I already knew. She will never love you.
I saved every petal. The evidence of what I would do to keep her close, if only in my mind. If only in my delusions, a Silver King and a Red Queen ruling Norta. Fragmented pieces of my past sat heavy on my shoulders. I ordered for my father’s throne to be replaced with Silent Stone.
How many months had it been? Months of hiding from Evangeline, from Court, from Mare. Petals that I coughed up that turned into flowers that turned into full stalks, emerging from my aching throat. A tiny itch at first, then a lingering soreness, then an all-consuming pain that threatened to drag me down completely, burning as hot as my love.
I cherished the pain. It reminded me of her.
This will kill you.
I knew. I had already lost in this game of love. Mother had painstakingly taught me how to be strong over years and years of pain. One minute of Mare’s gaze tore it all down.
Cal wouldn’t pick love over the crown.
So I was a loser. Was it so bad that I wanted to be loved? Was it so bad that I didn’t want to be alone? Was it so bad that I wanted to live, for once for myself and not under someone else’s control?
When the lights flickered out at night, a hundred deaths played out in my mind, each one better and more painful than the last. Advisors complained that I was missing too many of the meetings. Between speeches and long tirades, and occasionally during them, I would excuse myself to cough up the flowers that plagued me, knowing their scorn would only increase if they knew. The petals had been easier to hide before I ascended. Now, every unbidden thought of her brought a dramatic floral coughing fit I was forced to hide from the Council.
A sudden pain squeezed my chest. There was not much time left.
Get the surgery.
No. I ran to my room. There had to be another way. But I couldn’t keep the secret much longer. Bitterness tasted better than sweetness. Love tasted better than air. Pain tasted better than freedom.
My lungs screamed otherwise as a full flower, stalks and all emerged from my throat.
Evangeline’s voice was muffled against the door. “Maven.”
Out of breath, I forced myself to speak clearly. “I’m not accepting visitors.”
She came in anyway, the metal on her dress glittering in the dim light of my bathroom, fireflies glowing in an abysm. For a while, she said nothing, staring at the flower in my sink. “Oh.”
“Get out.” My voice was hoarse.
“She’s killing you.”
“All the better for you.”
“Where would my crown be then?”
I stared at her, forcing command into my voice. Was it not enough that she had had a glimpse of my greatest weakness? “Leave.”
She shook her head, as if wanting to say something more before giving up and walking to the door.
Don’t say it. Don’t show her more.
“Wait.”
She turned around, eyes wary. “Yes?”
“Don’t tell Mare.” That was the most vulnerable I had ever been with the daughter of fangs and steel. “Whatever you do, she can’t know.”
She nodded, eyes filling with horror.
“She can’t know,” I repeated, more to myself than Evangeline.
Every star appeared when Mare entered my world. The sun glowed dim in comparison. I wanted to beg her for forgiveness, to hear my name on her lips, not caring if it was spoken with love or hatred or pity. At one point I used to wish she would love me back, but it didn’t take long for me to realize I was unlovable, hopeless, a ship doomed to sink under her tide. Doomed to be a fountain of pain, poisoning everyone with the darkness that followed me and bled me dry. It was a slow death, just as I had given Mare, just as my mother had given me. It was fitting.
She doesn’t want you.
I couldn’t care less about what she wanted.
You would both be happier if you got the surgery.
I didn’t want to be happy. I didn’t care about her happiness.
Sand slipped through the hourglass, dwindling as it reached the bottom. The fear in her eyes shattered something in me, and I silently caved. She and Mother fought to take control of my mind. Would I rather be loved or feared? If there was anything she had taught me, it was that I deserved neither.
The water dripped cold from my fingers. I stopped ignoring myself. The emotions came in full force. Maybe love and hatred weren’t so different after all. They were both felt strongly, passionately, selfishly. They could coexist. Perhaps one could even lead to the other.
A seed of false hope. If she could just pretend for a moment, lie to me, hurt me, maybe that would be enough for me to survive. To wait for the next high like a dog for a treat. Like an addict, I was ruined by her. Like an addict, I wanted more.
For once my chest didn’t ache as it usually did. The bathroom was empty and hollow, a worthless luxury I couldn’t enjoy, just like everything else in Whitefire.
I cursed the water running through my hands for muffling the sound of her steps, slow ones that burned through my soul. Every part of me ached for her, but none of me could have her.
She shut the door. I looked up, meeting the eyes of the girl who had trusted me once, before our future turned to black ash. She was one of the few people that did. It made her beautiful in a way that made it hurt to be around her. Having spent my entire life around the Silvers in the Court, people who were polished and trained to perfection, donning pretty faces to cover the coldness and lust for power beneath, seeing her authenticity was refreshing. There was a raw beauty about her, a fire in her gaze that made her look alive from the inside.
Like Thomas had been. Maybe that was why the pain, the yearning, was so sharp.
The thought dissipated along with the steam rising from the bathtub. I couldn’t stand being next to her for a second longer, yet it was all I wanted to do. I wanted to take her in, protect her, save her, destroy her. But I didn’t do anything but stay.
The words she said and wouldn’t say were both a dagger to my heart. They killed me and made me feel alive all at once. Sentences tumbled out of our mouths as if we were lovers who had lost our memories, trying desperately to say words without speaking.
Impending doom lingered at the door, a heavy, biting feeling worse than Silent Stone.
Her gaze travelled to the sink. “You don’t seem like the type to keep flowers in your bathroom.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” My chest constricted, and I fought to swallow the petals back down. She couldn’t know. It was my last silver of hope.
“Why…?”
I’d beg her. I’d show her how I’d been suffering silently, nobly all along.
“Have you ever heard of hanahaki?”
Her eyes narrowed. “No.”
She’d finally see me for me.
“You’re fortunate, then.”
“What is it?”
She would love me.
“It’s a disease when flowers grow in someone’s body as a result of unrequited love.”
Mare shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“If the person they love doesn’t reciprocate, they eventually die from the disease.”
Her eyes widened, saying nothing, and I gestured for her to move closer. She took a cautious step forward, breath parting the steam. A blush crept up my cheeks.
“But I won’t force it.” I brushed a finger against her jaw, tracing her features with my gaze. Her eyes were hollow, broken as they stared into mine. “I can wait.”
“How—how long has it been?” she whispered.
I smiled, hopeful and sad. “Since the day I fell in love with you.”
Maybe it was because she was too close. Maybe her lack of feeling was too strong. Or maybe simply because it was due. It was the worst time for tightness to strangle my chest, and I fought to not let it show.
She blinked, as if pulling herself out of a haze. “Maven—”
A thrill ran down my spine at hearing my name from her lips. “I’ll wait, even in death.” My voice was gentle, echoing the pain below. “Because I’m yours.” Without meaning to, my hand lingered on the brand underneath her collarbone marking her as mine. She didn’t flinch.
A thousand emotions flashed across her eyes. “I think that’s more answers than I bargained for.”
My flamemakers clattered to the floor as I slipped them from my wrists. A silent dare.
Free me. Or chain me. The choice is yours.
The steam rippled as we looked at each other, neither of us making a move. What felt like an eternity ago, it would have been enough knowing that despite everything I had taken from her, she wouldn’t end my life. It wasn’t anymore, and maybe that was the saddest part of all.
She spoke, breaking the silence and everything left unsaid. “You shouldn’t have to face that because you love someone.”
“My love was already eating me alive. The flowers are just a physical manifestation of that.”
“Can’t a Greenwarden get rid of it?”
“It’ll take away all my memories of you. How can I live with that?”
“You can learn to live with anything.”
“I can’t.”
Her eyes hardened. “Thanks to you, I did.”
I swallowed. She took everything from me, even my sanity. “I could almost say the same.” I forced myself not to give in to the choking feeling in my throat. “But I’m glad I don’t have to.”
“You ruined this, Maven,” she said quietly. “Everything that we could have been.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t piece together what is left into something twisted, something dark, something like me.”
Her voice was tinged with regret. “And now we’re all suffering the consequences for it.”
I couldn’t speak.
A cough erupted out of my chest, and another followed. Then another. Then another, until I was convulsing uncontrollably in front of her, petals dropping into the water around me. “Leave,” I said between coughs, but she stayed, watching my burst with horror.
A flower.
A full stalk.
Multiple stalks.
Flame consumed my lungs, burning as I fought for air. I was half submerged in water but drowning in fire, among countless stars but falling into darkness as vines twisted, squeezed, choked until I was sure of nothing else but my twisted love.
I told you. I told you.
“Maven.” Her voice was desperate, a lifeline.
“Say it. Kill me.”
“I can’t.” Her eyes were wet.
“End it.” I coughed again, the pain nearly splitting my chest open. I gripped the edges of the bathtub so tightly my knuckles turned white. A lover’s corpse, mine, flashed in my vision, overgrown with flowers and limp from suffocation. “I’m begging you.”
“I can’t,” she said, her voice weak.
We were both cowards.
“You don’t want to watch me die.” She didn’t object. “Something in you still wants me to live, even though you don’t love me.” A tangle of vines and flowers fell into the water, staining it green. I could taste blood on my lip. “If you can’t do something useful, leave!”
“Get the surgery. Be free. This isn’t love. You can start over.”
I coughed a final time, expecting darkness to swallow me but instead meeting the bitter brown of her eyes. Even now I yearned to drown in her poison. So deep I could fall in and see nothing else for miles.
Be rid of her, Mother screamed, a ghost of the voice that took away my nightmares, my dreams, and everything in between.
Mare still stood before me, the result of weakness and stolen dreams. A thousand yesterdays we would never return to. A limited window I shut with my own two hands.
I blinked, lowering my gaze. It would have been easier if she yelled at me, cursed my soul. If she looked at me with contempt and rage and swore on her life that she would destroy me slowly, like how I was destroying her.
I could handle hatred. I could not handle indifference.
“You did this to yourself, Maven. I hope I never see you again.”
Her footsteps were steady, certain this time, fading into silence with a heart-rending finality.
I drained the cold water and left the flowers sitting in the bathtub. They looked just as desolate as I felt, a testament to pain and unrequited love. After a moment, I picked them up and stuffed them in my drawer. It was beginning to overflow, mounds of wilting flowers and plant material tangled against cool metal, escaping the cage of my heart just to be shoved into another.
I changed and sat for hours in my bedroom, the bleak, gray walls taking on a golden hue as day shifted to night. The ache in my chest eased, giving way to yearning. Memories of her touch made up what little comfort I had left in this world. It wasn’t enough, and it would never be.
But at least I could still pretend.
This love will be your death someday, Mother whispered.
I had known since the first petal, but it had never felt more real than now, as I sat on my bed, the sun sinking behind the horizon, the magnolia blossoms swaying gently in the wind, a broken flower cradled to my chest.
“I don’t mind, though,” I said softly to no one in particular.
Mare was enough for me to find the ghost boy buried beneath the irreparable damage and loss, the one who had been weak, the one who had loved and had been loved in return. The one who hadn’t had to put on this mask of lies.
He was gone now, but I held what remained of him close, if only to feel a little less empty, a little less lonely.
And a little more alive.