And scream.
And scream.
I thought I was prepared to see my sister’s lifeless face, but maybethat’s the problem…
Rowenna has no face.
She’s almost unrecognizable, with black bruises mottling her cheeks, one of which has collapsed entirely. And the skin from her slender neck all the way down her shoulders looks nauseatingly similar to the ground beef Birdie puts in her pies.
My stomach expels every bite of food I’ve eaten today. I doubt I’ll ever be able to eat again. But I force my gaze to continue downward, taking in Ro’s long brown curls, dark with blood and matted to her back. Her collarbone is broken, as are both her legs. The bones stab angrily through her skin and the torn remnants of her gown—if you can even call it that.
She’s dressed in the sheer Vanzadorian fashion: black-mesh sleeves, a neckline that plunges clear to her navel, and an equally revealing skirt that cuts away to expose the legs. It’s garish, impractical, andwrong.So wrong that she was wearing this when she died.
Before I realize what I’m doing, my fingers sink into the hideous fabric—like they did a year ago, when I grabbed for her chain mail rings—except now I close my fist. With a howl of fury, I tear, wrench, and rip with wild desperation. Convinced that if I remove all evidence of Vanzador, it will somehow bring Rowenna back. But even once the gauze and glitter are stripped away, she lies there, shattered and bloodied, her freckles painting a dark constellation across her too-pale torso.
I trail a finger over her freezing skin, remembering how she’d steal Father’s expensive ink pens when we were little, and we’d take turns drawing pictures of blooming flowers and crawling ivy by connecting the freckles on each other’s arms. Then, when she was eighteen and I was sixteen, right before she left for Vanzador, we had identical clovers inked onto the underside of our wrists. Permanently connecting our souls by connecting our freckles. Three leaves, not four.
We don’t need the universe’s luck—we’ll make our own, she said.
And Rowaslucky. Cunning and nimble and observant too.
Which is how I know she didn’tfallto her death.
I reach for her arm and gently turn her wrist, practically sobbing with relief when the clover shines up at me, untouched by scrapes and scratches. It looks so crisp and green, so inexplicablyalive, compared to the cold, gray skin surrounding it.
Tears blur my vision as I press my clover against Rowenna’s, and I find myself murmuring the incantations I sing to the bagrava. Wishing it could imbue her with life. Wishing I could do something—anything—to bring her back.
I don’t know how long I sit there. Time serves little purpose other than to mock me—reminding me, with every excruciating tick, of the endless hours and days and years I must live without her.
When I finally run out of strength and tears, I lay my head on the edge of the coffin and try to recall everything about my sister, desperate to preserve all the tiny details time will attempt to steal from me. Like the feel of her hands braiding my hair. Or how her laughter whistled through her nose when she thought something was truly funny. And the look in her eyes when she watched me tend the bagrava—as if I were the most extraordinary person she’d ever met. Even though we both knew I’d never be half as accomplished as she was.
I don’t have a single memory without her. Ro was my constant from the very beginning—standing on tiptoe and leaning over Mother’s bed to watch me draw my first breath. And I fully intended to be hunched old crones together, holding hands as we wheezed our last. Maybe that’s why my lungs feel so unbearably tight.
I don’t know how to breathe without her; don’t know how to do any of this without her.
You shouldn’t have to, she murmurs, and despite the chill of Rowenna’s skin, a spark of heat flares where our wrists meet. A flicker of fury and resolve that rushes through my body, feeding the newfound darkness in my stomach. It feels dangerous to give it any ground, but it’s the only thing strong enough to rival the pain. The only thing keepingme moving. So I let it surge and simmer as I roll up my sleeves and get to work.
With careful hands, I remove the last of Ro’s dress and pull off her shoes—the same muddy gardening boots she wore the day she left for Vanzador, I note with a sad smile. Then I rummage through the annex for Father Alonzo’s oils and scrolls, and whisper a final vow to my sister as I knead the myrrh and cassia into her hardening skin.
I will live for us both. I will honor Rowenna the only way I know how—the only way she would want.
By making the Vanzadorians pay.
Four
All of Tashir gathers for Rowenna’s burial two days later. Instead of fruitstands and vegetable carts, High Street teems with white-clad mourners from the farthest planting fields all the way to the courtyard of the hillock palace. The grieving faces of our people are painted a myriad of colors—beet red, saffron yellow, and deepest blackberry—as is customary when there’s a death in the royal family. Each gardener makes a pulp of their finest produce and streaks their face with color, which runs off their chin and drips onto their spotless garments throughout the funeral. Tears made of the earth, returning to the earth.
Most faces are painted orange with barberry, because it is widely known as Ro’s favorite color. Lewis even had the nerve to show up outside my bedroom window this morning clutching a bowl of thick orange paste.
“I-I think Rowenna would want us to paint each other,” he said through sniffles. As if he’d meant anything to her. “Rowenna always looked so lovely in orange…” he continued, gazing into the bowl as if he could see her reflection in the dye.
Without a word, I rotated the circular window and slammed it shut. Then I crossed my chamber to the vanity and dipped my fingersinto the mortar bowl of crushed bagrava I’d illegally harvested before sunrise. The juice is a deep purple-red, like blood.Actualblood, not the garish red of beetroot like the stories would have you believe. The bagrava pulp was even warm like blood as I painted thin vertical stripes down my face.
Everyone would be wearing orange in Ro’s honor, which is why it would mean nothing. No one else would be bold enough, or reckless enough, to wear bagrava purple. Every tiny seed, and even the rind of the fruit, was allocated either for the Vanzadorians’ tribute or our fields, and still there was never close to enough—let alone extra to use as face paint.
Which was precisely why I chose it.
Bagrava may have been the most precious commodity to the rest of them, but Rowenna would always be the most precious to me. That’s why I let the lifeblood of Soren’s power drip down my face—to show him how little I respected them, how easily I saw through their lies. And to show Rowenna I was good on my word. I would do everything in my power to ruin them and avenge her.
