She thought of driving it into Silas’s heart. Thought of the lookin his eyes when she did. Would it be shock? Regret? Or just that same smirk he always wore?
She knew the blade would not kill him. It might not even slow him down. Her poison, Kehinde’s armor, Percival’s guns—they’d been useless. Whatever Silas had become—whatever he truly was—she had no way to fight him. The amberheart gave him an unlimited stream of vitæ, and he had used it to turn into something more plant than human. How, she didn’t know. There was floromancy at work here that she couldn’t pretend to understand.
She wiped the blade with a cloth, removing the poison. Then she moved to the wardrobe next to her work station and opened the door. A lone gown hung within, the dark fabric almost shimmering in the light of her lantern like onyx. If she was going to face Silas, then she would need protection. And luckily, she had prepared.
She stripped from her ruined wedding gown, leaving it on the floor, and then slowly donned the dress. The fabric was tough but flexible, shining in emerald tones so dark they were almost obsidian. When she’d cinched the bodice and clasped the high collar, she assessed herself in the mirror. The gown was simple, with a tight-fitting bodice and long slits up the skirt for ease of movement. The stiff collar protected her neck, as did the full-length sleeves that tapered to points and looped around her middle fingers. The design maximized the protection of the gown, while leaving her hands free enough to use floromancy. The gown was woven from floromantically created fabric, which Elswyth had perfected in the lonely weeks after she’d been stabbed. She’d experimented with hybridizations of the most durable plants known to science—sisal, ebony, lignum vitæ, dozens of others—and spun threads made almost entirely of concentrated carbon.Ferrosilk, she called it, afabric strong enough to stop a blade but still lightweight and flexible enough to wear. Since the incident with Mr. Clipper, Elswyth had feared that such a gown would one day be necessary. And she’d been right.
Elswyth took the assassin’s blade and fastened it to the leather belt around her waist. Then she looked at herself in the mirror once more: her furious, scarred face. The blade at her side. And something unfamiliar in her eyes—something deadly.
She turned to leave but was interrupted by a thought. If Silas truly was the Reaper, then he’d been responsible for the mandrake as well. Perhaps he was not an exceptional floromancer, but the amberheart made him exceptionally powerful. With that much vitæ at his disposal, perhaps he could have created something like the mandrake. Perhaps he and the prince had been working together to ensure that Elswyth never came close to the truth.
She turned and raised her lantern, moving across the creaking floor toward the jar where she’d left the creature. Her foot landed on something that snapped under her weight. She lifted the hem of her dress and saw that the floor in this corner of her bedroom was covered in shards of shimmering glass.
She raised her lantern higher, stepping slowly forward. The floor was slick with something foul-smelling. Formaldehyde, she realized. When she reached the shelf where the mandrake’s jar had been kept, there was only a puddle, and the remains of its container.
Her blood cooled. To the right of the shelves, a series of smaller puddles moved toward the stairs. She knelt, examining the nearest one. There, stamped on the floor in pungent formaldehyde, was a three-pronged shape, almost like a footprint. Identical prints led toward the door, one after another. The first prints weresmall—around the size of the mandrake as she knew it. But as they moved toward the stairs, the prints grew larger. Cat-sized prints grew into dog-sized prints, which grew to the size of a woman’s foot, then a man’s… and then larger.
A crash sounded downstairs. The sound of wood cracking and then glass shattering. Then the boom of a rifle and the roar of something unearthly echoing through the house.
Elswyth dropped her lantern and ran. She sprinted from her chambers and down the stairs, exiting into the great hall. Another crash, followed by Percival shouting, and then the roar again, piercing the air.
She unsheathed the knife from her belt and ran toward the sound, racing into the drawing room. The only light was the fire in the hearth, casting eerie shadows about the scene before her. Percival stood in one corner, a pistol in his hands. And in the other corner, a monster.
It was difficult to describe. It was shaped like a man—with arms and legs and a torso—but its skin was the coarse flesh of a buried root, twisted into gray knots. Instead of hands, its arms ended in claws made from pale, smooth wood. Rootlike tentacles hung beneath the talons, wet and shining. The creature towered over the room, at least seven feet tall, and its arms were far too long. Its claws dragged on the floor.
The strangest part was its face. It appeared at first to have no face at all, only mottled gray skin. But a seam traced from the top of the creature’s skull to its jaw and then down over its neck and chest, finishing at the bottom of its torso. Spikes of the same gray flesh fanned from the vertical seam, creating a zigzag effect downthe creature’s face and torso. It turned to look at her with its eyeless stare.
It struck her then what the seam and spikes were: the mouth of a Venus flytrap. The very same one the infant mandrake had shown.
The mandrake’s face cracked open slightly. The seam split apart, revealing a thin line of red. Then the face opened completely, the spikes of the flytrap mouth flaring out. The creature’s throat waited beneath the flytrap, little more than a black hole lined with countless teeth.
The creature turned from Elswyth. The petals of its flytrap mouth rattled, and it moved sideways, circling Percival like a predator.
Then the mandrake screamed. The sound seemed to shatter the air. The room shook, and she clapped her hands over her ears; the glass in the windows exploded.
As the creature screamed, its chest unfurled in the same manner as its face. The entire torso opened into a second flytrap, its ribs spreading like wings, its cilia flaring. Within it was red, wet flesh. Rows of sharp canines lined the inside of its chest.
Percival covered one bleeding ear with a hand, wincing. With the other, he fired his pistol: once, twice, three times. The bullets struck the mandrake in the chest, which spilled green ichor onto the floor.
The creature flashed its hand at Percival, and the tentacles that hung there whipped outward. Percival dove behind his massive stuffed lion. The mandrake’s tentacles closed around the taxidermied beast, then ripped it back.
The lion flew across the room as if it weighed nothing. It collided with the mandrake’s chest, and the riblike mouth clampedshut. The lion exploded into a spray of fur and stuffing. The torso-mouth worked around the wire and the fur, secreting an acid that made the stuffing hiss away into smoke. When the mandrake realized there was no meat to be had, it spat out the mangled taxidermy on the floor, a pile of wire and steaming ichor.
The mandrake’s flytrap mouth chittered. It searched the room until its eyeless gaze settled on Percival.
It raised a hand and tentacles shot across the room, wrapping around Percival’s waist. It began to pull him in, spreading its two sets of jaws wide. Percival unloaded his pistol at the tentacles, sending sprays of ichor across the room, but the mandrake only dragged him closer. Percival inched toward the jaws of the creature’s open torso. He fired again, point blank, taking a chunk of the thing’s shoulder.
“Percival!” Elswyth shouted. She sprinted toward him, climbing over broken furniture, and tore the assassin’s blade from its sheath.
The mandrake raised its right claw and stabbed it through Percival’s stomach.
Elswyth slid to a stop. Shock froze her in place.
Percival’s eyes widened. He gasped as the mandrake’s claw slid deeper, protruding from his back. Blood spilled from his chest, into the mandrake’s open face, and Elswyth saw it chitter, petals fluttering, as if it were pleased. It flexed its open torso mouth, lowering Percival down to swallow him.
Percival coughed. Blood spurted out of his mouth and onto his beard. The pistol dropped from his hand, clattering to the floor.
Elswyth screamed. She swept her hand down, firing thorns from her fingertips. They stuck into the creature’s green skin, but the poison did nothing.
