“Grandmama?” Elswyth said. She put a hand on her grandmother’s back and tried to lead her away, but it seemed as though the old woman was fixed there, rooted to the ground.
“Persephone?” her grandmother whispered.
“No, Grandmama. It’s me. It’s Elswyth.”
“Where is Persephone?” Her grandmother turned to face Elswyth, her ancient face shifting beneath the veil.
The question broke Elswyth’s heart. What was she to say? Would her grandmother understand if she told her the truth? And what was the truth?
“I don’t know, Grandmama.”
Her grandmother turned back to the tree. Her fingers caressed it, moving over the eyelike knots on the trunk. “With the bones now,” she said, “under the earth.”
Elswyth shook her head. Now, of all times, tears came. Theypricked her eyes, making her voice waver. “No. No, I don’t believe that. Persephone is gone, that much is true. I don’t know where, and I don’t know why.” Elswyth took her grandmother’s hands from the tree, placing them in her own. Her voice shook with anger. “But I’m going to find her. I’m going to find whoever did this to her.”
A sudden wind tore across the cliffs. It lifted her grandmother’s veil, revealing the horror beneath: a face half-warped and knotted with wood, lichen crusting her jaw, twigs sprouting from beneath folds of skin, and galls dotting her flesh like pustules. The warping—that curse of all floromancers—had taken most of her body now, as it had her mind. Her grandmother stared into the distance, clouded pupils set amid green veins. But in that moment, under the tree, she seemed almost lucid. She looked at Elswyth as though she recognized her.
“As you should, my dear. And Elswyth?” Her old hand gripped Elswyth’s wrist with shocking strength. “When you find him: Kill the bastard.”
Elswyth shivered at the venom in the old woman’s voice. Then, as suddenly as her grandmother’s lucidity came, it vanished. The grip on her wrists slackened, and recognition left the old woman’s eyes. They began to drift, focused on nothing.
“Persephone?” she asked, her voice a whisper once more.
Elswyth frowned, leading her grandmother toward her chair and lowering her in.
Elswyth took the handles of the wheelchair and they left the cemetery, her grandmother mumbling about grapes. Behind her, the leaves of the elderwood whispered.
CHAPTER TWO
Elderwood trees,Orcus luminii, are known for their unusual pale color and their ability to produce light through a process called bioluminescence. Although rarely used in floriography, including elderwood leaves in a bouquet is said to meanDeath walks with you.
Two weeks passed, and Elswyth stood in the hall outside her father’s study, clutching a letter in her hands. A letter that—she hoped—would change everything.
The room beyond the door was drenched in shadow. It was early evening, but embers crackled in the hearth, casting a flickering light over the study. The fire did little to stop the cold, which leaked from the old stones as though the house itself were made of ice.
“Father?” Elswyth asked, sliding through the door and into the study.
Once she’d loved that room, with its towering shelves filled with dusty books, its mahogany walls, and its wide desk scattered with papers. There was a carving of her name and Persephone’s underneath that desk from when they were children. A little secret once shared that now belonged only to her.
A portrait of their family hung above the hearth. Her father, young, hair still coppery brown, body strong as an oak. Persephone, silver-haired and violet-eyed, standing primly at his feet. Elswyth, ever dour, even as a girl, even before her scar, with straight red hair and hands folded in her lap. And her mother, willow-thin and beautiful. Her emerald eyes, captured in oil forever, looking down on Elswyth from the past.
There were two chairs before the fire, high-backed and upholstered in damask. Her father slouched in one of them, wearing his evening robe. She could see the balding back of his head and see the contents of the small table next to him: a bottle of whisky, its amber insides flickering in the light of the fire, and a smaller bottle made of emerald glass. A rubber dropper lay next to it, discarded. She could smell the bittersweet sting of laudanum.
Elswyth hesitated, then moved to the chair opposite her father and sat. She reached across the table and touched his hand. “Father,” she said.
Her father woke with a start. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot, and a thin sheen of drool edged at his mouth. He stared at her, surprised, and then wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve.
“Elswyth,” he said, “what are you doing here?”
“I came to check on you. You were not at supper.”
“Ah. Yes, well, I’ve been working.”
He looked over her shoulder to the pile of papers stacked high on his desk. Invoices and ledgers, no doubt, along with letters from their lenders. Those letters had sat unanswered on his desk for months, since the news of Persephone.
Elswyth cleared her throat and forced a smile. “As have I, Father. I have news.”
She hesitated and then handed the letter across the table. Herfather looked confused, but took it, reaching for his spectacles. His sleep-stained eyes scanned the page, pupils two pinpricks of black. His nose—once regal, stern as the bow of a ship—had turned red and soft in the past few months. Faint veins traced their way across it and across his cheeks.
