the moths crazy. They would have eaten our whole crop, if you hadn’t stopped them. Ironic thing is, the flowers smell sweet, but don’t actually have any nectar. The moths transfer pollen from flower to flower in their fruitless search, becoming enraged. The flowers usually bloom at night, but they must have opened up in the darkness of the cart.”
“Here child,” the woman said, taking a bracelet of fresh petals off her wrist and offering them to Jazmine.
“Take it, a gift to remind you of home.”
She fastened the bracelet of small buds around Jazmine’s wrist and smiled.
“What are all these flowers for anyway?” Trevor asked. “You’re heading to the citadel?”
“You’re kidding right?” the woman frowned at us. “Which compound did you say you’re from?”
“Algrave, and Denvato, but we’ve been travelling.”
“The wedding feast,” the man said, closing up the back of the cart. “The king always orders wreaths and arrangements for the ceremony. Same every year. Usually waits till spring though, seemed he moved it up this year. We had to scramble to produce this many flowers off season.”
I felt a sudden tightening in my lungs, and a sharp pain in my chest. I adjusted my mask, fighting for breath. These flowers would have been for my wedding day. I thought they’d be out chasing me, hunting me down. Instead, it was like they’d already forgotten about me.
Of course the weddings would continue.
Next year, there would be another choosing. Life in the citadel would go on, like none of it had even happened. Like I didn’t even matter.
“You okay?” Trevor asked. He knew me too well. But he wouldn’t understand how I was feeling. Not about this.
“Forget it,” I grumbled, jerking my chin towards the trees. “We’re on a mission, remember? Let’s go.”
It took three hours to reach Quandom. We fanned out, trying to stay low as we approached the compound. It was no wonder it was hard to find; surrounded by thick trees on all sides, nature had pulled down the walls and half the houses, with a covering of ferns so thick the buildings were half hidden. The plants that grew on the surface were gray and dull, starved of sun and burnt from ash.
Only the more aggressive plants thrived, with large, purple veins on their dark green leaves, studded with thorns as big as knives. Nothing grew big enough to grow fruit or blossom, but the struggle to grow was almost manic. The bones, however, stood out in stark contrast from the wasted landscape. They gleamed like polished marble, no doubt picked clean by predators. When I came with Damien, I was too horrified to study them closely. But this time I was paying attention to everything. The citizens of Quandom had been tied up and left to starve and burn in the center of the village, like candles on a birthday cake. Hundreds of them.
Their faces and arms were lifted in tortured screams, but in places their skin had loosened and broken off in the elements, leaving only their skeletal remains.
A chill ran down my spine. The last time I was here, I’d kissed Damien. And it wasn’t just to help the rebels, and get him to trust me so I could find the research. I’d wanted to kiss him. And he’d pulled away first. But how twisted was it that he’d killed my grandfather decades ago, and then made out with me in the middle of the mass gravesite marking the site of his father’s failed social experiment?
We waited in the trees for twenty minutes, but despite the sound of falling ash, the silence was heavy like a rolling fog. Finally, we entered the village of the dead, creeping past the grotesque statues of what used to be the townsfolk, immortalized in ash by King Richard as a warning against those who would defy him. We crossed through the field of corpses as quietly as possible, carefully avoiding their mangled limbs.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Luke said.
“I think that’s the point,” Jazmine said.
Our weapons glinted softly in the afternoon light.
“Ssshhh!” Frank hushed, waving us forward. We darted towards the center of the town and gathered under the crumbling awning of the church.
Vines had overgrown the altar, half obscuring a large golden cross. A rusted bell hung in the remains of the tower, and I could almost feel a slight hum, like it was vibrating. Paintings were torn, and shards of colored glass from stained glass windows littered the floor like puzzle pieces.