Six Scorched Roses (Crowns of Nyaxia)

Ialways kept my workspace clean, but I took care to make it extra organized that evening. Beneath the waning light of sunset, which splashed bloody pink over my desk, I carefully sorted my notes and instruments. Everything was in its perfect place when I was done. Even a stranger could have sat down at my table and resumed my work. I figured this was practical, just in case I didn’t come back. I was expendable, but the work wasn’t.

I surveyed my handiwork with a critical eye, then went out to the greenhouse. It wasn’t a very pretty place—full not with colorful flowers but instead spiny leaves and vines stuffed into glass jars. Not much wanted to grow here these days. Only one little piece of beauty glinted in the back, beyond the door that led to the fields. Once, when I was very young, these fields were full of crops. Now, only one patch of dirt flourished—a cluster of rosebushes, black flowers perched upon emerald leaves, each petal outlined in a shock of red.

I carefully clipped a single flower, tucked it into my bag with special care, then went to the yard.

Mina was sitting in the sun. It was warm, but she kept a blanket over her lap anyway. She turned to me and squinted into the waning light, looking at my bag. “Where are you going?”

“Errands,” I said.

She frowned. She saw through the lie.

I paused beside her for a moment—observing the darkness under her delicate fingernails, the heaviness of her breathing. Observing most of all the fine coating of flesh-colored dust that settled over the chair and her blanket. Her very skin abandoning her, as death crept closer.

I put my hand on my sister’s shoulder, and for a moment I considered telling her that I loved her.

I didn’t say it, of course.

If I did that, she would know where I was going and try to stop me. Besides, a word was useless compared to what I was about to do. I could show my love in medicine and math and science. I couldn’t show it to her in an embrace—and what good would a thing like that do, anyway?

Besides, if I hugged her, maybe I wouldn’t be able to let her go.

“Lilith—” she started.

“I’ll be back soon,” I said.

By the time I reached the doors, I was panting and sweating. I paused at the doorstep, taking a moment to collect myself. I didn’t want whatever was about to greet me to see me looking like a mangy dog. I glanced over my shoulder, down the dozens of marble steps I had just scaled, and into the forest beyond. My town was not visible from here. It had been a long, long walk.

Next time, I’d take a horse.

I craned my neck up to the house before me. It was a strange collection of architectural elements—flying buttresses and arched windows and marble columns, all mashed together in a mansion that really should have looked ridiculous, but instead stood in stubborn and intimidating indifference.

I drew in a deep breath and let it out.

Then I knocked, and waited.

And waited.

Nothing.

After a few minutes, I knocked again, louder.

Waited.

Nothing.

I knocked a third time, a fourth. And then, finally, I thought to myself, Well, this is the stupidest thing I’ll ever do, and tried opening the door.

The door, to my luck—or misfortune—was unlocked. The hinges squealed like this door had not been opened for a very, very long time. I had to throw myself against the mahogany to get it to budge.

It was silent within. Dusty. The interior of the house was just as strangely inconsistent in style as the exterior, though it took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust enough to see that. It was dark inside, the only light the moonlight spilling from behind me. The silver outlined the silhouettes of countless objects—sculptures and paintings and artifacts and so much more I couldn’t even begin to take in. Gods, it was mesmerizing.

“Hello?” I called out.

But there was no sound. No movement, save for the faint rustling of moth-bitten gauze curtains.

Maybe he was dead. No one had seen him for a few decades. I’d be disappointed if I came all this way just to discover a rotting corpse. Did his kind rot? Or did they just—

“It appears,” a deep voice said, “a little mouse has made its way into my home.”