One last and divinely cursed

Thirty-two millennia ago, the worlds were at war. They warred not amongst themselves but with a witch. Her aim was to destroy the worlds along with their inhabitants, and so the worlds retaliated for their survival.

- Lukaryos Arieu, A Recounting of the Reglidition

“The seers were right, after all.”

Those were the words the queen’s advisors had said seven weeks ago. Back when she believed what they had presented to her was merely another specimen for the garden. Back when she wondered why the queen herself had come to visit hours later to examine it and request that she investigate it.

What the seers had actually said to prompt the fairies to go to another world to unearth this newest discovery, Scarlet had no idea. But she knew it was important enough to warrant the weekly visits of the queen and her advisors. And now…

Soon darkness would fall. Soon it would begin twitching.

Scarlet closed the door behind her and silently watched her charges. Dangerous specimens, they all were. Yet they paled in comparison to that thing.

The royal greenhouses had been virtually empty today because of the holiday, yet she was among the few servants who remained to work. Her subordinates had insisted earlier that she relieve herself and join them for the festivities—it was the Radvikari after all— but she had turned them all down with a regretful smile.

Those well-intentioned fools…little did they know she similarly had to decline her own

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family’s invitation, even after they had spent days traveling with the masses to come here to the capital. It had taken great pains to convey her reasons: that as the head gardener of the Garden of Durm, it was her obligation to oversee the dangerous specimen and their volatile behavior daily. Even today, on the first night of Radvikari.

If only that was her primary reason for being here.

It was a shame, though. A servant had informed her just an hour past that Queen Cyllenar had conceded to her request that a replacement come and relieve her. Which—given the queen’s general benevolence in their exchanges—Scarlet couldn’t say she had not been expecting. But with such a belated dismissal, how could she possibly inform her family now of the turn in events, the turn in fortune?

Fortune indeed. It was then she noticed the incessant tapping of her fingers against her leg. Why was she letting herself get antsy? Oh, she well knew why. Part of her wanted to go back outside and inspect the other plants again. Loath as she was to shirk the task her queen had given her, staying in this glasshouse hours on end with such an oppressive, chilling aura was insufferable. True, some of the other plants held dark auras of their own…but nothing akin to this special charge that could hardly be called a plant.

Yet she still found herself walking down the sixth row of plants. Yet she still had to inspect that blasted thing once more. Her fingers moved like clockwork as Scarlet stroked the leaves of some the dark flora surrounding her and infused them with sedative spells. But this time, the routine was less for settling the wrathful plants, but her own nerves.

If only that thing was as manageable. If only she could finally discover how to subdue it. The scholar in her was nettled at her continuous failures in that endeavour, and moreso that she had allowed an object of study to unsettle her so.

Even so she managed to press onward, each step increasing the tempo of her heartbeats. When at last she reached it, she stared with dread at a lone table where lay the specimen encased in enchanted glass, the plant that was not a plant.

It was a black rose. A mere passerby would have admired it for a simple and beautiful flower on the verge of blooming. And they would have walked on, ignorant to the fact that its origins were far more complex and horrific.

But then she too was ignorant. Still, if only she could know the extent of her own ignorance. Why did the queen insist on keeping sil—?

Scarlet took a sharp breath. Staggering back, she somehow managed to quell the urge shrieking at her to take flight and call for a servant. No, she would have call by scryglass, because she could not leave such a thing unattended now.

Because she knew she had not imagined it.

The whisper had spoken within her head in the Kriaan tongue. Three words had hissed into her brain like a rush of steam. No…like a dying snake lusting for vengeance.

Free me, Scarlet.