Ten seconds.
The studio lights were hot enough to wilt a cactus, and the air, thick with the saccharine scent of a thousand butchered roses, felt heavy in my lungs. My own station smelled of damp earth, peat moss, and something vaguely predatory.
“Five seconds, flor-tists!” the host’s voice boomed, a velvet tsunami of theatricality. Magnifico. Of course, that was his name. He was draped in a fuchsia silk suit that screamed, I’m not just a judge, I’m an event.
My fingers, stained with dirt and smeared with a streak of black floral dye, trembled as I made the final adjustment.
I nudged the blood-red tongue of a pitcher plant a millimeter to the left, so it looked poised to devour the cluster of delicate white stephanotis beside it.
A story of dangerous beauty. A fairytale with teeth.
“Three… two… one… Stems down!”
A collective sigh of relief and exhaustion swept through the massive, sterile-white studio. I dropped my floral shears with a clatter, my heart thumping a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
My creation, a wild, asymmetrical cascade designed for a so-called “Royal Wedding,” stood before me.
It was all deep purple hellebores, black calla lilies, and menacingly beautiful carnivorous plants, threaded through with thorny, grasping vines. It was a bouquet for a queen who eats kings for breakfast.
It was everything I was.
And it was the complete opposite of the arrangement at the station to my right.
Julian Covington III hadn’t even broken a sweat.
While I looked like I’d been wrestling a bog monster, he stood beside his pedestal, hands clasped behind his back, a vision of effortless perfection in a crisp linen shirt.
His creation was a breathtaking, technically flawless waterfall of white peonies, blush-pink roses, and lily of the valley. It was elegant, traditional, and so achingly beautiful it was almost boring.
He caught my eye, his gaze sweeping over my dark masterpiece with an expression of polite pity. “An interesting choice,” he said, his voice as smooth and cool as polished marble.
“For a gothic romance, perhaps. Not a royal wedding.”
“Not everyone’s fairytale is white roses and a life of polite obligation, Covington,” I shot back, wiping my hands on my black jeans.
“A wedding bouquet is meant to symbolize purity, hope, the dawn of a new life,” he countered, taking a step closer. The cameras, like carrion birds, swiveled to capture our exchange.
“It requires discipline. Restraint. Your… composition seems to be actively at war with itself.”
“It’s called passion,” I said, my voice tight. “You should try it sometime. It’s that messy thing that happens when you feel something other than superiority.”
A flicker of something—annoyance? surprise?—crossed his perfect features before being smoothed away. “Passion without technique is just chaos. Shock value.”
He gestured dismissively at my Venus flytrap, its tiny jaws agape. “This isn’t art. It’s a tantrum.”
Before I could tell him exactly where he could shove his perfectly conditioned peonies, Magnifico swept between us, his fuchsia suit a blinding beacon.
“Ooh, the thorns are out already, darlings! I love it!” He clapped his hands, and the panel of three stern-faced judges took their places.
The judging was a blur of floral jargon and faint praise. My design was called “daringly macabre” by one judge and “confused” by another.
They admired the concept but questioned its commercial appeal. Then, they moved to Julian. They gushed.
“Exquisite.” “Masterful.” “The epitome of romance.”
I felt a familiar, bitter burn in my throat.
This was why I was here. To prove that beauty didn’t have to be safe.
To win that hundred-thousand-dollar prize and save my grandfather’s weird little plant shop in Detroit from being bulldozed for a parking garage.
I couldn’t fail.
I wouldn’t.
Julian won the challenge, of course. He gave a gracious, humble nod, as if he’d been expecting it all along. As the crew reset for the next segment, Magnifico tapped his microphone.
“Now, gladiators,” he purred, “while the judges have had their say, we at Floral Gladiators believe our audience deserves to know the artist behind the arrangement. The soul behind the stems.”
A massive screen behind him, previously displaying the show’s glittering logo, flickered to life. My stomach twisted into an icy knot.
“In your pre-show interviews,” Magnifico continued, a gleam in his eye, “we asked you about your artistic philosophies. Raven, darling, you had some particularly… potent thoughts.”
My own face filled the screen.
It was from my audition tape, my hair messier, my eyeliner thicker. I was animated, passionate, talking about my love for bizarre and overlooked plants.
But the audio that played was… wrong. Chopped. Spliced.
“…it’s just so stale, you know?” my voice echoed through the silent studio.
“This obsession with tradition… it’s for people with no imagination. All that perfect, boring, white-flower nonsense… it’s a creative graveyard. I’m here to burn it all down.”
The clip ended.
The silence in the studio was absolute, broken only by a single, sharp gasp from one of the other contestants. My words, originally a broad critique of a stale industry, had been twisted.
In this context, placed right after Julian’s win for his traditional masterpiece, they sounded like a direct, personal, and venomously arrogant attack on him.
My cheeks flushed with a heat that had nothing to do with the studio lights. I looked at Julian. His jaw was set, and he gave me a look of cold, vindicated disdain.
See? his eyes said. I was right about you. A tantrum.
That was it. That was the moment it happened.
The snap.
It was a soundless, internal crack, a sudden, horrifying realignment of my entire world. I saw the calculated gleam in Magnifico’s eye.
I saw the subtle repositioning of the cameras to capture my humiliation. I saw the other contestants shifting away from me, as if my bad edit was contagious.
This wasn’t a competition about floral design. It wasn’t about art, or passion, or saving my grandfather’s legacy.
It was a story.
And I had just been cast as the villain.
The shock was a physical blow, sucking the air from my lungs. Humiliation coiled in my gut like a venomous snake.
They hadn’t just misunderstood me; they had deliberately, surgically carved me into a caricature. The arrogant punk, the gothic freak who spits on tradition.
The perfect foil for their golden boy, their Floral Prince.
My purpose here wasn’t to win. It was to make Julian Covington III look good.
I was the dragon for him to slay.
For a heartbeat, I wanted to run. To scream.
To tell them all that they had it wrong, that my grandfather taught me to respect a classic rose as much as a bizarre orchid, that my passion wasn’t about destruction but about showing the world that beauty could have depth and darkness.
But as I met Julian’s icy gaze across the studio floor, something inside me shifted.
The hot, messy shame began to cool, to harden, to sharpen into something else entirely. It became a cold, clear, diamond-hard rage.
They wanted a villain? Fine.
My posture changed.
The slump of defeat vanished, and I straightened my spine, lifting my chin. My hands, which had been clenched into trembling fists, relaxed at my sides.
The frantic panic in my chest slowed to a steady, dangerous thrum.
A villain doesn’t crumble.
A villain doesn’t plead their case.
A villain plays the game better than anyone else.
A slow smile spread across my face. It felt alien and sharp, a predator’s smile.
I let my gaze sweep over the producers behind the cameras, over the fuchsia-clad host, and finally, I let it land and lock on Julian Covington III.
He was still watching me, a faint, smug curl to his lips.
He thought he had me figured out. He thought he’d won.
He had no idea what was coming.
My old goal—to win the prize money—was a flickering candle in the face of this new, blazing inferno. That was checkers. This was chess.
To save my grandfather’s shop, I didn’t just need to win the competition. I needed to win the war they had just declared on me.
I had to seize control of the narrative they were trying to write.
And the protagonist of their story was standing right in front of me.
My new goal was born in that moment, fully formed and terrifyingly simple. I wasn’t just here to beat Julian Covington. I was here to dismantle him.
I was going to use their cameras, their challenges, and their manufactured drama to strip away his polished perfection layer by layer until all that was left was the insecure boy I suspected was hiding underneath.
They wanted a show?
I’d give them a goddamn masterpiece.
I held his gaze, my smile widening just enough to show a hint of teeth.
The Floral Prince thought he was untouchable on his throne of white roses.
I was about to burn it to the ground.