Chapter 17
brIAR ROSE’S COTTAGE painted a scene for the story she wanted to tell: tiny bells chiming at the door, a tea kettle blowing steam on floral wallpaper, sunlight casting sideways through windows. A quaint home where the oak floors were worn and ceramic plates were piled in a sink covered with moss. As Corin crossed the living room, she noticed the books were painted wooden blocks glued to shelves. The frosted cake on the kitchen table was covered in plastic film. The wooden ladles and metal pots hanging over the stove were paper cutouts. The clock was simply a painting on the wall, a permanent image where time stood still.
Pieces of this house were carefully curated. But they were not real.
That fact unnerved Corin as she found Briar in the kitchen, bent over a basket of strawberries. The fruits had a plastic sheen, like rocks painted red. The princess twisted the sink handle and let sparkling water pour into the basket, as if she were bathing the strawberries with stars and bringing them to life.
“We’ve met before,” Corin said, forcing Briar to look up at her. “Back in Winterland, you were going to shoot me.”
Corin could match the similarities between the girl she saw now to the girl she witnessed in the snow. Brown hair to silver, daisy petals to snowflakes, butterflies to nightingales. If Corin stripped those features away, who would be the real girl she’d see?
To her surprise, Briar let out a laugh. “You’re right. How awkward of me.”
“Why didn’t you do it?”
Briar stepped closer. Her fingers grazed Corin’s collarbone, shooting tingles down Corin’s chest. A pendant dangled in Briar’s palm.
“I was distracted by your necklace,” she said. “I wondered if there was a story behind it.”
Corin slapped Briar’s hand away by instinct, the strike of skin ringing loud in the kitchen. Briar stepped back and knocked her hip against the table. Strawberries fell to the ground, turning back into red blocks as they clattered. Silly props, like child’s play.
“That’s none of your business.” Corin kept her voice detached, even though the chain burned against her skin, a memory of her grandmother that she didn’t want to expose. Not to a stranger like Briar, whose lace dresses and floral crowns showed she knew nothing of the dirt and blood this pendant had survived over time.
The princess took the brusque response with grace and folded her hands together in compliance. Corin tried not to think about how the girl’s touch still left behind pinpricks of flesh.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have touched you without asking. I’m sorry.”
Corin’s face burned hot. She didn’t understand why she felt vulnerable, despite her efforts to remain impassive like stone. Both times she was around Briar, it felt like the girl peeled back her layers and found something to uncover. Perhaps it was the gaze in her eyes, the veiled thoughts that shone behind sea glass. But Corin was not something to be explored. She leaned against a counter, posture rigid, hands shoved in pockets, like her whole body could cave in.
Briar picked up the red blocks and washed them in the sink, as if it was her turn to play aloof as well. Corin sensed them both putting on a pretense, waiting for the other’s sheen to dim just slightly before the other one.
“Tell me, Corin,” Briar asked, “what did I look like out there?”
It took Corin a second to realize Briar was talking about the real world. That in her mind, the dreamscape was just like this make-believe house, small and contained and imaginary. The things they did and said only existed within this space, while the rest of the world kept turning.
“You were wearing a blue dress made of satin and a crown of moonflowers. You were sleeping in a bed that was decorated like a garden. There must have been a hundred roses wrapped around the bed frame, and they were in full bloom. The brightest one was pinned to your chest like a brooch.”
As Corin described the scene, the corners of Briar’s lips turned downward. None of the descriptions impressed her. “That sounds more like a casket than a bed.”
“Where I come from, people consider a casket full of roses the best thing that could happen to them when they die.”
“Roses are a bit outdated, though, don’t you think? I much prefer sunflowers.” Briar placed the basket on a windowsill and gazed at the sunflower field outside. Under the sun, her eyes shone like false coins. “Their faces are always pointed at the sun, as if trying to reach to the skies. But they never do. They’re always tethered to their stems, forced to be rooted to the ground. Someday, I want to watch one of them reach far enough to become the sun itself.”
Corin held back from scoffing at Briar’s nonsense. The girl spoke in delusions and pixie dreams. Only people like her could turn their sadness into whimsy. Corin was not interested in words spun into gold, but the real thing. She tried steering their conversation onto the right path.
“It wasn’t just you I saw in the castle. I met someone else. A prince named Ezran, who said he promised to protect your treasure. He’s waited a hundred years. If I returned with it, I’m sure he’d consider his job finished.”
Briar turned to the frosted cake on the table and began stacking red blocks on top. They smoothed their edges into strawberries again, the plastic around the cake solidifying into white glaze. Frosting stained her fingers, and as she licked them off delicately, Corin figured the girl had to be toying with her.
“I appreciate the offer, but I’m sorry,” Briar said. “I cannot give it to you.”
“Why not?”
“I abandoned many things when I fell asleep. My family’s treasure was one of them. It’s painful to think about, so I would rather not.”
Corin let out a bitter laugh. She couldn’t stand the irony. “Some of us don’t have the comfort of avoiding what makes us uncomfortable. You were cursed by magic. The rest of us were cursed just by being born.”
“I wasn’t cursed.”
Corin blinked. “What?”
“A demon’s curse cannot be broken unless the demon takes it away themselves. Malicine revoked the curse before my eighteenth birthday.” Briar sliced a piece of dessert, then offered the plate to Corin. “Would you like some cake?”
Corin gawked at her in disbelief. What had been the purpose of these fairy tales, then, if there wasn’t a damsel in distress trapped in another world? The girl chose to be here. Left the rest of the real world behind to rot and die. When Elly traveled the tunnels and risked her life, when her sister called out for Amelia, the princess hadn’t responded. She never would.
“Oh! I almost forgot.”
Briar opened a drawer, rifled through its contents, and placed a cake topper on the frosting. The ceramic fox curled between buttercream and strawberries. His eyes were closed, his bushy tail a veil that hid him from the rest of the world. Recognition struck Corin like shards of clay cutting into her palm. She tried swallowing, but her throat was thick and dry like cotton. The corners of her vision blurred, only the fox figurine in full focus.
It was one thing to see a live fox stalking her throughout the land. It was another to see the actual figurine her father had made, the one that Harlow had given back to her, the same object that Corin would later destroy. Even the chip in the fox’s tail was an exact match.
She strained to keep her voice calm. “Why do you have this?”
Briar shrugged. “Sometimes I’m not sure where the things I find here come from.”
“Don’t mock me. This is the same one as before.”
“Before?”
Corin sucked in a shaky breath. Briar was taunting her with this carefree performance. The airy tone of her voice, the subtle tilt of her head. It didn’t matter how many plants Briar tried decorating this place with. Even flowers would show their rot eventually. Corin closed her eyes to stop herself from leaping at Briar and tearing the girl apart until she found the rotten core inside. She needed to remain placid if she wanted to crack the girl open.
Her eyes opened to a plate in her hands, holding the slice of cake and fox topper. The clay figurine cracked under her touch, revealing maggots that writhed beneath the cake’s frosting. They wormed through the strawberries and left red trails behind. A familiar stench of death filled her nostrils. But Corin could force Briar to remember things she would rather forget, too.
“You’re a liar,” she said. “You, this world, everything—it’s all a lie.”
The plate slipped from Corin’s fingers and shattered. Cracks spread over the fox figurine and dissolved like sand, spilling into the floorboards that split open. A hole caved in the middle of the room and turned the house’s foundation at a slant. Trinkets fell off sliding tables, reverting to useless blocks. The armoire fell over with a violent thud and burst open its drawers, but nothing spilled out, just the hollow thud of plastic against a sinking floor.
Still Corin and Briar remained standing, as if acknowledging the catastrophe around them would mean exposing the cracks beneath their own facade.
“This place is empty, just like you,” Corin continued evenly. “You think you can dress something up in flowers and tea parties and pretend to have some pretty life, but none of it is real. Here’s the truth: Your name is Amelia. You’ve been sleeping for a hundred years. Your body has been wasting away in an empty castle buried beneath the ground. And your real home is nothing but dust and debris and ripped paintings.”
Potted plants spilled soil across the floorboards. Corin’s boots stomped in dirt as she backed Briar against the wall.
“Every family portrait I saw in that castle had their faces slashed out, including yours. But there was one left unscathed. The queen.”
For the first time, Briar’s sun-kissed complexion went pale, and she almost looked like the princess Corin saw in the real world. A vindictive part of Corin delighted in that. To turn the tables and make Briar the one uncomfortable with acknowledging the truth.
“I heard the stories about how your family lineage ended. She killed your father and nearly took your life too. Is that why you’re here? You couldn’t deal with reality crumbling around you, so you retreated into your dreams to hide.”
“We are all running away from something,” Briar replied, her voice steady. “That’s why we’re here. Even you.”
“No, I’m the one trying to return to reality. As horrible as it is, some of us don’t have the freedom to run away whenever something goes wrong. We don’t get caskets full of roses, or faeries to grant us gifts, or better worlds to escape by magic. We’re forced to live with the consequences of wealthy, frivolous people like you. And when we die, nobody will remember us.”
Briar stared at Corin for a long moment. Veiled thoughts passed behind her eyes like shadows, as if she were examining the emotions seething behind Corin’s even tone, turning them over to see every jagged edge. “You’re angry,” she said.
“Of course I am. It must be nice to live in dreams without any worries.”
“I have plenty of worries. And regrets. And sadness,” she replied. “But I bury them so I don’t have to look at it anymore. You can do the same. You and Elly can be happy here.”
Corin sneered. “You don’t know what would make El happy.”
“Do you?” Briar asked. “Do you even know what would make you happy?”
Corin’s breaths turned short, as if air had just been cut from her lungs. She recalled the look on Elly’s face. The way the shards of the clay figurine bit into her palm. The miserable black night when she confessed to her sister what she did.
No—there was no point looking back. They were already making up. They were supposed to be better now. Corin refocused on Briar, studying the daisy petal dripping below her eye like a teardrop. The princess could live in illusions, but she had no right to trick Corin with them, to pick at Corin’s wounds while covering her own. Corin placed a finger on the petal and lifted it from Briar’s cheek. The gesture was slow, almost gentle, but they both felt the sharpness of her action, the weight of her glare.
She drew her face so close that they couldn’t tell their breaths apart from one another. So that, when she said these words next, they would strike Briar directly.
“What did you do to the queen?”
The daisy petal fell from Briar’s cheek, revealing a permanent teardrop mark on her skin. She lifted her chin and looked directly in Corin’s eyes.
“What did you do to your sister?”
I hate you.
Elly’s words echoed between the walls, slipped through the stones, lingered through the water reeds of the roof. The words dissolved into the rumbles of a new sound, like a monster waking up. The shingles above their heads rolled like a thunderstorm. A hard crack struck the air, the windows shattering. The world shook violently in an earthquake, and glass bit into their skin as they lost balance.
Corin hit the ground first. The house’s rapid shaking kept her pinned down. Rotting cake slicked over her limbs, maggots and food residue sticking to her skin. The other furniture clattered across the wood and rolled like tidal waves. Then a sharp jolt broke the roof in half.
When she looked up, the wood above collapsed. She felt a sharp stab in her stomach, a sickly cold that spread in her abdomen and told her that, no matter how solid of a fortress she tried to build, the pain would always slip through.