Chapter 21
CORIN SENSED THE shift in seasons as the last blossoms scattered like soft confetti along a pathway of parsley-green fields. Spring leaves deepened into lush canopies to shade her group from the warming sun. The day stretched as long as Elly’s shadow, which jumped alongside the girl as she plucked ripening cherries from trees. In the golden air, Corin could hear the cicadas clicking in rhythmic patterns, their volume growing louder as her group reached a sandy terrain that curved around a jewel-blue sea. Waves crashed against black rocks foaming white. Salt-crisp air filled her lungs as she took a deep breath and turned to Briar.
“Remind me, again, why you put the treasure in Summerland?”
“I didn’t,” Briar replied. “You did.”
Corin shielded her eyes from the sun, which reflected onto Briar’s dress and turned the fabric luminescent. Butterflies had drifted away from her cape, while her sleeves shortened into layers that ebbed and flowed like ripples of water. “Is this supposed to be another cryptic message?” Corin grumbled.
“There’s no fixed position in the dreamworld,” Malicine explained. “The landscape changes depending on its inhabitants. Sometimes it’s our memories. Sometimes it’s our wishes for better ones. Since the treasure is going to be yours, your subconscious has tucked it over there.”
The demon pointed to a wildflower-studded cliff beyond a beach, where water poured from the rocky ledge and plunged into a deep pool. The rapids glimmered as if they contained stars.
“Look familiar to you?” they said.
Corin shook her head before the smell of linseed oil wafted in the breeze, and she was brought back to paint streaked in the lines of her palms, her mother’s hands guiding hers across a canvas, the sweltering sun turning both their skins a deeper brown. She’d plucked wildflowers during their hike to this cliff and learned how to draw them under the sunset. The rounded tip of her brush had glided against parchment and curved into soft petals. Her damp cloth had blurred the brushstrokes of mountains in the background. She’d been so proud of that painting, even though the work was amateur, for she never quite learned how to avoid the sharp edges her hands often made. She’d thought she would have the rest of her life to keep practicing.
“It’s not familiar at all,” Corin lied, but that lie became a truth, too, as her eyes followed the waterfall cascading into a deep pool that opened into an ocean. She’d never seen a body of water as large as this. Gyldan’s surroundings beyond the borders were dense with trees except for the river that separated the rolling hills. When she painted the kingdom’s landscape, she’d been excited to use blue paints and draw the winding curves of the stream, not knowing that in a few years, her father would bring them there to drown in oils of teal and cobalt.
Elly took in the ocean with wide eyes, as if she did not know whether to be amazed or afraid. As an infant, her cries in Corin’s ears had screamed fear. Now the girl trekked through sand and lingered near the water with the uneasiness of a distant memory. Her gaze locked on the swelling sea, and in her eyes, Corin could see Elly was trying to make sense of where that fear came from, and why it lingered.
Clumps of seaweed washed ashore. Elly plucked the kelp, staring at the plant stuck to her fingers like it were a foreign object. Waves rippled gently to her feet and made her jump. She eyed the waves more tentatively, taking a few steps backward, as if they would snatch her if she got too close. Her body seemed to have remembered being taken by wild waters even if her mind had forgotten.
Briar placed a hand on Elly’s shoulder like a protective raft. “Do you want to swim?”
Elly stared at the ocean, brows pinched together. “I don’t know how.”
“That’s okay. You can learn.”
Corin opened her mouth to protest, but to her surprise, Elly took Briar’s hand and allowed herself to be guided to the water. Her arms wrapped around Briar’s neck as they explored further. The princess lifted Elly into her arms, as if the child weighed nothing, and dipped Elly low enough to practice floating.
“Don’t go too far,” Corin warned. She watched them like a hawk, ready to dive into the currents if Elly so much as let out a gasp. But her sister’s initial signs of fear soon melted into ease. Elly’s face relaxed even when Briar let go, as if the princess were sending off a floating water lantern, the very same light that Corin had spent years burying for protection. It was better to snuff out a flame before others could see and claim it for their own. For the first time, Corin saw how bright this flame could last uninhibited.
Elly floated naturally on her back, her limbs wading through waves. Water droplets trailed from the slick spikes of her hair to the creases of her eyes, and she dipped her head backward, basking in the sun’s warmth. The girl was a dark streak across deep blues before white lilies began to bloom in the water. The ocean transformed into clouds, a swelling mirror of the widening sky. Clouds ruffled at the edges, grazing Elly’s cheeks, wrapping her limbs in puffs of silver and milk.
Corin watched in awe as her sister floated in the ocean made of skies. Not because of the acres of blues and infinite colors, but because the child looked like a speck of paint in a canvas she belonged in, like these paints were made for her alone. She would not be disturbed by the eyes of leering men and skulking shadows that took small girls. She would not be snatched by unhappy fathers or saved by hopeless daughters. Instead she existed, fully, as herself: sun on bare skin, salt on wet hair. A girl who would never be harmed.
Corin was so spellbound by the sight, she didn’t realize Briar had transformed in the water as well. The shrubs of her dress melted into translucent blue, and her gown floated like pulsing jellyfish, lacy ribbons trailing her limbs as she dove below. Coral wrapped around her head like a crown as she emerged from the surface. She wiped her face with both hands, leaving behind star-shaped pearls on wet cheeks, as she swallowed the salted air.
She looked beautiful, and Corin immediately cursed herself for thinking that.
“Come in,” Briar said, waving to them. “The water’s perfect.”
“Splash me and I’ll kill you,” Malicine said.
Briar laughed. “You’ve cursed me for less.”
She continued swimming with Elly, while Malicine cast a black cloud over their head for shade. Beside them, a tiny tree sprouted from the sand, where Talon perched to also avoid the sun.
Corin tried not to pay attention to the rosy glow on Briar’s bare skin and instead shifted her focus to the cliffside in the distance. She needed to remember what she came here for. Her mind fixed on a new life after claiming her treasure. She’d find a sprawling home in the borders of Gyldan, where she could be away from the noise and memories, the mistakes and loss. She didn’t want to deal with people ever again. Corin had seen the consequences of rebels like Harlow who risked their lives for the greater good, and it was never worth it.
Malicine’s voice broke her reverie. “You two had an argument, didn’t you?”
The muscles in Corin’s jaw jumped. She instantly thought of Elly before realizing Malicine had meant Briar Rose.
“I figured something happened,” they said. “You’re extra prickly around her.”
She hated that Malicine forced her to pay attention to Briar again. Cylinders of light moved across the sea and radiated across the girl’s skin like glitter. Corin’s mouth tightened into a grimace.
“I know I should be grateful that she’s giving me the treasure. But she irritates me.”
“Of course. She’s a spoiled princess who’s never worked a day in her life.”
“Then how are you friends?”
“That’s a long story.” Malicine tossed their hand, as if the memory was too distant to bother grasping. “I suppose the short answer is that we both wanted an escape, and we found that with each other. She has her reasons for hiding in an imaginary world. I have mine.”
Corin repeated Malicine’s words from their solitary ice castle. “You don’t like people?”
“I loathe them. Pathetic little parasites clawing at each other for scraps of power and praise. They dress their wars in different flags, but it will always be the same hunger underneath. I don’t regret leaving your world behind. They certainly never paid me any kindness.”
The demon tilted their head back. Their horns created a stark shadow over the sand, a shape of two crescent moons that no longer hid in the skies. The sun beat against their green skin, and they lacked any shame to hide it.
“Why fight to stay in a world that’s not worth saving,” they said, “when it’s so much easier to be on our own here?”
Corin’s gaze drifted toward Elly. The girl swam back to shore, her hands cupped over a collection of shells. Shades of pink and translucent blue sprinkled across her palms. They reflected light into her widened eyes, gleaming in wonder at the novelty in her hands.
It would have been so easy for Elly to be happy, Corin thought. If she was born in the right place, the right time. The right family.
“All we’ve ever done is fight to survive,” Corin murmured.
“Maybe your sister doesn’t want to survive,” Malicine said. “Maybe she just wants to live.”
Corin didn’t respond, because Malicine was right. Elly should know what it meant to enjoy simple pleasures. Swimming in water. Feeling the sun on her skin. Being loved. The weight of Elly’s wet clothes should have dragged her down, yet she bounded across the sand as if she were light as air. This was what someone looked like when they weren’t restrained by cruel soldiers or selfish sisters.
Corin let out a long exhale, shoulders sagging. Fine. She would settle inside this moment, even if it was fleeting. Elly’s laughter was rowdy and obnoxious, the kind that demanded attention. Corin wanted to bottle the sound in a jar and shake it beside her ear so she could hear it even in the darkest of nights.
She took off her boots and swam in the ocean, catching up to Elly. “You learn fast,” she said, then splashed water on her sister’s face.
Elly kicked her feet forward. “Bet you can’t catch me.”
Before Corin could reply, Elly already dived below. Corin followed without hesitation, puncturing clouds until they turned to white foam, deep blue-greens transforming to bursting corals, fuchsia, tangerine. She locked her arm around Elly’s waist and thrust her other hand over Elly’s stomach to torture the girl with tickles. Her sister’s laughter came out in bubbles, and she silently flailed until they reached the surface again, gasping for air.
Corin listened to the steady beat of Elly’s heart as they held each other. Sunrise turned the waves to gold, the horizon a line of silver. Waves rippled gently against their brown skin. She stared at her sister and wondered how someone could grow so fast. Despite her best efforts to hide Elly, the girl was too bright and beautiful. It scared Corin, knowing the world was cruel and often took beautiful things away from her.
As they breathed the briny air and tasted ocean salt, she wondered if this was what life would look like without fear. The lull of the ocean, the swell of the waves, her sister beside her. The feeling of being safe in an infinite world.
But this isn’t real.
Salt trickled in Corin’s eyes and burned. A blot of ink stained her vision. She blinked hard, yet the black spot did not disappear from the horizon. A dark patch had disrupted the silver line, so pervasive that even when birds flew toward it, dusk swallowed their silhouettes.
Thick clouds wrapped around the island in a gray halo. Among the swelling sea, the island looked dead. When had this island appeared? Or had it always been there, and she hadn’t remembered? She realized too late that someone had been calling her name. The wind had drowned out Malicine’s voice, barely carrying it over to her ears as she turned around and saw the demon’s face had contorted to panic.
“Get out!” they yelled. “Don’t go any farther!”
Corin didn’t have time to react. Lightning struck the island, turning the sky white. Seaweed wrapped around her ankles and pulled her down. She lost grip of Elly as the waves pushed them apart. Elly yelled her name, but it was too late. The rope of seaweed had already dragged Corin below to darkness.
Her body struck a rock at the bottom of the ocean. Fish scattered and reefs disintegrated into sand. Black squid ink permeated the trenches and shrouded her body like an ill-fitting blanket. Corin pulled her limbs and tried to scream, but there was no sound. Panic overtook her. She didn’t stop thrashing, her pulse racing to burst from her skin. Her wedged foot turned blue. Bits of her flesh ripped from bone and scattered in the water.
In the corners of her vision, rocks twisted into a tunnel path filled with starved bodies and bones. Death’s stench permeated her nose. Gloved hands reached for her shoulders, and she recognized the pattern of holes in the fabric, the cuts on Harlow’s knuckles, every detail stained in her memory after hours of painting next to each other, foolishly believing their art could mean something just because they wanted to make it.
Strips of kelp hung from Harlow’s body like flayed skin. Her fingers were like dripping strands, wrapped around Corin’s throat in a chokehold. Black water streamed from the dead woman’s eyes, the hole in the back of her skull, even her chapped lips as they ripped open to a distorted cry.
“I trusted you, Corin. How could you?”
Corin wanted to scream, but the stench of brine and rot filled her mouth. Ghosts invaded her vision: Maggie’s cracked lips, Rowan’s broken nose, and a smaller, pale face with blue lips, but she couldn’t make out the exact arrangement of features, nor did she want to.
Her eyes clenched shut, and her body sank deeper into an abyss, where rocks that once trapped her melted into soil, damp with blood. Pearls grew in place of budding plants. A flicker of moonlight revealed a woman draped in white, her limbs stiff, her dress stained with scarlet. They were in the woods, but the smell of death was stronger than the wilted flowers.
“How could you abandon Gyldan? Abandon her?”
A familiar voice echoed in her ears, too frail to be Harlow this time. Corin could not pinpoint the source, only a feeling of sorrow that permeated the ocean water like a distant memory. The seaweed wrapped around her limbs turned brittle like autumn leaves. A cold wind of night air howled through her bones. She squinted at the blurred shape of the woman ahead of her, limp and pale as the pearls that scattered around their feet. Horror gripped Corin like the stake that held the woman’s body.
She was dead. Corin didn’t know who she was, yet the familiar voice in her ears continued sobbing. Grief from a memory not belonging to hers pressed into Corin’s lungs and sank her body into the ocean like an anvil. She screamed while drowning. Her vision turned black, and she was alone, and most of all, it was her fault, her fault, her fault. She let someone die. Someone she loved, someone whose name she could not say. The anguish was so unbearable that she could no longer breathe through her sobs. She wanted to die. She was too cowardly, too weak, to survive this life.
She threw herself forward and felt her body hitting not the ground, but the flesh of another, his skin as rough as a skinned buck. Rage broiled from the pit of her stomach and reached to her fists as they pounded against his chest. He had abandoned Gyldan and this woman, and Corin would not let him destroy more of their future. She fought against the shadow of a man until he seized her by the wrists.
“Do not defy me, Amelia,” came his voice, deep and distorted.
Corin froze, like she had been caught wearing someone else’s skin. The shadow twisted into a deep red, and when she looked down at her hands, so too did blood smear over her palms. Her eyes scanned the forest, where dead soldiers surrounded the soil, their helmets revealing a black abyss where their eyes should be.
Like a phantom, she felt a new presence draw closer. Another shadow swam through the darkness, an invader of her home. It lunged toward her, and she would let it kill her, if it was what she deserved for letting so many die.
Then another’s arms wrapped around Corin. A soft body pressed into her skin, and a sword sliced into flesh that was not hers. Corin watched Briar open her mouth in a silent scream as the princess shielded her. Briar’s hand wrapped around the blade. Instead of blood, light spilled from her fingertips. The rays poured down the weapon and to the shadow’s limbs until the attacker crumbled to dust. Murky water dissipated as blinding light fractured the tides, and Corin fell through the brine.
Floating specks disappeared from her vision. She reoriented herself at the sandy bottom of the ocean, where the currents had parted and left her to dry beneath the beating sun. She gasped for air, something she thought she would never breathe again. Her clothes were drenched and heavy, pinning her body against coarse sand.
There was another weight on top of her. Bare skin peeked through her damp dress, pale as a dying moon. Blond hair stuck to her cracked lips. She was no longer Briar Rose, merely a girl.
“It’s all my fault,” the girl sobbed. Her hands covered her face, as if to keep the shame from spilling. “You weren’t supposed to see this.”
Grief coated Corin like sticky tree sap from a nearby forest, foreign but familiar. Her savior remained elusive, a beautiful mask covering a broken girl. Corin reached for Amelia, wanting to confirm she wasn’t a dream. As her fingers grazed Amelia’s cheek, her eyes traced the girl’s features, searching for the truth behind the illusion.
“I see you, Amelia,” she whispered.
The girl flinched and pulled away from Corin’s touch. She retreated into the ocean, ignoring shouts of her real name. Corin attempted to stand, but the currents came crashing back. Water swept her into rolling waves. She mustered enough strength to swim to the surface and gasp for salted air. But no matter where she scanned beyond the ocean, from the rocky beaches to the looming island in the distance, she could no longer find Amelia.