Chapter 25
THE CRASHING WAVES of a waterfall rang in Corin’s ears like shattered glass. The sunflowers had carried Elly and her to the top of the mountain, where the higher atmosphere turned the air crisp and granted her a view of several miles of landscape. Petals unfurled over her eyes to reveal soft hues washing over the beach, its sands earthen and muted like flour on bread. She allowed the sunset to warm her skin, watching the body of brine transform into tinted sepia, the ocean into dark waves, the skies into marigold.
Briar and Malicine had also reached the summit, reuniting with the sisters. Corin stepped onto a jagged rock and let fresh air kiss her cheeks while a waterfall sprouted from the cliffside ahead of them. Her heart beat against the necklace resting on her chest. She thought about their new future, just within their reach, as she would finally find her treasure.
Black rocks shone around the crest of the waterfall where the stream began. A rectangular wooden box was submerged underwater, snagged by a stray branch. Corin hadn’t spotted the box until Briar pointed out its location. Of course the treasure chest would look nondescript, hidden at the highest peak of the mountain and covered by running streams and shrubbery.
Corin’s hands held two things. In her left, Elly’s palm. In her right, the necklace tucked beneath her shirt. She let both go so she could approach the waterfall, careful to balance atop the pathway of rocks. Her palms scooped the box and felt the smooth wooden surface. The treasure was lighter than she expected, but her fingers started trembling, and suddenly the chest felt heavy with the knowledge that its contents would change her future.
She held more gold than she ever carried in her life. This was the sort of wealth people fought wars and betrayed lovers for. Corin stole a glance at the others waiting near the plateau. She could not read the expressions on Briar and Malicine, but Elly, she could always recognize. The pinch between her brows, the worried teeth mark on her bottom lip. Corin wanted to reassure her that she didn’t need to be nervous. For the first time, they were going to be okay. Corin would be the one to prove it.
Her fingers pried open the hinge, a slow yawning of the box for the grand reveal. Yet contained inside velvet lining was not a necklace glittering in gold, a long-lost crown jewel made of hundreds of carats, or any item belonging to royalty at all.
Instead there was a canvas, flat and old and barely bigger than her hand. Splatters of paint created a familiar scene: tangerine skies, puffy clouds, rolling green hills separated by a river. This painting looked like Summerland, except Corin recognized in the picture the rows of rooftops from Gyldan, the chimney smoke wafting in the air, the bundle of wildflowers in the foreground. She remembered how shaky her hand recognized in the picture the from painting every tiny petal. How the sunset looked beautiful as she’d followed her mother down the cliff, turning their skin a darker shade of brown.
How much she had loved that ordinary day.
“What is it?” Elly asked, trying to peer over Corin’s shoulder. Corin couldn’t respond. The box collapsed to the ground, and the waterfall seized it in roaring waves. She held the painting in shaking hands, but she couldn’t see it anymore, only a curtain of red rage.
The painting shouldn’t have existed. Not anymore. A soldier had smashed his foot through the canvas during one of their invasions. She remembered thinking she should have sold the art and at least gotten a few coins, rather than cling onto it in foolish sentimentality.
Why was it in her hands now? With her dreams gone, what use could she possibly have for it anymore?
“Whatever appears inside the box is your treasure,” Briar said. “You used to paint, didn’t you? It’s—”
Corin spun around, nearly snapping the canvas in half. “You promised you’d give me your family’s treasure. The one that Ezran waited a hundred years for. The one that you abandoned.”
“Briar didn’t promise that,” Malicine interrupted. “She said she’d help you find your treasure. The one that belongs to you.”
Corin couldn’t believe it. She let out a bitter laugh. What was art but just a rich man’s dream? It would never provide for her, put food in her stomach, or help her feel safe at night. She didn’t have the capacity to create beautiful things, nor the time and money to do so. She had no energy left for dreaming.
“Is this some kind of joke? You get my hopes up, string me along, just to give me something worthless and say that’s all I ever wanted?”
The sunset softened Briar’s sad expression. She spoke more gently, and that infuriated Corin even more. “If it matters to you, it’s not worthless.”
Something snapped in Corin. The frivolity of Briar’s words, the useless emotions behind them. If she was trying to teach Corin a lesson, she picked the wrong person. Rage broke the canvas into pieces, splintering the frames, cracking the varnish. Corin hurled the painting over the waterfall, where the waves would swallow it whole, bleeding the paints together until the scenery became soaked in sludge.
Elly yelled, her hand reaching in useless grasps. She jumped over the rocks and tried catching the broken pieces, but it was too late. The sight reminded Corin of her sister picking up the fox’s shattered parts once more. Her knees were on the ground again, her fingers picking apart the pieces left behind by Corin’s rage. Things returned to the way they were so easily.
Corin shoved regret in the back of her mind, as easy as fitting her hand into a glove, and turned to Briar.
“Just because you were miserable with your life doesn’t give you the right to decide what’s best for mine.”
Her sister returned from the rocks. “Corin, stop—”
“Shut up, El.” She saw the flash of hurt in Elly’s eyes. She couldn’t stop herself. She was too angry to care. “There’s a reason why you’re hiding the real treasure, isn’t there? You’re ashamed of what it means. You can’t bear facing the truth.”
Briar didn’t flinch, even as Corin raised her voice. Malicine stepped forward and said, “That’s enough.”
“No. I’m not listening to either of you anymore.”
Her anger returned like a bright, burning ball. The waterfall roiled in her ears, a bitter sound that sloshed over rocks and crashed into the pool below. The figures surrounding her blurred in her shaky vision. She refused to see them with clarity. Her legs moved before she thought twice, closer to the roaring water. A rumble of thunder breathed in the distance as an island revealed itself on the horizon.
She stared at the patch of gray spreading in the sky. Thick clouds turned black as they choked out the sun. The darkness had an alluring quality, calling her name. She knew unspeakable things were buried in Autumnland and had only a taste of them when she drowned in the ocean. What other painful things had Briar buried during the last autumn of her life? And what would happen if Corin fully uncovered the truth?
She stepped to the edge of the cliff, where the waterfall sputtered into the ocean. The threat of leaping made Briar and the others move. Their arms reached forward to stop her, but it was too late. She had already jumped and let the water take her.
As her body descended into the rapids, she felt Malicine’s magic grasping for her, a force of energy that curled around her ankles. The presence weakened within seconds. She’d descended too quickly for them to catch up.
Crashing into the ocean felt like hitting concrete. Her body fractured into pieces before the waves washed the shards back together. Even in the black trenches of the sea, she knew where the currents would take her next.
The tides carried her along the ebbs and flows of time, following her rage like a moon that pulled the waves. Sunset colors shifted in the water, gold bleeding into silver, silver into dusk. The stars reflecting in the water pricked her skin until, eventually, she washed ashore in a new body, one hardened by resentment. The ocean salt tasted bitter on her lips.
On the island, the air whistled through her stringy hair, a kind of cold that nibbled beneath her skin and scraped her bones. She squeezed water from the ends of her shirt and pants so that the wet fabric wouldn’t weigh her down. Her eyes scanned the island’s outskirts, where the trees looked like skeletons and piles of mulch covered the forest floor. Dead leaves wilted from branches, crumbling to dust as they scattered from the wind. The bark looked brittle, like it would disintegrate under a single touch. That was what happened when winds stripped leaves from trees, once tall and grand. They revealed how small and vulnerable things were behind the facade.
Behind Corin, the ocean was barely visible from the fog, which meant that she would not be seen by Briar, Malicine, or Elly if they looked for her. If she became lost, perhaps they would never find her.
“They betrayed you. You can’t return now,” a distorted voice said. “Not until you get answers first.”
Corin turned to the shadow standing in the mist. Ezran’s form blurred in the shifting currents of the wind, yet she could feel vitriol radiating from his mirage, for it had been shared by her as well.
“Briar Rose forced you to bear your vulnerabilities. She made you slice yourself open just to be hung dry,” he hissed. “But if you do the same to her, you can prove she is worse.”
Corin’s fingers wrapped into a tight fist. She stared at the endless pathway of dead trees and blackened leaves. Swathed in a silvery fog, she had no idea what would lie inside. Still, she took a deep breath and walked forward into the darkness.
? ? ?
NONEXISTENT HOURS CREPT by like the scatter of dead leaves from a weakening wind throughout Corin’s trek. Nightfall came by the time blisters oozed between her toes and she slowed her pace. If Malicine were here, she’d tell the demon that they had exaggerated the terrors of the island. The truth was that the forest was mostly uneventful, more a monotonous slog than a nightmare.
There had been expected sights, of course. Trees with screaming faces carved into bark, spiders the size of her head hanging from branches in silky trails. The bark stretched into arms and swayed back and forth. They looked like creatures stalking her in the night, yet as they breathed down her neck, she was not afraid. She had witnessed more terrifying things in the real world.
This couldn’t be it, Corin thought. She was supposed to uncover secrets, monsters that people kept hidden in the dark, skeletons that would be unearthed. She expected to find clues for what Briar was hiding, perhaps even signs that would lead to the real treasure. These visions gave her nothing in return.
“You’re lost,” the wind hissed.
Shadows lengthened into Ezran’s tall figure between the trees. He slinked between twisted branches, his face as hollowed as the creatures around her. A scowl marred his lips.
“I wouldn’t have hunted her for a hundred years just to wander listlessly,” he said. “You know she’s hiding something. Hurry up and find it.”
Corin’s knee crushed dirt as she bent down to make a torch and see better in the dark. After a few minutes spent rubbing together sticks, she created a decent flame, one that melted away Ezran’s shadow and made room for something else glistening in the light. She followed the shining object and found small, white orbs half buried in soil. Her fingers carefully picked up one of the tiny spheres and scrutinized the object. Pearls.
There were several of them, lined over the ground as a trail, leading deeper inside the forest. The familiarity of the object gave Corin a flicker of hope. She followed the trail, picking up the pearls one by one, collecting them in her fist. As she traveled farther into the woods, the ground turned softer, a muddy expanse that clung to her boots. Her feet took extra effort pulling her forward so she wouldn’t sink.
Then she heard a low groan.
The sound rose above the whistle of wind and creaking of branches. A long and brutal moan, like an animal dying. She held the torch in the air and scanned the leaves.
“Who’s there?”
The groaning continued, horrible and pleading. She followed the sound, feet moving as fast as her pounding heart. Her chest slammed against a wall of dead ivy and she fell to the ground. A hard blink, and she realized it hadn’t been a wall at all.
The man turned around, slowly, torturously, like a creaking door about to rip open its hinges. Antlers protruded from his head like a gnarled crown, exposing muscle and oozing blood where the tusks had been jammed in his skull. Matted fur covered his cape, mangy and rotten with fleas. He looked like a skinned animal hanging from a mantel. Her skin crawled like the flies latched onto his graying skin.
“Do not defy me, Amelia.”
His mouth gaped wide open in a continuous groan, deep as grit and gravel. She swallowed down her vomit and dared to speak.
“What happened when she defied you?”
Fear sparked in his hollowed eyes, and he lunged forward. The stench of blood and animal and death was so foul Corin jumped back. She thrashed the torch in his face, but couldn’t deter his arms from reaching out and shoving her. They both fell to the ground. His weight pressed on top of her like a colossal animal. She couldn’t breathe through crushed ribs. The flame of her torch was too weak and died instantly.
She struggled fighting back, grasping his neck to strangle him, but brittle leaves covered his throat like a dying tree, and her fingers dug into black crumbs and foliage. Rotten berries spewed from his mouth and drenched her face. She thought she would drown in sludge, choking in both of their bile.
A blade swung in the air and struck him. His weight stiffened on top of her, allowing a sliver of time to kick him off her. She heard the pierce of flesh as he rolled over, a sword wedged deep through his heart.
Corin bit back a scream. The man dissolved into leaves, yet as she backed away from his body, she felt the graze of another one. A litter of dead soldiers had been strewn around the woods, as if she’d been caught in the aftermath of a bloody battle. Her trembling hands shook their bodies and met the clanking sound of empty armor. She ripped off their helmets. Where their heads should be was nothing but a black void.
Her breaths turned quick and panicked. Corin raced across the forest, but the trees twisted into columns, the damp soil solidifying to hard marble. Faces in the bark turned real, blurry men and women and faeries that chattered around her without making a coherent sound. She wanted to shout that the antler king was dead, and it had been her fault, her fault, her fault.
She continued fleeing through the woods, for the only thing Amelia knew how to do was run.
What? No—this was Corin.
The only thing Corin knew how to do was run.
Her foot hit something hard and she fell forward. She looked over her shoulder and sucked in a sharp breath at the body writhing behind her. Dead foliage stuck to the person’s skin like a suffocating suit. The woman’s lips moved soundlessly, a cry for help, yet no sound escaped her lips. Hollow, vacant eyes stared from behind a mask of twisted branches and decay. The white pupils reminded Corin of pearls.
The body began to sink as a hole opened in the ground like a stretching mouth. Panicked, Corin jumped forward to grab her. She didn’t understand why desperation compelled her to cling onto this woman. Regret settled in as the branches twisted around her arms and pulled her down below. Dirt filled her lungs and muffled her screams. Twigs and sharp leaves cut her skin as she descended into the rotten core of Autumnland.
Her body struck hard rock. She gasped in familiar pain. Darkness carried her to a familiar place with stagnant air and winding paths, where the trapped woman was nowhere to be found. Sharp gravel stabbed her back as she rolled over dirt and coughed out dust. When she got up, she stared into an abyss. Her hands blindly reached for the walls, now solid rock instead of debris. A stench of rotten eggs wafted under her nose, and she wanted to gag.
Then a voice echoed down the passageway. Not the woman who had been trapped in foliage, but someone she recognized. Elly was calling her name.
“El?” Corin shouted, terror overtaking her shaking breath. Elly wasn’t supposed to follow her. Her sister would not survive the island. Her hands slammed against the walls until rocks scraped her skin raw. “El! Get out of here! Run!”
She couldn’t tell if Elly responded or if the sound was too far away. Maybe Elly couldn’t even hear her. Corin ran through the tunnels, yelling until her throat turned hoarse, slamming her shoulders against boulders until her body felt like it would break apart from fear and desperation. She couldn’t lose her sister. Not when they had been through so much together. Not when they were finally repairing the closest thing they had to family.
The exertion made the rocks spin around her. Corin knelt over to heave, but nothing came out of her parched throat. She hadn’t eaten or drank in the several hours she wandered through these tunnels. Or had it been days? She couldn’t remember. Time slipped through her fingers. The walls were shrinking. The stench of death became suffocating. Bodies grew from soil, sprouting from the seeds of her mind. She saw Harlow’s cracked skull, the pale sheet of Maggie’s cheek, Rowan’s twisted limbs. Her friends buried in the dirt with the rest of their forgotten dreams. Then there were the other corpses, strewn around the passages, time eroding their skin until they were nothing but bone. How many people had died in these tunnels, searching for the princess?
Corin stopped as she saw one of them.
The girl’s body was small and sunken in, like hunger had overtaken her body and hollowed her whole. Maggots buried themselves in the flesh of her back. Her dark skin had turned pale gray, like a withered flower that never saw the sun. Her lips were blue, and her hair was cut in such a way where it curled behind her ears, just as Corin had recalled.
“No,” Corin whispered. “This is a dream. This isn’t real.”
But she remembered everything about her sister. The shape of her body, the jut of her bones, the fabric of her clothes. She remembered looking for Elly in the tunnels. She remembered finding bodies in a winding path. She remembered a smaller body left behind, one of a girl who had died alone.
Corin screamed, because this wasn’t a nightmare.
This was the truth.