Chapter 31
FLAMES LICKED HER heels as Corin climbed on Malicine’s back. The demon’s wings flapped hard, sending a gust of wind so fierce it allowed them to puncture through fog. Corin gasped for fresh air as they soared into the sky. Below them, Autumnland turned into blazing trees and crimson mountains.
Her heart still hammered against her chest as she clung onto Malicine’s scales. She had watched them transform into a dragon and kill the monster that tormented them with a fiery tidal wave. Relief filled her body as parts of her pieced back together, rematerializing once the demon burned down their nightmares.
But Corin looked back at the island and felt her heart drop once again. It took only a breeze to cool the fires down. Tree stumps grew back to where they once were, skeletal arms and withered leaves that haunted her moments ago. Thick clouds wrapped around the island like a cocoon. Through the fog, a monster’s growl echoed, the faint roars of thunder muffled behind an invisible fortress. Restored to its original form, the island told Corin that she may have left, but the land would always remain. A secret stored in the back of her conscience that she would never truly erase.
She had doubled over with nausea by the time they reached Summerland, despite the salt air and jewel-blue ocean welcoming them. Talon’s familiar croak greeted Malicine at the shore while Corin tumbled on her hands and knees. Her palm squeezed fistfuls of sand, the sun’s warmth trickling between her fingers, a sensation she never thought she would feel again. She focused on the gentle waves of the ocean and the birds cawing in the sky. The sounds, the touch, all the reminders she needed that they were safe now.
Except none of this was real, either.
Grief crashed back into Corin as she remembered her sister’s blue lips and cold skin. Her ragged fingernails with dirt packed beneath. The way her body sagged in Corin’s hands. Corin rolled over in the sand and threw up. The sickness didn’t stop, even as Malicine transformed back to their original form, knelt beside her, and healed her wounds. Her flesh may have reassembled whole, but pain ate at her heart until she felt like there was only a gaping hole left inside her chest. What had once filled its place, a little girl who never grew up to be cherished.
What future could they ever have together but an imagined one?
Corin did not know how long she cried. Time stretched and warped, the sound of waves crashing to the shore along with her sobs, then returning to the ocean, leaving her behind. Her cheek had stuck to the sand, the sideways clouds she watched crawling for miles across blue. She didn’t get up. Neither did Malicine or Talon, who sat quietly by her side the entire time.
Across the ocean, the island rumbled. Waves left behind clumps of seaweed that glittered under the light. Black kelp crawled across the sand like snails, slowly inching their way toward Corin’s body. Their slimy arms wrapped around her ankles, and she was ready for its pull, wanted it to bring her down to the depths of the ocean where darkness would drown her.
“You’re doing it again.” Malicine’s voice cut through the seaweed. Corin felt magic tingling her skin as the kelp unwrapped itself from her ankles and retreated to the ocean.
“Doing what?” she muttered.
“Punishing yourself.”
Corin watched the water swallow the seaweed until it disintegrated, leaving black residue even where light refracted. It was guilt that once made her nearly drown, the truth in the back of her mind when she had swam with Elly and knew it wasn’t real. Corin didn’t know any other way to continue existing without harming herself. She didn’t know how it was possible to keep living without suffering too.
She wanted to ask Malicine who else she could be angry with, but the question died on her tongue, the answer coming to her first. There had been a person who tried saving her from drowning, reaching out with gentle arms and telling Corin not to fight her grief. In the end, her kindness had been deception. This person should have known it was crueler to let Corin believe in the light refracting in the water rather than the darkness below.
At last, Corin sat up. Grains of sand trickled down her cheek, following where her tears had dried. Her eyes narrowed in resolve, staring at the sun that burned so bright she wanted to stab into the star and watch it sink, so that she would never see the light again.
Her voice willed itself to stay calm as she turned to Malicine and said, “Take me to Briar Rose.”
? ? ?
CORIN WATCHED MALICINE and Talon cut through dense undergrowth to reach the center of the jungle. She kicked rough vines blocking the path, stomping wet ground in a silent scowl. She no longer believed in the sun’s warmth or the smell of clay wafting through trees. They were nostalgia steeped in lies, a web of fake memories spun by a princess who wanted to forget her own.
They reached the base of the waterfall, where Corin had first plunged before the tides swept her away. The water rippled calmly with no hint of the turmoil from earlier. Instead the stream burbled quietly, spitting on rocks with the same contained anger she had reserved for one person.
Briar sat on one of the boulders, her arms crossed around her knees, the bottom of her dress cascading in water so one couldn’t tell where fabric ended and liquid began. Stray sunflowers floated around her bare feet, wilting like her posture of grief. Corin tried to still herself, curling her fingers to fists at her side. She refused to shake in anger, even though she wanted to thrash the trees around them, yell at the chirping birds to quiet down, tear the peaceful scenery apart so they would stop pretending any of this was real. She wanted to destroy something beautiful, and the most beautiful thing was the girl in front of her.
Briar sensed their presence and looked up. Hopeful light shone in her widened eyes. She leapt off the boulder and wrapped her arms around Malicine.
“You made it,” she gasped, a sob of relief muffled in their chest.
“Barely. But we have a problem. I lost the amulet.”
Briar pulled away to examine Malicine, whose hands were empty without their staff. A faint worry etched her forehead. The silence made Corin’s stomach coil with guilt. It had been her fault that Malicine chased her into the island. She risked both their lives and lost the demon’s amulet in the process. Without the gem, Malicine could no longer open a portal. Their plan for stopping Prince Ezran and the godmothers from following their tracks would not work. Corin had no way of returning to Gyldan anymore, either.
A new, terrifying thought trickled to the back of her mind. Without Elly, there was no reason for Corin to return to Gyldan. She had nowhere to go. No reason to continue living.
“We will figure it out,” Briar reassured. “The important thing is that both of you made it back safe.”
The softness of her voice made Corin’s anger flare once again. How could this girl be so insistent on suppressing the guilt and pain? They could have died. Now they were trapped forever. She acted like things could easily go back to normal. Sunsets, afternoon tea, parties and pretty dresses. Trivial props to play pretend for the entirety of her sad existence.
Corin couldn’t bring herself to look at Briar, so she walked toward the waterfall. Her pants soaked from the stream as she jumped over the rocks. She stopped at the cascade, where beyond the white foam, her reflection stared back at her. Dark skin, cracked lips, bloodshot eyes. A broken person who could never be put back together.
“Are you all right, Corin?”
She watched Briar drawing nearer behind her. White foam blurred the princess’s expression, but Corin could already imagine the mock concern, the furrow of her brows, the bite of her lower lip.
“Malicine said that in the dreamworld, your subconscious thoughts come to life,” Corin said. “That means, if I want something, I can make it appear in my own hands.”
She reached inside the waterfall, feeling the cool river wash over her skin and drizzle between her empty fingers. They curled into a fist until something solid filled her palm like a block of ice. It was the same feeling she had when she first pulled out a sword in Winterland. She had wanted to protect Elly.
“I know what I want now.”
Now, she would protect herself.
Corin unsheathed the dagger from the water and leapt at Briar’s throat. The force knocked her over, and they were both on the ground, Corin’s knees locked around Briar’s waist, the makeshift weapon at her neck. Boulders rose to the sky, jagged slabs of rock surrounding them as walls to muffle Malicine’s yells from outside. The waterfall roared above their heads, drenching them both until Corin could feel her own skin against Briar’s between wet fabric. Corin breathed heavily, heart pounding against her chest, the violent urge to tear into Briar and expose every part of her.
The girl’s voice cut through the noise like a lacy embrace.
“It’s okay, Mal. Let her do it.”
Briar tilted her head back, exposing the soft blue veins that ran down her throat where Corin’s dagger touched. Corin could hear the flutter of breath, the swirl of emotions that rocked her body on top of Briar.
“You have that little regard for your life?” she hissed.
Her hand pressed the blade harder to Briar’s throat like a challenge. She could feel the princess suck in a breath and let it go, the slow rise and fall of her chest beneath her damp dress. She wanted to cut the girl open and demand answers from the wretched, beating heart that gave her foolish hope. Somewhere, between the crooks of Briar’s limbs and paths of her veins, Corin searched for the truth.
Yet when Briar replied, her voice carried a lightness. Like she could float away at any moment, even as Corin pinned her body to the ground.
“Why not? Death means no uncertainty. No pain. No sadness. Why, it’s almost like being in a dream.”
The shock of Briar’s calmness spread through Corin’s body. She didn’t know why it felt like she was the one being cut. She needed to patch the wound the only way she knew how: with rage. She wanted Briar to show she was afraid. That the girl wasn’t so resigned to toss away her life like it meant nothing.
Corin raised her weapon in the air and plunged it down.
The blade hit the rock beside Briar’s head with a hard crack. The dagger shattered like ice, and the waterfall split into opposite directions, a flood that rolled across stones and emptied the pool. Without water, the sleeves of Briar’s dress looked deflated, her hair slicked wet against her face, eyes closed and waiting. But Corin was still on her knees, staring at the flutter of her lashes, watching her cheeks gleam as a single drop of water hit her face.
Briar’s eyes fluttered open. Disbelief flickered across her face as she realized Corin was crying.
“I looked for you,” Corin whispered. “In the tunnels, in Gyldan—I looked for you.”
Then a new flood came, one of her own doing. She thought she couldn’t cry anymore, but her broken heart was an endless pool, and Briar was going to drown in it.
“I cried out for you when I found El. I called your name. I prayed and begged to a god, any god, that somewhere, out there, you would wake up and make things better. But you never came.”
The memories came rushing back. Elly’s body cradled to her chest. Her throat turning raw from screaming. The name of a sleeping princess echoing through the tunnels. The deafening silence that told her nobody was going to help them.
For so long, she had told Elly not to get her hopes up with magic and fairy tales. She had dismissed the stories as desperate imagination for fools who had nothing else to live for. Yet even after discovering Elly’s body starved to death with the other lost souls, Corin had continued wandering through the tunnels in search for the castle ruins. She had done it because, more than anything, it was Corin who wanted to believe the fairy tale was real.
In the end, she had been the fool who dreamed.
Briar recognized this truth as well, because her face crumpled under the weight of it. She let go a shuddering breath as if she were in pain, even though Corin no longer pinned her to the ground. Something heavier pressed against Briar’s chest, forcing tears to spring to her eyes, a broken sob to crawl out of her throat.
“I’m sorry,” Briar said. “But there would be no difference in the world if I was in it. In fact, the world would be better off without me.”
“Why?” The question sounded more like a beg. Corin saw the image of the perfect princess crumbling before her, an ethereal vision cracked into glass shards. Briar’s flowers washed away in the river, her skin turning pale like the sleeping princess Corin had seen in Gyldan. Blond, limp hair slicked her real face.
“Because I am a coward,” Amelia answered, “and cowards do not change lives.”
Corin stared at her, remembering every clue of Amelia’s life she had witnessed, every wound the princess tried to hide. Broken crowns, dented chain mail, rows of pearls with specks of blood. An act of defiance ending with a dead king’s blood crusted beneath her nails. They came in flashes, the memories diluted from suppression, like watching something submerged underwater. Corin had only seen pieces in Autumnland, yet she felt the weight of Amelia’s pain, the way it suffocated her. It was the same sinking feeling Corin possessed when she held Elly’s body to her sobbing chest, knowing that even when her sister was alive, Corin couldn’t have given her a better life anyway.
She had been suspicious of Briar Rose, not because of her unfamiliarity, but her uncomfortable likeness. Beneath Briar’s facade, Corin had seen the very thing she hated within herself.
The realization washed over her like the last wave of an ocean. The sun broke through the sky in fractured light, shining through the waterfall that streamed over the cliffside again. What once were walls surrounding them shrank back to rocks. Malicine and Talon stood from the other side, watching in stunned silence.
Corin could not stand up or apologize. Instead, she broke down in Briar’s arms.
The stream trickled past their skin and tried to wash away their pain, but the sounds Corin made were too loud and horrid, disrupting what should have been serene. She cried like someone who felt the whole truth: that sometimes people died and the world was cruel and there was nothing left to do but feel every loss.
Briar held her for what felt like an eternity. She didn’t let go, even as Corin gripped her arms and wailed. They curled inside the pool, floating between each other’s limbs. This was different from drowning herself in the darkest depths of the ocean or burying herself in soil like a grave. Corin could no longer sink into oblivion and self-hatred, because this time, Briar Rose carried her.