Chapter 37
AFALLING STAR LANDED on the coast of Autumnland when Corin arrived. Her limbs had grown weak and tired from swimming, her lungs taking in desperate gasps of air as she crawled over the shore. The earthquake had spewed plumes of dust and debris into the air. She coughed violently, forcing her body forward. The woods swallowed her whole as she trudged through the path of trees and shouted for Malicine.
Her voice echoed through hollow trees and winding roads. Whispers of imagined voices scraped the leaves, urging for distraction, a lure to an offbeat path. Her skin prickled from the bitter cold, a familiar sensation. She remembered what she had seen the last time she was here: bloodstained pearl earrings, a dead king with antlers, trails of ants that crawled over Elly’s sunken face. A voice that said Briar, or Amelia, or maybe even Corin herself, would never be forgiven.
Surrounding trees morphed into screaming faces. The arrangement of bark twisted into familiar features belonging to Harlow, Maggie, Rowan, everyone she had lost. Cold breezes dissolved to whispers like their voices, pleading for her to look at them, remember the taste of death and regret. Corin shook her head, trying to ward off the memories. This wasn’t real, she kept telling herself. The island used her subconscious for tricks, reflecting the darkest of thoughts the deeper she crossed. As long as she remembered light existed too, she could escape the island with Malicine, both their minds intact.
Corin cupped her hands over her mouth and continued shouting the demon’s name until it strained her throat. The darkness was so vast that she couldn’t tell where they were or if they even heard her. Dead trees remained still, as if nothing changed. The wind howled mockingly, drowning her voice.
She took another step until the ground rumbled once again. Branches rattled like bones before the sound of split wood tore the sky. Violent tremors pushed rocks off a mountainside. She dodged the boulders, but mud gripped her ankles and pulled her down the landslide. The sudden descent was too familiar. It terrified her as the ground swallowed her whole.
Debris and snapped branches collapsed on her body, pinning her down the bottom of a hole. Mud slicked her clothes as cold air breathed into reopened wounds. There came the pain again, one she knew too well. It bloomed in the pit of her stomach and rolled waves of nausea across her skin.
Malicine was right when they said she couldn’t truly escape her nightmares. The harder she tried not to think of something, the more she did.
Even if she closed her eyes, she knew who would speak next.
“You should have been there for me.”
Corin turned to the body draped over the landslide. A white film had washed over Elly’s eyes like clouds. Corin’s silhouette looked too big, too monstrous in the reflection.
“You’re not real.” She repeated the words like a mantra and clamped her hands over her ears, but there was no point. Her sister’s voice rang clear between muddy walls.
“It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m real,” Elly said. “In the end, I’m still dead. Don’t you understand?”
Elly didn’t blink. Ants crawled between the gaps in her teeth as her cracked lips parted. Collarbones protruded from her dirty shirt like a jagged tooth. Tears burned Corin’s eyes. Her hands fell to her sides, no longer blocking the truth. She could pretend to believe in two versions of her sister: the one covered in wildflowers, waiting for her safe return, or the one covered in dirt, cursing her for abandonment. But as long as both versions continued breathing, neither was truly real.
“I’m sorry, El,” she pleaded. “I’ll never forgive my—”
“Being sorry doesn’t change what happened.”
Elly’s words settled into Corin’s skin. The hard lump in her throat burned as if it had caught on fire. Her feet sank into the soil, the roots twisting around her limbs and pulling deeper. It was happening again. She was supposed to make it through the island. She thought she was stronger than this. But maybe that had been a lie too, one of the hundreds she had told herself.
Why had she come here in the first place? Her willpower dulled, as if she were observing herself in a dream. No, she needed to remember. She came here for someone, and she needed to return into the arms of another someone too. Yet she couldn’t forget the person she came for in the first place, long ago in the tunnels.
Maybe it didn’t matter, the difference between real or fake, living or dead. There would always be a girl etched permanently in Corin’s mind, one that her sad little heart could never erase. The complicated feelings she had for that girl were real. They had made her wretched life worth living too.
Corin willed herself not to turn away. Instead, she strained in the howling wind to remember the girl. If she listened closely enough, the wind could remind her of a wailing baby that once squirmed in her arms. The wet dirt could feel like sticky palms she’d held on to whenever they crossed the street. The feeling of wanting to curl in bed could be accompanied by a familiar body next to hers, breathing down her chest, arms wrapped around her stomach like an anchor that brought her home.
She let that familiarity guide her, even though she knew the words she’d hear next.
“I hate you,” Elly said.
Corin opened her eyes and faced the mirage of her sister. “No, you don’t.”
Elly blinked slowly. The clouds in her eyes flickered, as if uncertain of whether a storm would arrive. Corin pulled her legs out of the sinking soil and trudged over to her sister. Muddy walls framed Elly’s body like a painting. The girl only existed because Corin had twisted her memories this way, letting grief and shame sculpt the creature before her. Maybe, if she remembered other truths, she could look at this scene again in a different light.
“I know you don’t hate me, because when you were five, you held my hand every time we crossed the street and wouldn’t let go. When you were seven, you collected rocks so I could paint again, thinking they were the same thing as charcoal. When you were nine, you got in trouble for stealing a peach from the marketplace, because you were worried I’d go hungry. And when I yelled at you in front of the shop owner, you saw I pocketed the rest of the peaches behind his back, and we ate them on our way home.”
Corin’s hand stretched to Elly’s cropped hair, fingers threading through rough spikes with all the gentleness she could hold.
“The truth is you always loved me, El,” she said, “and that’s better than anything I could have ever dreamed.”
Clouds dispersed from Elly’s eyes, leaving behind a pool of black that reflected Corin’s own face. She saw the projection of what she told herself through her sister, the nightmares that tormented her conscience with reminders of their past. But accepting the pain of losing Elly meant accepting that they had loved each other too.
Corin couldn’t punish herself anymore. Not when they needed a better future.
“Come with me,” she said. “We can’t be together in the real world, but I promise we will be in this one.”
Ants dispersed from Elly’s face, the white clouds in her eyes parting in new clarity. Color restored to her skin, deep brown like fresh summer soil. Light gleamed in the dark pools of her irises as she grasped Corin’s hand. Their fingers interlocked in a tight squeeze, and Corin vowed to never let her go, even if her sister was only a memory.
A deep rumbling echoed over their heads, followed by screeches of a familiar voice. Panic struck Corin’s chest. She climbed over the landslide and helped Elly up. When they reached the top, the smell of burning wood struck her nose. Wildfires had spread throughout the forest. Trees burned to crisps and splintered like spiderwebs. Above, the skies glowed red. The air no longer had its frigid chill, but a suffocating heat that pressed onto the island.
A wide trunk split in half and crashed, sending another wave of heat. Corin motioned for Elly to follow her. They crawled over jagged roots as thick smoke muffled their violent coughs. Corin found cracks where the ground split open, the source of the earthquake that had nearly dragged her into oblivion. As she followed the fissure that trailed the earth like open veins, they led to a wider mouth in the center of the forest, a hole that spewed light and magic.
Dread curdled inside the pit of her stomach as she recognized the smell of blood. Surely the island was playing tricks on her. The earthquake and fires weren’t signs of intruders disrupting their dreams, but manifestations of her fears. The prince was not actually here, but a vision she conjured up again, an exhibition of her most selfish desires.
If so, she could not explain the three bodies littered on the ground. The faeries were face down, limbs bent, dresses swallowed up by flames. Elly ran to their side, attempting to put out the fires. She rolled over their bodies to face up and jumped back upon the sight of glass eyes and bloodied chests.
Their stab wounds were the size of her fist. The blood gleamed fresh, the faeries killed immediately upon arrival, as if someone had no use for them anymore once they arrived.
Corin and Elly fell back as the earth shook again. A monstrous scream split the sky, one that chilled Corin’s bones. Only one person could make that sound. Elly pointed above the line of trees, where she’d spotted the flicker of a tail, heard the echo of a dragon’s screech.
Corin grabbed Elly’s hand as they ran inside the sooty heart of the island. Burnt branches scraped their arms as they bounded through crackling woods. Corin refused to tear her eyes away from the sky, hoping she would catch a flicker of scales again, some confirmation that they hadn’t lost Malicine. The farther they ran, the farther the demon crossed off the path, stomping toward a rocky cliffside at the edge of the forest.
Corin yelled Malicine’s name. They didn’t hear it. The dragon had fixed their vision onto a stone figure at the base of the cliff. Scales shone in the flames, yet below, something burned brighter. A gleaming sword, an angry man. A walking nightmare.
Ezran hadn’t changed since the last time Corin saw him. White-blond hair glinted in the fire, as if he were a blinding ball of light, too bright to stare at closely. His ivory armor was impeccably clean despite the rainfall of ash, which dissolved upon touching his glowing sword. Weaponry aside, it was his features that intensified his wrath: the tight lock of his jaw, the narrowed slivers of his eyes. He possessed an anger that had been broiling for centuries.
With each step he took, ground crumbled beneath him. White fragments scattered in the trail of his shoes, bursting in flames and ruin. Everything he touched fell apart, as if the world couldn’t piece itself together under his ire. A swing of his sword and an entire row of trees sliced open, roots split as if struck by lightning. Heat sizzled the air as Malicine breathed a tidal wave of fire in retaliation. It wasn’t enough. He needed only a simple flick of the wrist to tilt his sword and send the flames ricocheting back.
Corin could barely comprehend magic, yet even she knew from the sheen of his blade that the faeries had enchanted his weapon. As he lifted his sword, the blade absorbed the flames and glowed a deadly light. Her eyes burned so bright she didn’t realize he lunged forward until the sword sliced the dragon’s throat.
Corin knew then that Ezran was real, for Malicine’s cry was worse than anything she could have imagined.
The demon plunged down the cliff. Corin let out a scream and raced to the bottom, trying not to spew her heart out of her chest. The base of the cliff had hollowed out into a jagged cave, where old rainwater filled the space and soaked her pants as she waded through. By the time Elly caught up to her, she found Malicine reverted to their regular form. The demon’s body had strewn across rocks, their wings covered in pine needles and dirt. Corin collapsed at their side and didn’t stop shaking them until they rolled over and retched into the water.
“You need to run,” they groaned.
“No,” Corin argued. “I came here for you!”
Malicine grabbed her hand and squeezed it so tight she thought they would break her bones. When they pulled away, the broken shard of an amulet glowed in her palm.
“Take this to Briar and open a new portal. Run to a place where he will never find you.”
“Not without you,” Corin.
Malicine’s eyebrow arched, making Corin overly conscious of the gaping wound in their throat. Desperation overtook logic. Survival required believing they could remain whole, together.
Light glowed from Malicine’s palm, and Corin felt the tug of the chain around her neck. The amulet fused inside the hollowed pendant that she carried close to her chest, becoming one. Malicine tucked the necklace back under Corin’s shirt, and she felt a heavier weight on her body, as if she held the pain of every past self that had been sacrificed for the amulet. She didn’t know if she could carry such responsibility, not when she could barely reconcile her own past.
“The world is falling apart,” Malicine rasped. “If you stay here, you will never make it out, and this will all be for nothing. Get out of here. I’ll hold him off.”
Corin stared at the dribble of blood down their chin, the fading green of their eyes. Leaving Malicine behind wasn’t fair. She had seen the torture they endured in Autumnland, the words and violence hurled at them throughout their life. They had no reason to help anyone but themselves.
“You don’t have to be good,” Corin said, fighting back tears.
The ends of Malicine’s lips twitched. Long nails scraped Corin’s cheek as they cupped her face.
“I was wrong, Corin. I shouldn’t have left your world behind,” they said. “Some of you are worth the sacrifice after all.”
With the last burst of their magic, Malicine sent a gust of wind that sent Corin and Elly flying off their feet. The sisters barreled backward into the forest, where the trees sensed their presence and swayed their trunks to clear a path. Corin coughed black flakes of smoke. The fumes cleared when she got up and her line of sight revealed Ezran.
He was too far away to notice her, fixated on the wounded demon at the bottom of the cliff. The man stood in front of the caverns, a gaping hole that looked smaller beside his towering figure. Darkness radiated from his body, as if his presence sucked in all the shadows and left behind a void. With each step he took, fragments of the ground disappeared, the dreamworld they had carefully constructed dissolving like sand. He was stronger than Autumnland, a hero and nightmare in one.
His command was hard as stone. “Let’s finish what we started, demon.”
“Go to hell.” Malicine spat blood at his feet.
Ezran let out a cruel laugh that made the hair on the back of Corin’s neck stand stiff. It was the sound one made after waiting over a hundred years for this victory.
“That’s reserved for monsters like you,” he said, before plunging his sword through Malicine’s chest.
Corin clamped a hand over Elly’s mouth, dampening her sister’s scream so they would not be caught. She bit her tongue so hard it bled as they watched Malicine slump forward. It took all her willpower to hold back from lunging at Ezran and sobbing over Malicine’s body. She couldn’t. Not if she wanted to throw away everything the demon had sacrificed for her and Briar. Her other hand let go of the amulet before she could shatter it in her tightly wounded fist, letting the gem dangle from her necklace and safely under her shirt.
As they ran, Corin could only think about how the fairy tales were wrong. There were no heroes to save them. They were only stories written by invaders—not the ones from faraway lands who sought refuge, but the very men who tore down their homes, claiming heroism in their own violence.