Chapter 40
100 YEARS AGO
ONCE PAIN FADED from her chest, darkness came to welcome Amelia in death. It hugged her like a warm blanket, wrapping its arms around her body until fully enveloped as one. There was peace in dying, the kind of serenity that made her forget how she ended up here, but not question how she should go back. Eighteen years of fighting to have some meaning in life, and all she had to do was give up to finally find comfort.
A prickle of light peeked through like holes in a kaleidoscope. The light expanded wider until it eventually swallowed her. Stars exploded in her body, the particles of herself swirling like grains of sand in a windstorm. She hurtled through the air, only slowing to a gradual float, drifting toward nothing.
Then she lay in emptiness.
At first it hurt to open her eyes. The light was too bright, and she had been used to being swathed in darkness. Once her vision focused to clarity, she felt dizzy, stumbling. Her surroundings turned pure, blinding white, an ever-stretching field of nothingness. She looked down and watched her body materialize into existence. Pale limbs filled a white dress, bare feet hovering over a blank abyss. She didn’t know where to move, because she had not been standing anywhere. Miraculously, incomprehensibly, she did anyway.
The first step poured a patch of grass beneath her toes, like ink on a page. She took another step and watched the grass expand farther. Daisies sprang from the ground, blades of grass curling around her ankles. The smell of spring wafted in the air, poppy seeds and acorns and sweet florals. She looked up to watch the sky wash over blue like ocean’s waves. The color stretched endlessly, the horizon never fading.
It was impossible. And yet, as the song of a hummingbird whistled in her ear, it became impossibly real.
“Amelia!”
She spun around to see Malicine and Talon surface from the blank canvas of her surroundings. Relief flooded her lungs as she watched green skin and black ink feathers fill the void. Colors that were once frightening, now familiar and safe.
“Am I dead?” she asked.
“You were close to dying, thanks to that senseless stunt you pulled.” Malicine scowled as Talon flew in circles around the emptiness. “The only way I could stop it was restoring the curse so that you’d fall asleep.”
Malicine tilted their chin and watched tufts of clouds materialize along Talon’s flight path. Blue skies stretched above their heads like paint spilling over a blank board.
“It was our best chance for escape. That prince came looking for you and brought your godmothers for help. I gave them what they wanted: a reason to feel like heroes.”
Amelia pieced together vague memories and fragmented sounds. Shrill voices muffling behind dead foliage. Hooves clopping against gravel. Her heart beat rapidly as the scene turned clearer. Fire crackled the sky, clouds turning into black smoke that shaped into a dragon’s silhouette. Smaller tufts of smoke morphed into running figures, shadow puppets that charged toward the winged serpent with raised weapons. As swiftly as he had appeared, the figure riding on a horse threw his sword and pierced the dragon’s chest. Smoke dissipated as the creature released an earsplitting scream.
The ground shook. Amelia fell back on the grass while green blades turned into rotting vines, twisting around her wrists to lock her in place. She tried to resist it, but the truth had been painted by the clouds. Ezran was working with her godmothers. He must have fled from the scene so he wouldn’t be associated with her father’s death. No one had known his whereabouts, and by the time the godmothers realized Amelia was missing, he’d likely looked distressed enough for them to believe his story.
But maybe none of his words were lies. Her godmothers believed they were helping him avenge his true love. They didn’t know that meant hunting Amelia.
The ground split open, an emptiness gaping open for Amelia to fall through and disintegrate forever. Malicine seized her by the shoulders.
“Stop it,” they demanded. “He’s never going to find us.”
The demon stilled her long enough for the rocks beneath her to slowly fuse back together. Smoke cleared from the sky, leaving behind white.
“You lost a lot of blood. I did too,” Malicine said. “Do you understand what that means? I opened a portal to your dreams.”
The amulet in their staff flickered red. Amelia blinked as slow understanding dawned upon her. Pale blue washed into the sky like quiet waves. The world turned quiet, as if waiting for her thoughts. She tried to make sense of the emptiness, but there were no rules to reference. This place was not Gyldan, nor the Otherworld. She was not alive, but she was not dead. She was somewhere in between.
Amelia waved her hand and watched butterflies scatter from her fingertips. Black veins decorated sunny-gold wings, colors swirling like sand in a desert night. She followed their blurry flights. A meadow paved the way for her footsteps, careful and light at first, then quick and manic, bounding across fields as trees sprouted from earth, tangled branches lifting her into the air. Her dress spun daffodils and tulips, petals pressed to fabric, leaves folded into sleeves. A laugh burst from her lips and turned into wind chimes. Rays of light streaked to her fingertips.
She looked down at her hands and saw that her palms shimmered like the sun. This was different from the gold that ran through her veins. This was true magic.
A single sunflower sprung from grass. A memory rooted in her mind. Smells of pastries and apple cakes, an autumn breeze. At Gyldan’s marketplace, she’d discovered a miniature cottage house with a sunflower garden. As she recalled that hazy afternoon, gray stones lifted themselves from the ground and hovered in the air. They stacked on top of one another until they were two stories tall. Dry vegetation melded together into a roof, and glass washed over the gaps where windows should be. Behind the house, grass parted ways to create a soil field that stretched for miles. Thick stalks sprouted in rows. Sunflowers bloomed, their faces full of black seeds that shone like oil under the sun.
Her heartbeats raced with her across the field. The fertile soil sensed her footsteps, and another stalk grew beneath her feet and lifted her to the sky.
Malicine called after her. “Amelia, wait—”
But she was already running across the stalks, adrenaline pushing her forward. Black seeds crunched beneath her toes before she leapt into the air. Vines reached to catch her in leafy grasps and settled her on the thatched roof.
“Slow down,” Malicine warned.
“How can I?” she exclaimed, her arms stretched wide over the straw and heather. The sun’s warmth radiated on her skin, freckles blooming like tiny brown flowers. A finch with rainbow feathers perched on her fingertip. “This is everything I’ve always wanted. A garden of sunflowers. A cottage on a hill. A place where no one knows my name. Just like . . .”
The dollhouse she gave me.
The words died on Amelia’s lips. The wind carried it away like dandelion seeds, leaving her mute. She stared into the distance, where a muffled sound of thunder rumbled behind the mountains. Dark patches of gray formed a silhouette of a faceless woman. Small tufts of clouds collected around the silhouette’s neck, like a string of pearls. Amelia knew this person. She must have. Long ago, she received a dollhouse for her birthday. Who had given her such a gift?
Someone wise.
Someone kind.
Someone who believed in her—
Someone who died because of her.
Dark clouds advanced toward Amelia. She felt uneasy, the sound of hissing droning in her ears. Then, a strike of blade against flesh. Blood splattered across the pearls. She jolted back, the sudden memory of Lilith hitting her like a hammer to her chest. Tears stung her eyes as she remembered the pearls rolling across dirt, the limp weight of her father’s body, her hands drenched in his blood. She tried to forget by looking back at the garden, but the sunflowers began to wilt, their petals shriveled to a muddy brown. Limp birds descended onto fields of dead grass. Gray skies loomed above, growls of thunder reverberating through black clouds.
Wind sliced Amelia’s skin. She shrieked and fell backward. The thatched roof turned into brittle straw, and she broke through the flimsy material, falling to the ground. Dirt and bugs crawled over her pale flesh. She shivered in the flimsy fabric of her dress, where flowers died and stank in rot. Snakes slithered around her ears. Their tongues hissed reminders of what she left behind. Your fault, your fault, your fault, they said, and each word made her sink deeper, until the roots beneath the soil wrapped around her limbs, squeezing her bones so tight she would break into pieces.
Malicine called for her, but their voice sounded far away and distorted, like Amelia was underwater. Talon dove to the ground and snapped at the snakes and vines, cutting them into ribbons. Once Amelia was freed, Malicine pulled her from the ground and pushed her aside. They swung their staff and sent a ripple of air. The force made the terrain roll over like tidal waves: the bare trees with sunken faces in their trunks, the snakes that coiled and hissed, the mud that had dragged her down like quicksand.
A rift broke through the ground and separated them from a gray mass of land. The terrain warped into a small island, where dark clouds hovered in a circle of fog and broken memories. Water poured into the fracture between them, separating the island with miles of ocean.
In the distance, Amelia could still hear muffled thunder. A menacing fog veiled the shadows living on the island. Gravestones of people she let—
Malicine snapped their fingers in front of Amelia’s face.
“I told you to slow down,” they said. “This isn’t just a world where you can make up whatever you want. It’s your dream, which means it’ll take pieces of your subconscious.”
A storm brewed in the distance, thick gray clouds covering the island filled with bare trees and parched soil. They hovered above the dead foliage, never crossing over the ocean or reaching the rest of the world. A bolt of lightning struck the trees, and an ominous hum reverberated through the misshaped island. The shadow that was once Lilith’s silhouette transformed into a larger figure. Its shoulders broadened, and its head grew a pair of horns that pierced through the sky.
A flicker of fear passed through Malicine’s eyes before they snapped their head away. “It seems like mine is bleeding over as well.”
Amelia watched the horn-shaped clouds before the fog rose high enough to dissipate. Though the island radiated a menacing aura, the grayness was contained behind the ocean and did not seep through water. If she turned her head higher, the skies above remained bright blue, untouched by smog and death.
The nightmares existed. Yet, if she tried hard enough, they could never touch her.
“What if we stayed?” she dared to ask.
“And have an island of doom, quite literally, looming behind us the entire time?”
“We’ll do what we always do,” she murmured. “We’ll bury it all. The memories. The pain. Everything.”
A spring’s breeze brought the smell of sweet fragranced petals. Fresh grass parted ways to recreate the soil fields, where stalks of sunflowers rose up once again, as if they had never wilted. White and gray stones collected themselves together to rebuild the dollhouse she loved. Its charmingly misshapen roof slanted to the side, like she’d never fallen through it in the first place.
She heard Lilith whisper promises of treasure, but she could not make out the full sentence or meaning behind the words. Not when she was too busy listening to the bees instead, their buzzing drowning out any other sound. Black seeds from the sunflowers dropped like pellets, a few of them turning white like pearls. Amelia spun her dress and swept them away as she continued to dance in blissful ignorance.
Malicine stopped her at the end of the maze. “And what will be left of Gyldan?”
Her fingers curled into fists. The sunflower next to her also began to curl into itself, mimicking the same motion as it withered into a sad, ugly thing. Inside her was a weak soul, one that perished as easily as flowers did.
She replied, “I’m sure it would not make a difference to the world if I existed.”
The world would keep turning, the same as it always did. People would mourn the loss of their princess, but they would move on.
Malicine pressed their lips together. Shadowed thoughts passed behind the veil of green eyes as they took in Amelia’s words and made sense of them. She knew Malicine felt the same way, for the world had failed them as well. She would never know the true impact of her decision, but she could not will herself to believe there would be any. She would trap herself in a snow globe of her own making, where the scenery never changed unless she willed it, and any chance for true connection would be given up in exchange for comfort.
“You will never want more than this?” Malicine murmured.
“I will never want more,” Amelia answered, because she was good at fooling herself too.
She turned her head to the sky, where the shade of blue was so vivid it could only be imagined. Her eyes closed as she inhaled the sweet smell of florals. The sunflowers grew taller around her, their petals grazing her skin and softly bringing her back to the life she envisioned. Even if it wasn’t real, it was both of their new lives now. Neither here nor there, they stayed frozen in between. The villain and the damsel in distress had found a hidden pocket between realities to hide, and they would never come back.