Chapter 41
CORIN STOOD ALONE in the middle of a white void. The animals, the grass, the house, were all gone. Pieces of meadow scattered across the emptiness, a few flowers clinging onto the soil as temporary survivors, only to wither moments later.
She jumped across small patches of grass to reach the rest of the land that hadn’t been wiped away yet. A stream lapped quietly at the bottom of the hill. She splashed her face for clarity, then stared back at her reflection. Water dripped down her chin and slicked the fresh cuts across her flat nose and scratched cheeks. Her eyes were blotted red from crying. This was what someone looked like when they were going to lose everything.
She peered at the snowy mountains in the distance, where Winterland remained. Her wet hands balled into fists. Somewhere out there, Ezran still hunted for Briar. He wouldn’t stop chasing, just like how Briar wouldn’t stop running. It didn’t matter how many portals they created or worlds they left behind. Briar would spend the rest of eternity hiding, even if it meant never finding out what was on the other side.
But Corin had already buried her sister. She didn’t want to keep burying more pain.
The stream dwindled itself into nothing more than a trickle before it disappeared. Her hands dried, but a new icy chill ran down her palm. The clear resolution came to her before her subconscious could conjure it in the shape of a dagger in her hand. She grasped the weapon tight. There was only one way for them to move on, and it would no longer be running away.
? ? ?
A SNOWSTORM HAD overtaken the world by the time Corin reached Winterland. The bitter wind howled like a cry. Snowflakes morphed into tiny pins that struck her cheeks. Still she trudged forward in the snow, her own icy dagger in hand. A trail of dead crows paved the way for where Ezran had traveled. He’d gone through the mountains and past frozen lakes, where cracks formed past each footstep.
Some of the ice began to drift upward to the sky, like hail moving backward. Corin dodged the torrent of crystals while jumping between broken pieces of a frozen lake. A chunk of ice flew into the air and cut her shoulder. Her foot slipped on the glacier as she hurtled into water.
The lake was so cold she thought her bones would freeze over. Her blood pressure spiked, her heart beating wild like a hammer. She tried not to let water clog her throat as she gasped for air above the surface. Her hands grasped for the ledge, knuckles turning white to the bone as she struggled to lift her weight. Her wet clothes had gotten too heavy, and the water threatened to drag her down. She stared at the horrified reflection in the ice: face as pale as a sheet, lips turned blue from the cold.
The glacier had also brought something to the surface. The chain around her neck drifted up, the pendant swirling in the water, the amulet glowing red. Corin remembered handing the necklace to Briar, telling her about the sacrifices her family had made. She remembered Malicine giving her their amulet, a relic of their own lineage as well.
Perhaps these tokens were always meant to be given away from one person to another, like a price to pay. There was a reason why, despite her insides screaming to give up, that Corin kept going. For her mother and father. For Harlow and their friends. For Malicine and Elly.
For her.
Corin wanted a better world for every person she ever loved.
She gasped a lung full of air and pulled herself out of the water. Her arms wrestled across ice, the amulet tucked under her vest, glowing through the fabric and shimmering red across glaciers. She dragged herself across the lake until she could reach snow again. Her teeth chattered like they would fall out. It took everything in her willpower to charge forward, no matter how sharply the wind bit into her skin.
She followed the trail of dead crows leading to the caves. Glaciers glowed a bright blue light, and the open mouth of crystals swallowed her in its entrance. A bitter cold filled the cobalt-colored space. The cavern walls, once glistening like jewels, dulled into a muted gray. Darkness clouded beneath the ice floor, the silhouettes of whales drifting by as limp bodies. The ice no longer vibrated with a rhythmic pulse, but a deep, droning sound of death.
Footsteps echoed from the other side of the cave. She turned the next corner and pressed her back against the wall. The ice felt too cold against her skin, like it was biting through her clothes. Ezran’s presence brought a different chill as he roamed down the corridor.
Icicles turned black in his reflection. Darkness spread across cracked ice, but if she stared closely enough, she could make out an expression in the amorphous gloom, the vague silhouette of hollowed cheeks and mournful eyes within the nebula. He drifted through the caverns like a ghost, yet there was a steadiness in every step, a heavy weight he carried like a dragging shadow.
As he moved, the walls beside him glowed with new visions. Scarlet burned across icy rocks and swirled into a kaleidoscope of scenes unfamiliar from Corin’s memories. Ocean waves under a colorless sky. A young blond boy sinking alone. The bitter smell of salt and tears wafted through the caves like a crisp morning.
Then ocean hit the walls, and water trickled down the ice, eroding away into a new memory. A necklace of pearls tucked inside wooden cases at a marketplace, a slender hand snatching them amid distracted eyes. The ice fractured, and those same fingers interlocked with another’s. Her skin was tinted brown next to his pale hands, yet when the glaciers stretched high enough to reveal the woman with dark hair, the pearls resting on her collarbone made it known that she was his.
She had belonged to him. Until she wasn’t anymore.
The walls shattered as hundreds of pearls splashed to the floor like teardrops. Ezran reached to grasp them, but they melted past his shadowy limbs. A sorrowful groan reverberated through the caves. A hollow voice scraped the ice.
“We were supposed to be happy together. Until that family ruined it all.”
Though his amorphous form didn’t have a face, Corin could tell Ezran had turned to her from the way the shadows shifted. She pulled back to hide behind the wall, but there was no use. In every broken piece of ice, she could see his permeating gloom reflected.
“You destroyed my dreams, Amelia. Now it’s time for me to destroy yours.”
Ice shattered like starlight across the walls. Water burst through the caves, a typhoon disaster exploding and sending Corin off her feet. As quickly as the glaciers fell, the darkness lunged toward Corin. She swung her dagger, but the weapon caught between his shadowy fingers, wispy limbs curling around the blade and cracking the ice. The dagger shattered in her hand and cut her skin. She yelped in pain before a force kicked her chest to the ground. A heavy weight dropped onto her ribs as his shadow clouded her vision. She choked for air, while his darkness wrapped around her throat, strangling her.
“I assumed you were a petty thief, but it’s worse than that. You think you can change and be a hero now. Perhaps that’s why you love this fantasy world so much, how it feeds your delusions. But remember this: You ended up here by chance. You took my place that night, and it was never yours to begin with.”
His voice was smooth and rich, the kind of sound that lingered on skin in its echoes. It reverberated through the walls even as the cave slowly disappeared into the void. He pushed her skull toward the empty mass beneath the ice, and she could somehow hear the nothingness, the way it was close to taking her with it to nonexistence.
Corin strained to see past his shadowy form for proof that something still existed beyond the darkness, even if they were dangling icicles. A dark reflection in the broken ice stared back at her. She looked like a skeleton, all broken skin and brittle bones. So small and inconsequential that once she disappeared with the rest of this place, she would not even be noticed.
But she wanted to matter. Even if for a moment outside time. Even in an imaginary world that was crumbling apart.
So she stared directly into the darkness and said, “I didn’t take your place. I saw the opportunity to stand where you never did.”
Corin grabbed a fistful of broken ice and held it to the void. Refracted light poured from her fingers and tore through the hazy figure. Ezran recoiled under the fluorescence, his wisps shrinking back. Slivers of flesh flickered in his silhouette. She aimed for skin and not shadow, smashing the ice into his head, feeling the crack of bone. Gloom slipped from his figure as blood dripped from his skull and down his cheeks.
Ezran staggered back, which freed up enough room for Corin to get up and jump across the sleet. The ice below her fractured into pieces. Chunks floated to the sky, gravity disappearing as quickly as melting water. She grabbed onto an icicle that floated in the air. Her feet dangled dangerously over the tides, but even more terrifying was the water dissipating below, vanishing into a white void that stretched beyond the horizon.
Corin couldn’t cling onto the icicle forever. It melted between her fingers. She swung forward to land on a field from the other side of the caves, where animals made of glass crumbled in the blizzard. Behind her, the caves burst like a dam. She rolled over the snow and crawled as far away as she could to avoid disappearing along with it.
Black branches swayed frantically in the storm, as if beckoning her to hurry. Corin tried to get up before Ezran’s hand grabbed her ankle and pulled her down with him. He had blended with the rest of the snow when he jumped with her, his lashes clumped in powder over his pale face and white lips. The pallor made it look like he was decaying, as if the magic that had granted him immortality drained from his bones.
His free hand dragged through the snow until the ice formed a sword as long as his reach. The blade swung at Corin’s legs, and the cut was deep, tearing into fabric and bone. She let out a cry and fell. He got on top of her again, locking her body between his knees. The hilt of his sword slammed into her eyes, nose, and teeth. Bones cracked like porcelain, and snow soaked in red. Her vision turned hazy, and she no longer knew if it was the world slipping away or her own life.
Ezran forced her to stay conscious as he gripped her hair and pulled her up to look at him. Silver eyes bore into hers, filled with rage, and yet, somewhere in the dying flecks of light, there was a deep sorrow that had been harvested for centuries.
“When you die, history will forget you,” he snarled, “and I’ll be the one who fulfilled his promise.”
Ezran dropped her limp body to the snow and stood straight. His arm swung back, the blade of his sword pointed to the fractured sky. Corin was too tired to close her eyes. She would not even flinch. Instead, she would let herself see the sword plunge into her chest and meet death face-to-face.
The blade lunged forward before an arrow shot through the wind. It barely missed the space between his sword and arm before landing in snow. Ezran released the weapon in shock, but it did not fall on Corin.
Everything stopped moving. The snowfall. The cracks in ice. The crystals that drifted from a broken sky. They hung suspended, frozen in motion. The sword dangled above Corin’s face, yet to drop. The only movement was the breath escaping from Ezran’s lips as he stared at the arrow. Corin followed his shifting gaze to the black trees across the field.
Bare-bone branches hardly camouflaged the girl standing between them. Broken sunlight made her blue dress gleam in the emptiness, a beacon to signal exactly where to find her. Corin had become so used to the different versions of Briar Rose that the real girl looked plain in comparison. Her skin was pallid, her hair limp with uneven shades of dull yellow. Her dress looked too flat, the muddy fabric draped over inelegant limbs. There was no glamor, no magical adornments. Only her.
Amelia dropped her bow. The branches where she stood curled together, and the trunk bent over with a mournful groan. She walked along the trunk like a bridge, finally meeting the man who had been trying to wake her for centuries. But the reunion was no amicable scene, and the prince’s distorted smile did not convey love.
“You missed,” he sneered. “All these years, and you still can’t do anything right.”
But Corin remembered the careful balance of the arrow whenever Amelia wielded her bow. She recalled the slow, deliberate breaths Amelia took before releasing the pointed weapon. There was purpose in those long seconds, the decision to tilt her aim elsewhere. Too often people mistook violence for strength and bloodshed for proof of it.
The wood dissolved with each step Amelia took until the only things left in this world were the three of them. Her first and only words came as a single breath, one that she had held for centuries.
“The treasure is Gyldan.”
A tense silence passed between them to register her words. Corin didn’t move, even as snow melted around her. She watched Amelia’s arrow descend through water and into the white void, the dart nothing more than a tiny, dissolving speck.
“You’re lying,” Ezran hissed.
“Lilith loved Gyldan more than anything. It wasn’t perfect, but nothing truly is,” Amelia continued. “She wanted to make it better, because she wasn’t afraid of the future on the other side. Not like we were.”
Ezran snarled. “Don’t lump me in with you. She wanted to be with me. She wanted—”
“She wanted so much more, and you didn’t see that.”
He shook his head with gritted teeth, but the goose bumps on his skin betrayed him, prickling with admission that he refused to voice. Hundreds of years had passed, consumed in revenge and hatred, while kingdoms crumbled around him. Centuries of violent invasions and dying children, bitter poverty and fervid disease. An immeasurable amount of suffering that could have been alleviated by an immortal prince and his loyal faeries, if only they had looked at the world around them and done something.
Corin should have felt vindication, yet grief weighed upon her and spread its mass across the others. As Ezran’s face crumpled in agony, so did the dreamscape. Skies crumbled in bits of starlight and dust. The ground broke apart until they stood on nothing else other than a patch of snow. Amelia lifted her chin to the sky, where snowflakes shattered to pieces, their crystals disintegrating into the void. Her eyes turned wet, reflecting oceans long gone in this world.
“But I am worse,” she confessed, “because I knew what she treasured most and ran anyway.”
A tear slipped from her cheek and plummeted past the snow into nothingness. She swallowed hard, then took a closer step to Ezran, who instinctively wrapped a hand around his sword.
“I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through. I’m sorry I can’t bring her back,” she said. “No matter how many centuries pass, I miss her every day. Only you know what that feels like.”
She reached out a hand to him. There was no bow and arrows, no weapon to defend herself with. Only blind trust.
“I don’t know if it’s too late to change. Perhaps that’s another foolish dream. But maybe the thought of it wouldn’t be so terrifying if we helped one another. Maybe it would hurt a little less if we tried.”
Corin fixated on the empty palm and bare skin of Amelia’s outstretched hand. Guilt twisted her bleeding insides. How quickly Corin had suppressed Amelia’s quiet desires when the girl had voiced them in the boat. The love Amelia sought had waited beyond her buried pain, patient through years of silence.
Amelia’s trembling fingers told Corin she was afraid. Somehow, Corin knew this did not make her a coward.
She couldn’t read Ezran’s expression as he closed his lips in resolution, a decision solidifying behind his silver eyes. He reached out for Amelia, and for a moment, Corin thought this would be a peaceful union. But she was behind him and saw the hand that wrapped his sword. She had spotted the grip of his fingers, the whitening of his knuckles, the answer in his eyes.
As he pulled the hilt, she leapt forward. He swung, and there came the slice of flesh, a cut too deep to take back.
Pain bloomed Corin’s stomach, searing and heavy. It spread through her body, from her slow-beating heart to the tips of her fingers. The pain became more agonizing as she wrapped her hands around the sword, let the blade’s teeth cut into her palms, and shoved with all the strength she could muster.
Her full weight pushed him backward, but Ezran never landed in the snow.
The ground crumbled beneath his feet, and he stumbled into the void with a silent scream. In his descent, the emptiness became a part of him. His blond hair turned so white it disintegrated into strands of light. His steel armor dissolved into atoms, exposing his skin and bones before they disappeared as well.
He was nothing. And then, he was gone.
Corin felt the weight of her bleeding body fall forward until Amelia pulled her back. They fell onto the last patch of snow floating in the void. White flakes disintegrated around them as Amelia pressed her hands against Corin’s stomach, trying to keep her whole. The ice caps were melting, the sky was fracturing, and Corin, too, was dissolving before Amelia’s arms.
Corin untangled the necklace from her vest and showed the amulet locked safely inside the pendant. She placed the glowing orb inside Amelia’s palm, sensing her own blood reacting to the mixture that swirled inside, as if it knew the next price to pay.
“Malicine left this,” she gasped, “for you to open a new portal.”
Amelia stared at the magic brimming inside the amulet. They both understood the unlimited possibilities of what she could do. It was so easy, Corin thought, to continue this for eternity. People in Gyldan would be abandoned for dead, but Corin had fought so hard and for so long to survive too, hadn’t she? Surely, she deserved to be selfish once more. She could claim this paradise for herself, a bargain better than anything Woodbine or soldiers or kingdoms could offer her.
Not a roof over her head, but endless blue skies. A stomach that was always full. A love that was guaranteed. A world where she was not a failure.
But Corin could no longer be the same person she was when she had entered Amelia’s dreams. Even if it was only imagination, she had to believe she was capable of changing too.
And so, she tightened her grip on Amelia’s hand and said, “I don’t want to run away anymore.”
Tears brimmed in Amelia’s eyes. “Corin,” she pleaded. “You’re going to die.”
“I know you want to try again. You don’t need him, or anyone, to start over.”
“I can’t—” Amelia shook her head, sobbing. “I don’t want to wake up in a world without you.”
Even as Amelia clung onto her tight, Corin’s bones eroded away, starting from the tips of her toes as her blood dissolved to particles. She was afraid of dying, while the girl holding her was afraid of living. They had never met each other, not truly, and still, Corin had to believe that their dreams were enough.
“You’ll find other things to wake up for,” she promised.
The amulet sparked in pure light as the world crumbled around them. Amelia’s pleas echoed as Corin’s consciousness drifted farther away.
“What if I’m not strong enough?”
What if it doesn’t get better?
What if I can’t survive this?
What if—
Corin draped the chain around Amelia’s neck, choosing a new home for her grandmother’s pendant. Amelia’s eyes opened, a clear blue ocean in the void, tears lighting up like stars. Her fingers closed around the amulet. The snow beneath their bodies melted away. The amulet’s brightness consumed everything around them. Somewhere, beyond sight, a portal opened.
Corin felt herself unraveling. Her flesh was dissolving, her bones decomposing, her memories bleeding away. With the last of her strength, Corin pulled Amelia closer, tasting salt and grief in their kiss. Between their lips, she whispered her answer.