Her eyes started burning. She clenched her fists, refusing to take Harlow’s gift.
“Stop it.”
The caves continued gleaming. Corin turned away from Harlow’s distorted laugh and looked back at her family. But her mother’s embrace was too suffocating, and Corin couldn’t stand that either. Her father’s rough hands cupped a tiny clay fox, reaching out to her, as if she could touch it herself. She reared back.
“I saidstop it!”
She thought she brushed away the memory. Instead, her fist smashed against the ice. The visions cracked and disappeared. Chunks of ice scraped her gloves and sliced the skin of her knuckles open. Her blood tingled in cold dew. Pain brought her back to reality, as it always did.
Elly ran over to her side and gasped at the blood dripping from Corin’s hand. She was too frantic to forget they were supposed to be ignoring each other. “What did you see?”
Light faded from the ice, returning to blank cavern walls. Corin answered through gritted teeth. “Nothing.”
Malicine’s gaze lowered to the shards of ice on the floor, and they sighed. “Must you make a mess everywhere you go?”
“I want to get out of here,” Corin said.
“Why?”
“Because there’s no point. Just because it’s a happy memory doesn’t mean I want to revisit it.”
At least with the bad memories, Corin could live in them. Like a bed she would make and lie in comfortably, knowing that at least if she stayed there, she could get used to the darkness.
Corin pushed her way past the others. She didn’t realize goose bumps had prickled her flesh until she crossed her arms and shivered in the cold. As the sun emerged from the other side of the caves, whale songs faded behind them like a whistle. With each step the snow melted under her boots, dissolving into freshly sprouted grass. Dandelions sprung from soil, the wind’s hum blowing seeds into the swirl of air. Her eyes followed the floating seeds, how they traced themselves in the sky like fuzzy constellations. They floated inside the caves before transforming into snowflakes on the other side.
As she stared at the opposite end of the cave, a family of foxestrekked in the snow. An icy sheen coated their fur, light bursting through crystal and turning into fragments of mauve. Milky colors floated in the distance above Winterland, ribbons of pink and violet pulsing through the darkening sky.
A single fox perched on the other side, left behind by the rest of his family. His coat had been the only one that didn’t turn into ice. If Corin squinted, she could spot the cracks in his skin, the warning in his eyes.
I am breakable,his voice echoed.But you already knew that, didn’t you?
CHAPTER 14
102 YEARS AGO
“THEY’RE DYING,” AMELIA said.
She often accompanied the queen on her weekly excursions to the marketplace, and this time Lilith had bought a wreath’s worth of moonflowers from a vendor. The autumn breeze carried aromas of pastries and apple cakes along the cobblestone roads of Gyldan’s shopping district. Booths lined the streets, adorned with colorful strips of cloth and fallen orange leaves. Lilith had meandered inside one of the flower shops, chose a bouquet of moonflowers, and thanked the botanist with a generous satchel of coins.
In the queen’s hands, the flowers wilted. They were the color of bruises, their petals so wrinkled and small they could be mistaken for raisins left to bake in the sun.
“They’re not dying,” Lilith insisted. “They haven’t gotten the chance to be alive yet.”
She explained their significance: While moonflowers appeared dead most of the time, they bloomed once every century. Theirpetals would glow with a white sheen and unfurl into the shape of a circle, like a full moon. A sweet fragrance would emanate from their petals for a fleeting few minutes before they wilted once more. It was those rare, precious moments that made their existence worth it. That was the beauty of being alive, even if the flowers didn’t have enough time in the world.
Amelia could understand why Lilith liked moonflowers. Lilith’s rum-dark eyes always skipped past beauty to look instead for potential. She clasped hands with maids and merchants, seeing humans with futures where others saw servants. She visited brothels to offer gifts to the women so they wouldn’t have to work for the rest of the day. She sought empty plots of land as fertile soil to build shelters for people displaced from Zilar. Amelia overheard Lilith discussing her intentions in hushed whispers with some of the artisans, including the one she bought moonflowers from.
“The shopkeeper said these will bloom in a year from now, exactly on your eighteenth birthday,” Lilith said. “Maybe we can decorate your dress with them for good luck.”
Amelia sighed, picturing a tight bodice around her chest, the carmine silk she would be forced to wear like a bleeding rose. Her godmothers were particular about the dresses she wore for her birthday ceremonies to the point where they would argue for weeks prior to the day.
“I doubt the godmothers would allow it. I can barely deal with my seventeenth coming next week.”
With each passing year, her godmothers became more desperate to find a suitor who would break her curse with true love’s kiss. Even if the curse couldn’t be broken, King Victor still expected her to bring an heir for Gyldan. But Amelia didn’t want to think aboutforced conversations with men and empty smiles. She only wanted to think about her time with Lilith.
She followed the queen through paths of food stalls. They trailed after smells of spices, wandered between jewelry stalls filled with diamonds and necklaces, and tossed coins at accordion players on the street, the vibrato of instruments ringing pleasantly in their ears. Amelia watched Lilith intensely, mimicking her movements and mannerisms like a child. If they were more similar, perhaps she could learn to walk through the world confidently as well.
A baker Lilith knew offered her freshly baked pies from his stall. They sat on the side of the street, their gowns bunched up at their feet and a plate balancing on top of their laps. Lilith sliced a corner of the pie with the edge of her fork. Amelia watched the tines enter Lilith’s lips, then looked away so she wouldn’t be caught staring. Her gaze fell to the pearls wrapped around the queen’s neck. They collected themselves across her collarbone, white and smooth.
