Amelia closed the window and held the quill delicately between her fingertips. Under moonlight, the feather glowed an iridescent blue. She pressed the feather into the pages and ruminated over losing the raven once again.
It took a minute before she realized the letters on the page were moving. Crooked shapes straightened together, slashes of ink bentbackward. The letters floated across the page until they made discernible shapes, an alphabet that she could recognize. She gawked at the text until the first sentence completed itself.
To whom this may concern:
If you are reading this, I am writing to you from the Otherworld.
Her heart thundered against her chest, a quiet storm igniting for the first time that night. She was wide awake now, and suddenly the crinkled edges of the pages felt tinged with magic. When she pulled the quill away, the words rearranged to indiscernible text again. With the brush of the feather, the letters came back together in an alphabet, blue luminescence gleaming across the ink. Her pulse hummed. This was not a secret language, or even cryptic code. This was the result of writing from a different world.
Pages trembled in her hands as she continued reading. Her eyes fervently skimmed across the handwriting, each pen stroke illuminating long-darkened hallways. Beyond Gyldan’s walls was something extraordinary, and the barriers were finally crumbling down. Amelia assembled fragments of knowledge, piece by jagged piece, until the truth emerged:
King Samael was not dead.
He had opened a portal to somewhere else.
CHAPTER 21
CORIN SENSED THE shift in seasons as the last blossoms scattered like soft confetti along a pathway of parsley-green fields. Spring leaves deepened into lush canopies to shade her group from the warming sun. The day stretched as long as Elly’s shadow, which jumped alongside the girl as she plucked ripening cherries from trees. In the golden air, Corin could hear the cicadas clicking in rhythmic patterns, their volume growing louder as her group reached a sandy terrain that curved around a jewel-blue sea. Waves crashed against black rocks foaming white. Salt-crisp air filled her lungs as she took a deep breath and turned to Briar.
“Remind me, again, why you put the treasure in Summerland?”
“I didn’t,” Briar replied. “You did.”
Corin shielded her eyes from the sun, which reflected onto Briar’s dress and turned the fabric luminescent. Butterflies had drifted away from her cape, while her sleeves shortened into layers that ebbed and flowed like ripples of water. “Is this supposed to be another cryptic message?” Corin grumbled.
“There’s no fixed position in the dreamworld,” Malicine explained. “The landscape changes depending on its inhabitants.Sometimes it’s our memories. Sometimes it’s our wishes for better ones. Since the treasure is going to be yours, your subconscious has tucked it over there.”
The demon pointed to a wildflower-studded cliff beyond a beach, where water poured from the rocky ledge and plunged into a deep pool. The rapids glimmered as if they contained stars.
“Look familiar to you?” they said.
Corin shook her head before the smell of linseed oil wafted in the breeze, and she was brought back to paint streaked in the lines of her palms, her mother’s hands guiding hers across a canvas, the sweltering sun turning both their skins a deeper brown. She’d plucked wildflowers during their hike to this cliff and learned how to draw them under the sunset. The rounded tip of her brush had glided against parchment and curved into soft petals. Her damp cloth had blurred the brushstrokes of mountains in the background. She’d been so proud of that painting, even though the work was amateur, for she never quite learned how to avoid the sharp edges her hands often made. She’d thought she would have the rest of her life to keep practicing.
“It’s not familiar at all,” Corin lied, but that lie became a truth, too, as her eyes followed the waterfall cascading into a deep pool that opened into an ocean. She’d never seen a body of water as large as this. Gyldan’s surroundings beyond the borders were dense with trees except for the river that separated the rolling hills. When she painted the kingdom’s landscape, she’d been excited to use blue paints and draw the winding curves of the stream, not knowing that in a few years, her father would bring them there to drown in oils of teal and cobalt.
Elly took in the ocean with wide eyes, as if she did not know whether to be amazed or afraid. As an infant, her cries in Corin’sears had screamed fear. Now the girl trekked through sand and lingered near the water with the uneasiness of a distant memory. Her gaze locked on the swelling sea, and in her eyes, Corin could see Elly was trying to make sense of where that fear came from, and why it lingered.
Clumps of seaweed washed ashore. Elly plucked the kelp, staring at the plant stuck to her fingers like it were a foreign object. Waves rippled gently to her feet and made her jump. She eyed the waves more tentatively, taking a few steps backward, as if they would snatch her if she got too close. Her body seemed to have remembered being taken by wild waters even if her mind had forgotten.
Briar placed a hand on Elly’s shoulder like a protective raft. “Do you want to swim?”
Elly stared at the ocean, brows pinched together. “I don’t know how.”
“That’s okay. You can learn.”
Corin opened her mouth to protest, but to her surprise, Elly took Briar’s hand and allowed herself to be guided to the water. Her arms wrapped around Briar’s neck as they explored further. The princess lifted Elly into her arms, as if the child weighed nothing, and dipped Elly low enough to practice floating.
“Don’t go too far,” Corin warned. She watched them like a hawk, ready to dive into the currents if Elly so much as let out a gasp. But her sister’s initial signs of fear soon melted into ease. Elly’s face relaxed even when Briar let go, as if the princess were sending off a floating water lantern, the very same light that Corin had spent years burying for protection. It was better to snuff out a flame before others could see and claim it for their own. For the first time, Corin saw how bright this flame could last uninhibited.
Elly floated naturally on her back, her limbs wading throughwaves. Water droplets trailed from the slick spikes of her hair to the creases of her eyes, and she dipped her head backward, basking in the sun’s warmth. The girl was a dark streak across deep blues before white lilies began to bloom in the water. The ocean transformed into clouds, a swelling mirror of the widening sky. Clouds ruffled at the edges, grazing Elly’s cheeks, wrapping her limbs in puffs of silver and milk.
Corin watched in awe as her sister floated in the ocean made of skies. Not because of the acres of blues and infinite colors, but because the child looked like a speck of paint in a canvas she belonged in, like these paints were made for her alone. She would not be disturbed by the eyes of leering men and skulking shadows that took small girls. She would not be snatched by unhappy fathers or saved by hopeless daughters. Instead she existed, fully, as herself: sun on bare skin, salt on wet hair. A girl who would never be harmed.
Corin was so spellbound by the sight, she didn’t realize Briar had transformed in the water as well. The shrubs of her dress melted into translucent blue, and her gown floated like pulsing jellyfish, lacy ribbons trailing her limbs as she dove below. Coral wrapped around her head like a crown as she emerged from the surface. She wiped her face with both hands, leaving behind star-shaped pearls on wet cheeks, as she swallowed the salted air.
She looked beautiful, and Corin immediately cursed herself for thinking that.
“Come in,” Briar said, waving to them. “The water’s perfect.”
