A new voice interrupted their hushed conversations. “Enough with the gossip, ladies. Let’s have a little more tact, shall we?” The two sisters parted, making room for their eldest. Dahlia wore a ruby gown with a high neckline that accentuated the sharp point of her chin. She tucked a curl of brown hair behind her ear and turned to Amelia with a practiced smile.
“Welcoming another woman into the castle must be difficult. You miss your mother very much, don’t you?”
Amelia didn’t respond, because she couldn’t miss someone she never knew. Her mother had died giving birth to her. Amelia held no animosity toward the new queen, nor did she react with any of the tantrums that one would expect from an adolescent. Instead, she felt about the situation like she felt about most things: indifferent.
Where her mind often wandered as her godmothers gossiped was a different road entirely. One far away from ancient castles and limestone towers and talk of golden bloodlines, demons’ curses, even true love.
“Godmother Dahlia,” she murmured, “will I still become Briar Rose?”
She waited for an answer as the faerie pursed her lips. Long ago, the godmothers discussed plans to disguise Amelia as a humble orphan. They feared that the demon Malicine would sneak into the castle on Amelia’s eighteenth birthday and trick her into pricking her finger on a spindle. It might be easier, they suggested, if she lived as an ordinary girl among the other forest nymphs. A girl by the name of Briar Rose.
“No, my dear,” Dahlia said apologetically. “Your father didn’t think it would be a good idea.”
Amelia held her breath so that her chest would not deflate. Hiding her disappointment, she bid the faeries goodbye and retreated to her bedroom. For the rest of the evening, the godmothers would likely chatter about the new queen or potential suitors who could break Amelia’s curse. They wouldn’t know that such matters were far away from the princess’s mind.
In her head, she had already envisioned this life they planted long ago, watered the seeds and watched them grow into a cottage nestled deep in a far-off forest. It would be a fraction the size of the castle, but there would be a garden of sunflowers, a front porch where she’d share tea with forest animals, and windows that let sunlight cast in sideways.
In another life, Amelia would rise with the sun and sleep with the stars and never feel alone.
She would be happy, rather than someone only pretending to be in their portrait.
CHAPTER 3
COLD WATER STUNG Corin’s skin as she splashed her face beside the river. Fat bruises the size of berries bloomed on her cheeks, and her left eye was swollen shut after the soldier had beaten her. But she was used to looking like crap, and really, she was more concerned that Elly had nowhere to return. If her sister tried searching for their ramshackle house behind the railroads, she would find only a mountain of rubble and an army of soldiers who would sooner protect land than their own people.
When most of the blood and grime washed off, Corin limped down the rocky path by the river’s edge. The water had turned to a muted gray, reflecting the dull clouds of a washed-out sky, though most of the riverbank was covered in dead leaves and weeds that grew along the edges. Autumn should have killed her memories of this place alongside the trees, yet reminders lingered on every corner. The soft murmur of stream that once lulled Corin and Elly to sleep in their tent. The patch of grass where their friends lay freshly washed clothes to dry under the sun. The gritty pile of rocks that children collected to skip across the water. That time felt like the closest thing to peace, which was why Corin shouldn’t have expected it to last at all.
She passed by the area where she had last seen her friends, marked now by churned mud and shattered stone. The commune moved their tents along the river trail throughout the seasons to avoid capturing soldiers’ attention, but she remembered the place she’d stayed the night she left for good, the gentle slope of wildflowers her boots had crushed to death when she fled under the moonlight. A year was enough time to turn her friends to dust, but she couldn’t stop smelling charred flesh as if she’d been with them.
She quickened her pace to leave them behind. Dryness thickened her throat like the scream she swallowed every morning after waking up. When she thought it would come up again like bile, she steadied herself at a wooden pole. Her blurred gaze fixed itself to something simple: The mud on her boots. The scattering of gravel. The curved lines of chalk on the rocks’ surface.
The familiarity of it struck her. Most of the drawings had faded from rain, but she recognized the rough scribbles of white and the uneven bumps of paint. She had taught Elly to soak chalk in water to create a paste, and had seen her sister cover sidewalks with drawings. The day before they left the commune, despite Elly’s protests, Corin had stamped them out. At least, she thought she did.
Corin knelt down to turn over the rocks. Each drawing revealed underside was a tiny stab of betrayal. There were ruffled petals colored in white, as if in mid-bloom, and broad circles that spiraled around a stem like full moons. A few of the stems turned into wavy lines, which Corin guessed were locks of hair, a childish depiction of a flower crown worn by a girl. Except, to Elly, these were not ordinary flowers, and this was not an ordinary girl.
Anger pulsed against Corin’s temple as she kicked the rocks into the river. She had told her sister to stop listening to fairy tales. That stories were shared to placate and distract from reality, but theywould never be tools to survive in it. All this time, she feared Elly would die in the crossfire of soldiers, be snatched by men with leering eyes, keel over from hunger and poverty. But she hadn’t lost Elly to any of those things.
In the end, her sister had run away to chase the most dangerous thing of all: hope.
• • •
SUNSET BLED INTO the mountainside by the time Corin reached Gyldan’s borders, and she understood then why a castle had been built here centuries ago. The rocky terrain overlooked the surrounding forests, and if any god had favored her enough to have her born in wealth, she would have wanted her windows to oversee the towering trees and changing colors of the leaves as well. But the castle was long gone, rumored to be buried with its sleeping princess, and the only sight left was dead foliage and patrolling soldiers. They stood along the border with rifles and sharp eyes, keen to pull the trigger if they spotted Corin as they would any animal.
She stayed away from walking trails, ducking behind a boulder to evade a passing military tank. Once the roar of the vehicle faded, she continued stalking along the mountainside as she had for the past hour, tearing down vines that wrapped around the rocky walls, and rubbing mud over her clothes for camouflage. Thorns ripped holes in her gloves, and her palms prickled with splinters.
When she thought her chafed skin couldn’t handle more, her fingers dug into a rock crevice that finally felt different from the rest.
Cold air wafted through the small cracks. The change in temperature raised bumps on her skin. She cut through the thickvines with her dagger, shearing the tendrils that twisted around each other until a gaping black mouth opened before her.
Corin stepped back, staring into the darkness. The wind whispered around the rocks like a secret. She thought about the ones that would never be uncovered by the world, lost in time.
A century ago, refugees from Zilar dug tunnels connecting to their neighbors in Gyldan while evading the dangerous forests that surrounded the kingdom. Corin’s grandmother had been one of hundreds who survived traveling for miles by foot. But monarchy dissolved into war after the royal family died out, and as neighboring kingdoms fought to take over the land, military forces found and demolished several passageways. Now, desperate travelers used the remaining network of tunnels for a different purpose: to find the princess who fell asleep one hundred years ago.
Corin knew the story well, because it was Elly’s favorite. The other artists in the commune had told Elly about the legend, and she loved repeating it to Corin. On rainy nights when they hid inside their tent, Elly would whisper in Corin’s ear the tale of a princess cursed by a demon. As midnight struck on the princess’s eighteenth birthday, the girl pricked herself with a spindle and fell into eternal slumber. Her faerie godmothers gifted true love’s kiss as a cure, yet when time came for the prince to kiss her, she never opened her eyes. The prince was so consumed by grief that he asked the faeries to bury the castle underground, taking him with it, so that he would never live in a world without his true love.
“That’s why Gyldan is so terrible now,” Elly had whispered.
“Because some princess pricked herself with a spindle?” Corin remembered saying. “That’s stupid.”
