“Get out!” they yelled. “Don’t go any farther!”
Corin didn’t have time to react. Lightning struck the island, turning the sky white. Seaweed wrapped around her ankles and pulled her down. She lost grip of Elly as the waves pushed them apart. Elly yelled her name, but it was too late. The rope of seaweed had already dragged Corin below to darkness.
Her body struck a rock at the bottom of the ocean. Fish scattered and reefs disintegrated into sand. Black squid ink permeated the trenches and shrouded her body like an ill-fitting blanket. Corin pulled her limbs and tried to scream, but there was no sound. Panic overtook her. She didn’t stop thrashing, her pulse racing to burst from her skin. Her wedged foot turned blue. Bits of her flesh ripped from bone and scattered in the water.
In the corners of her vision, rocks twisted into a tunnel path filled with starved bodies and bones. Death’s stench permeated her nose. Gloved hands reached for her shoulders, and she recognized the pattern of holes in the fabric, the cuts on Harlow’s knuckles, every detail stained in her memory after hours of painting next to each other, foolishly believing their art could mean something just because they wanted to make it.
Strips of kelp hung from Harlow’s body like flayed skin. Her fingers were like dripping strands, wrapped around Corin’s throat in a chokehold. Black water streamed from the dead woman’seyes, the hole in the back of her skull, even her chapped lips as they ripped open to a distorted cry.
“I trusted you, Corin. How could you?”
Corin wanted to scream, but the stench of brine and rot filled her mouth. Ghosts invaded her vision: Maggie’s cracked lips, Rowan’s broken nose, and a smaller, pale face with blue lips, but she couldn’t make out the exact arrangement of features, nor did she want to.
Her eyes clenched shut, and her body sank deeper into an abyss, where rocks that once trapped her melted into soil, damp with blood. Pearls grew in place of budding plants. A flicker of moonlight revealed a woman draped in white, her limbs stiff, her dress stained with scarlet. They were in the woods, but the smell of death was stronger than the wilted flowers.
“How could you abandon Gyldan? Abandon her?”
A familiar voice echoed in her ears, too frail to be Harlow this time. Corin could not pinpoint the source, only a feeling of sorrow that permeated the ocean water like a distant memory. The seaweed wrapped around her limbs turned brittle like autumn leaves. A cold wind of night air howled through her bones. She squinted at the blurred shape of the woman ahead of her, limp and pale as the pearls that scattered around their feet. Horror gripped Corin like the stake that held the woman’s body.
She was dead. Corin didn’t know who she was, yet the familiar voice in her ears continued sobbing. Grief from a memory not belonging to hers pressed into Corin’s lungs and sank her body into the ocean like an anvil. She screamed while drowning. Her vision turned black, and she was alone, and most of all, it washer fault, her fault, her fault. She let someone die. Someone she loved, someone whose name she could not say. The anguish was so unbearable that she could no longer breathe through her sobs. She wanted todie. She was too cowardly, too weak, to survive this life.
She threw herself forward and felt her body hitting not the ground, but the flesh of another, his skin as rough as a skinned buck. Rage broiled from the pit of her stomach and reached to her fists as they pounded against his chest. He had abandoned Gyldan and this woman, and Corin would not let him destroy more of their future. She fought against the shadow of a man until he seized her by the wrists.
“Do not defy me, Amelia,”came his voice, deep and distorted.
Corin froze, like she had been caught wearing someone else’s skin. The shadow twisted into a deep red, and when she looked down at her hands, so too did blood smear over her palms. Her eyes scanned the forest, where dead soldiers surrounded the soil, their helmets revealing a black abyss where their eyes should be.
Like a phantom, she felt a new presence draw closer. Another shadow swam through the darkness, an invader of her home. It lunged toward her, and she would let it kill her, if it was what she deserved for letting so many die.
Then another’s arms wrapped around Corin. A soft body pressed into her skin, and a sword sliced into flesh that was not hers. Corin watched Briar open her mouth in a silent scream as the princess shielded her. Briar’s hand wrapped around the blade. Instead of blood, light spilled from her fingertips. The rays poured down the weapon and to the shadow’s limbs until the attacker crumbled to dust. Murky water dissipated as blinding light fractured the tides, and Corin fell through the brine.
Floating specks disappeared from her vision. She reoriented herself at the sandy bottom of the ocean, where the currents had parted and left her to dry beneath the beating sun. She gasped for air, something she thought she would never breathe again. Herclothes were drenched and heavy, pinning her body against coarse sand.
There was another weight on top of her. Bare skin peeked through her damp dress, pale as a dying moon. Blond hair stuck to her cracked lips. She was no longer Briar Rose, merely a girl.
“It’s all my fault,” the girl sobbed. Her hands covered her face, as if to keep the shame from spilling. “You weren’t supposed to see this.”
Grief coated Corin like sticky tree sap from a nearby forest, foreign but familiar. Her savior remained elusive, a beautiful mask covering a broken girl. Corin reached for Amelia, wanting to confirm she wasn’t a dream. As her fingers grazed Amelia’s cheek, her eyes traced the girl’s features, searching for the truth behind the illusion.
“I see you, Amelia,” she whispered.
The girl flinched and pulled away from Corin’s touch. She retreated into the ocean, ignoring shouts of her real name. Corin attempted to stand, but the currents came crashing back. Water swept her into rolling waves. She mustered enough strength to swim to the surface and gasp for salted air. But no matter where she scanned beyond the ocean, from the rocky beaches to the looming island in the distance, she could no longer find Amelia.
CHAPTER 22
101 YEARS AGO
AGAINST HER BETTER judgment, Amelia started sneaking off into the woods to find the raven. The weakened chill of late winter made the night more bearable, so Amelia had dressed in a thin cloak, where the fabric wouldn’t stick to her skin but kept her disguised in the dark. She’d tuckedThe Book of Samaelin the crook of her arm and headed off. Crooked trees and gnarled roots marked the area where Malicine lived. Amelia settled her bow trap and broke off two thick branches, carving large notches into them so that they could be shoveled into the ground.
She’d been practicing this ritual for weeks, improving with each attempt. Her fingers carefully tied the bowstrings to each side, then tied the trigger stick to the rear, where the bowstring would be pulled back and set behind the top. Then she set the trigger by running out the tripwire to a patch of leaves several feet away. Tonight, she’d swiped grapes from dinner and sprinkled them across the wide patch. In the clear sky, moonlight shone on olive berries, hoping to catch the eyes of a hungry raven.
Amelia had attempted and failed several times before, wasting hours and running into dead ends. But she was determined to find the raven , no matter how long her wait would be. His feather, the key to translating King Samael’s book, meant demons were connected to the Otherworld.
The night she discovered his story, she didn’t sleep.
A plague took over my body for months, weakening my bones and tainting my lungs. One night, Oleander informed me that I was to die in my sleep. As I retired to my chambers, he drew a magic circle around the bedposts for protection. He said this was common practice among the Fae when they aid the ill, for these circles act as a reservoir of concentrated power when ignited with fire.
Yet something new plagued me that night: suspicion. How did Oleander know I was to die? Do the Fae have such natural inclinations, given their immortality, or did he possess other secrets? It made little sense why I would meet death so soon. My body is sturdy as a mountain, never shaken by wind or word. The heads of wild beasts hang upon my mantel from my years of conquests. And my mind, sharper than any blades my soldiers possess, recalled weeks of his insistence to prepare my food, his overeagerness to pour liquids into my goblet, his attentive devotion that he claimed to be concern.
