“What is it?” Elly asked, trying to peer over Corin’s shoulder. Corin couldn’t respond. The box collapsed to the ground, and the waterfall seized it in roaring waves. She held the painting in shaking hands, but she couldn’t see it anymore, only a curtain of red rage.
The painting shouldn’t have existed. Not anymore. A soldier had smashed his foot through the canvas during one of their invasions. She remembered thinking she should have sold the art and at least gotten a few coins, rather than cling onto it in foolish sentimentality.
Why was it in her hands now? With her dreams gone, what use could she possibly have for it anymore?
“Whatever appears inside the box is your treasure,” Briar said. “You used to paint, didn’t you? It’s—”
Corin spun around, nearly snapping the canvas in half. “You promised you’d give me your family’s treasure. The one that Ezran waited a hundred years for. The one thatyouabandoned.”
“Briar didn’t promise that,” Malicine interrupted. “She said she’d help you find your treasure. The one that belongs to you.”
Corin couldn’t believe it. She let out a bitter laugh. What was art but just a rich man’s dream? It would never provide for her, put food in her stomach, or help her feel safe at night. She didn’t have the capacity to create beautiful things, nor the time and money to do so. She had no energy left for dreaming.
“Is this some kind of joke? You get my hopes up, string me along, just to give me something worthless and say that’s all I ever wanted?”
The sunset softened Briar’s sad expression. She spoke more gently, and that infuriated Corin even more. “If it matters to you, it’s not worthless.”
Something snapped in Corin. The frivolity of Briar’s words, the useless emotions behind them. If she was trying to teach Corin a lesson, she picked the wrong person. Rage broke the canvas into pieces, splintering the frames, cracking the varnish. Corin hurled the painting over the waterfall, where the waves would swallow it whole, bleeding the paints together until the scenery became soaked in sludge.
Elly yelled, her hand reaching in useless grasps. She jumped over the rocks and tried catching the broken pieces, but it was too late. The sight reminded Corin of her sister picking up the fox’s shattered parts once more. Her knees were on the ground again, her fingers picking apart the pieces left behind by Corin’s rage. Things returned to the way they were so easily.
Corin shoved regret in the back of her mind, as easy as fitting her hand into a glove, and turned to Briar.
“Just because you were miserable with your life doesn’t give you the right to decide what’s best for mine.”
Her sister returned from the rocks. “Corin, stop—”
“Shut up, El.” She saw the flash of hurt in Elly’s eyes. She couldn’t stop herself. She was too angry to care. “There’s a reason why you’re hiding the real treasure, isn’t there? You’re ashamed of what it means. You can’t bear facing the truth.”
Briar didn’t flinch, even as Corin raised her voice. Malicine stepped forward and said, “That’s enough.”
“No. I’m not listening to either of you anymore.”
Her anger returned like a bright, burning ball. The waterfall roiled in her ears, a bitter sound that sloshed over rocks and crashed into the pool below. The figures surrounding her blurred in her shaky vision. She refused to see them with clarity. Her legs moved before she thought twice, closer to the roaring water. A rumble ofthunder breathed in the distance as an island revealed itself on the horizon.
She stared at the patch of gray spreading in the sky. Thick clouds turned black as they choked out the sun. The darkness had an alluring quality, calling her name. She knew unspeakable things were buried in Autumnland and had only a taste of them when she drowned in the ocean. What other painful things had Briar buried during the last autumn of her life? And what would happen if Corin fully uncovered the truth?
She stepped to the edge of the cliff, where the waterfall sputtered into the ocean. The threat of leaping made Briar and the others move. Their arms reached forward to stop her, but it was too late. She had already jumped and let the water take her.
As her body descended into the rapids, she felt Malicine’s magic grasping for her, a force of energy that curled around her ankles. The presence weakened within seconds. She’d descended too quickly for them to catch up.
Crashing into the ocean felt like hitting concrete. Her body fractured into pieces before the waves washed the shards back together. Even in the black trenches of the sea, she knew where the currents would take her next.
The tides carried her along the ebbs and flows of time, following her rage like a moon that pulled the waves. Sunset colors shifted in the water, gold bleeding into silver, silver into dusk. The stars reflecting in the water pricked her skin until, eventually, she washed ashore in a new body, one hardened by resentment. The ocean salt tasted bitter on her lips.
On the island, the air whistled through her stringy hair, a kind of cold that nibbled beneath her skin and scraped her bones. She squeezed water from the ends of her shirt and pants so that thewet fabric wouldn’t weigh her down. Her eyes scanned the island’s outskirts, where the trees looked like skeletons and piles of mulch covered the forest floor. Dead leaves wilted from branches, crumbling to dust as they scattered from the wind. The bark looked brittle, like it would disintegrate under a single touch. That was what happened when winds stripped leaves from trees, once tall and grand. They revealed how small and vulnerable things were behind the facade.
Behind Corin, the ocean was barely visible from the fog, which meant that she would not be seen by Briar, Malicine, or Elly if they looked for her. If she became lost, perhaps they would never find her.
“They betrayed you. You can’t return now,” a distorted voice said. “Not until you get answers first.”
Corin turned to the shadow standing in the mist. Ezran’s form blurred in the shifting currents of the wind, yet she could feel vitriol radiating from his mirage, for it had been shared by her as well.
“Briar Rose forced you to bear your vulnerabilities. She made you slice yourself open just to be hung dry,” he hissed. “But if you do the same to her, you can prove she is worse.”
Corin’s fingers wrapped into a tight fist. She stared at the endless pathway of dead trees and blackened leaves. Swathed in a silvery fog, she had no idea what would lie inside. Still, she took a deep breath and walked forward into the darkness.
• • •
