NONEXISTENT HOURS CREPT by like the scatter of dead leaves from a weakening wind throughout Corin’s trek. Nightfall came by the time blisters oozed between her toes and she slowed her pace. IfMalicine were here, she’d tell the demon that they had exaggerated the terrors of the island. The truth was that the forest was mostly uneventful, more a monotonous slog than a nightmare.
There had been expected sights, of course. Trees with screaming faces carved into bark, spiders the size of her head hanging from branches in silky trails. The bark stretched into arms and swayed back and forth. They looked like creatures stalking her in the night, yet as they breathed down her neck, she was not afraid. She had witnessed more terrifying things in the real world.
This couldn’t be it, Corin thought. She was supposed to uncover secrets, monsters that people kept hidden in the dark, skeletons that would be unearthed. She expected to find clues for what Briar was hiding, perhaps even signs that would lead to the real treasure. These visions gave her nothing in return.
“You’re lost,” the wind hissed.
Shadows lengthened into Ezran’s tall figure between the trees. He slinked between twisted branches, his face as hollowed as the creatures around her. A scowl marred his lips.
“I wouldn’t have hunted her for a hundred years just to wander listlessly,” he said. “You know she’s hiding something. Hurry up and find it.”
Corin’s knee crushed dirt as she bent down to make a torch and see better in the dark. After a few minutes spent rubbing together sticks, she created a decent flame, one that melted away Ezran’s shadow and made room for something else glistening in the light. She followed the shining object and found small, white orbs half buried in soil. Her fingers carefully picked up one of the tiny spheres and scrutinized the object. Pearls.
There were several of them, lined over the ground as a trail, leading deeper inside the forest. The familiarity of the object gaveCorin a flicker of hope. She followed the trail, picking up the pearls one by one, collecting them in her fist. As she traveled farther into the woods, the ground turned softer, a muddy expanse that clung to her boots. Her feet took extra effort pulling her forward so she wouldn’t sink.
Then she heard a low groan.
The sound rose above the whistle of wind and creaking of branches. A long and brutal moan, like an animal dying. She held the torch in the air and scanned the leaves.
“Who’s there?”
The groaning continued, horrible and pleading. She followed the sound, feet moving as fast as her pounding heart. Her chest slammed against a wall of dead ivy and she fell to the ground. A hard blink, and she realized it hadn’t been a wall at all.
The man turned around, slowly, torturously, like a creaking door about to rip open its hinges. Antlers protruded from his head like a gnarled crown, exposing muscle and oozing blood where the tusks had been jammed in his skull. Matted fur covered his cape, mangy and rotten with fleas. He looked like a skinned animal hanging from a mantel. Her skin crawled like the flies latched onto his graying skin.
“Do not defy me, Amelia.”
His mouth gaped wide open in a continuous groan, deep as grit and gravel. She swallowed down her vomit and dared to speak.
“What happened when she defied you?”
Fear sparked in his hollowed eyes, and he lunged forward. The stench of blood and animal and death was so foul Corin jumped back. She thrashed the torch in his face, but couldn’t deter his arms from reaching out and shoving her. They both fell to the ground. His weight pressed on top of her like a colossal animal.She couldn’t breathe through crushed ribs. The flame of her torch was too weak and died instantly.
She struggled fighting back, grasping his neck to strangle him, but brittle leaves covered his throat like a dying tree, and her fingers dug into black crumbs and foliage. Rotten berries spewed from his mouth and drenched her face. She thought she would drown in sludge, choking in both of their bile.
A blade swung in the air and struck him. His weight stiffened on top of her, allowing a sliver of time to kick him off her. She heard the pierce of flesh as he rolled over, a sword wedged deep through his heart.
Corin bit back a scream. The man dissolved into leaves, yet as she backed away from his body, she felt the graze of another one. A litter of dead soldiers had been strewn around the woods, as if she’d been caught in the aftermath of a bloody battle. Her trembling hands shook their bodies and met the clanking sound of empty armor. She ripped off their helmets. Where their heads should be was nothing but a black void.
Her breaths turned quick and panicked. Corin raced across the forest, but the trees twisted into columns, the damp soil solidifying to hard marble. Faces in the bark turned real, blurry men and women and faeries that chattered around her without making a coherent sound. She wanted to shout that the antler king was dead, and it had beenher fault, her fault, her fault.
She continued fleeing through the woods, for the only thing Amelia knew how to do was run.
What? No—this was Corin.
The only thing Corin knew how to do was run.
Her foot hit something hard and she fell forward. She looked over her shoulder and sucked in a sharp breath at the body writhingbehind her. Dead foliage stuck to the person’s skin like a suffocating suit. The woman’s lips moved soundlessly, a cry for help, yet no sound escaped her lips. Hollow, vacant eyes stared from behind a mask of twisted branches and decay. The white pupils reminded Corin of pearls.
The body began to sink as a hole opened in the ground like a stretching mouth. Panicked, Corin jumped forward to grab her. She didn’t understand why desperation compelled her to cling onto this woman. Regret settled in as the branches twisted around her arms and pulled her down below. Dirt filled her lungs and muffled her screams. Twigs and sharp leaves cut her skin as she descended into the rotten core of Autumnland.
Her body struck hard rock. She gasped in familiar pain. Darkness carried her to a familiar place with stagnant air and winding paths, where the trapped woman was nowhere to be found. Sharp gravel stabbed her back as she rolled over dirt and coughed out dust. When she got up, she stared into an abyss. Her hands blindly reached for the walls, now solid rock instead of debris. A stench of rotten eggs wafted under her nose, and she wanted to gag.
Then a voice echoed down the passageway. Not the woman who had been trapped in foliage, but someone she recognized. Elly was calling her name.
“El?” Corin shouted, terror overtaking her shaking breath. Elly wasn’t supposed to follow her. Her sister would not survive the island. Her hands slammed against the walls until rocks scraped her skin raw. “El! Get out of here! Run!”
She couldn’t tell if Elly responded or if the sound was too far away. Maybe Elly couldn’t even hear her. Corin ran through the tunnels, yelling until her throat turned hoarse, slamming her shoulders against boulders until her body felt like it would breakapart from fear and desperation. She couldn’t lose her sister. Not when they had been through so much together. Not when they were finally repairing the closest thing they had to family.
