Malicine grabbed the window ledge and gaped at the girl. Wider cracks had formed across her limbs. Her footsteps were uneven on the choppy rocks. She roamed aimlessly around the terrain, scanning the columns and calling for Malicine’s name in a voice so frail the demon could barely hear her.
They didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. How could she be so stupid? They’d left her behind, and here she was, still searching for them as if her body wasn’t falling apart.
“She is like the king she descends from.” Disgust tinged Oleander’s voice. “She wants to use you and keep you as her little pet, as Samael did with me. But do not worry. I have other plans for her.”
His gnarled finger pointed ahead where Amelia walked. Streaks of red light radiated from his amulet. Dead leaves swirled around the princess, trapping her in place. Sticks rose in the air and curved into the shape of a circle as large as her body. The circle’s surface turned opaque, an oily iridescent sheen that contained light. Once she saw whatever was inside, her eyes turned glossy, her mouth parting in awe. She stretched an arm toward the portal and walked like someone under hypnosis.
“Where is she going?” Malicine asked, trying to contain the alarm in their voice.
“Nowhere. She thinks she sees an ideal world, but she will be trapped in nothingness.”
Malicine’s heartbeats slowed as they watched Amelia place her hands at the edge of the portal, peering inside with wonder. Light shimmered through her glass silhouette, as if she would disappear into the stars.
But wasn’t that what Amelia wanted, after all, to no longer exist? If anything invited disaster, she’d already willingly accepted it. Malicine didn’t need to stop her. Yet a heavy anchor brought them forward and made them grip the window. Their movements were slow, as if they were drowning. A bitter aftertaste lingered on their tongue, the familiar scent of wine.
“Wait,” they said, but it came out as a whisper.
The light from the portal dimmed, only for Malicine to realize it was their own vision, dark blotches blooming in the corners of their sight. Amelia became a blur, and when they turned to their father, they could barely see his face. They sought out Talon for help, yet the raven was limp and motionless on the dining table, half-eaten grapes rolled aside their beak.
Something was wrong. Malicine’s eyelids were too heavy, their mouth too dry. The edges of the vaulted ceiling pulled in. The room spun, and they couldn’t stop it. The last thing they felt was the hard crack of their skull against the floor before their body turned limp, their limbs in a fixed position, unable to move. Their eyes caught the glint of Oleander’s fangs as he stared at her, smiling, the both of them knowing that Malicine could do absolutely nothing to escape.
CHAPTER 29
CORIN GASPED FOR air, limbs thrashing to hold on to the rocks at the river’s edge. She crawled a few steps onto solid ground before heaving water. Her throat burned, but as she wrapped her necklace around it, the pendant pressed against her chest and slowed her heartbeats.
She lay on the ground of rotting leaves and bumpy roots. There was a tree next to where she’d rolled over, so she pressed her face against the bark and let the ridges bite into her cheeks. She needed everything to slow down, to stop feeling the motions of the river carrying her to her own death. She needed, for a moment, to let it sink in that she was still alive. Even though she didn’t want to be.
All because Malicine had saved her.
The demon was nowhere to be seen. The tides had separated them after Malicine lost their staff, and Corin was stranded in some indiscernible part of the woods. She shouted for Malicine, only to be met with the howl of wind through the oaks.
Logically, she knew she was still trapped in Autumnland. Yet as snow poured from the sky and the air turned cold enough to bite into her bones, Corin felt like she had been transportedsomewhere else. She shivered in the moonlit dark, then forced her chattering teeth to stop when she heard whispers. A crowd of them, each one speaking over the other, but none whose words she could distinguish.
Then the sound of a woman wailing split the air.
Her moans sounded so pained that Corin moved instantly, following the source. She winded through trees, panic pushing her forward as the woman continued crying. No matter how quickly she ran, she couldn’t find the woman. The snow blinded her, a world of black and white. The sky only turned red when the woman let out a dying screech. Corin jumped as the crowd of whispers turned into a chorus of screams. Several winged creatures appeared through the trees and ran toward her. She tried jumping out of the way, but they flitted through her like ghosts. A baby wailed in the distance, the sound deep and guttural, teeth scraping against flesh. It struck fear in all the creatures. Part of Corin was scared, while another part of her recognized the familiarity.
She ran forward, calling for Malicine. Stars bled from the sky while snow turned to ash. Three figures appeared from the trees, and something wet struck her, burning her skin. She screamed and fell to the ground. Blisters formed over her arms and face as she writhed on a stone floor. The three women surrounded her like a cage. One of them held the bucket, dripping with bleach.
“Monster! Demon! Freak!”
Their voices drilled into Corin’s ears even as she clamped them shut. Her body drowned in a lake of acid, melting her atom by atom until nothing remained. A terrible feeling overcame her: She was alone, and always would be. A creature abandoned by their world since birth. They might as well listen to the voices and die too.
Where did this despair come from? Had it taken root in Corin’s heart, or had she intertwined with another? She could not tell. Whispers grew louder, urging her to follow death’s path, while she resisted by clinging to a different memory, another pattern, a sense of recognition.
Whenever Corin drowned, it was always Malicine who came after her.
Different voices clawed at Corin, reminding her the kind of person she was. She had once abandoned allies, fled toward safety while bridges burned behind her, leaving others for dead. Regret twisted in her stomach and lived in her bones every day since she lost Harlow, her friends, her Elly. She did not save them.
Maybe this time, she could save someone.
Her eyes burned as she forced them open. Bleeding stars painted the sky red, silhouettes of gnarled branches twisting around her vision. Some of their shapes looked like horns. In one of the branches, a warning signal came from a raven. Corin pulled herself from the ground, hand desperately reaching for the bird.
“Talon!” Her voice echoed Malicine’s. The raven flapped his wings, ready to take flight. Strangled noises came from his throat. Poison spewed from his beak. Talon fell from the branch and into an open cage, where the iron bars grew smaller until they crushed his bones. Corin cried out, but the tears weren’t only hers. She could feel Malicine somewhere. The demon’s nightmares had imprisoned them all, but these scenes, this anguish, were too detailed to exist in mere imagination.
Corin knew how Autumnland tortured people within. The island used the truth.
“You gave the creature a name. How quaint.” A deep, distorted voice echoed in the darkness. The island sucked away every treeuntil they turned to stone columns. Corin blinked at vaulted ceilings, a slab of a stone table, an overturned goblet where poison dripped from the rim. Talon lay limp in his cage.
