Amelia gaped at the demon, mouth hung open as she processed what this meant. “Why would you do that?”
They ignored her question and focused on the amulet encrusted in their staff. The gem sensed the magic pulsing in their veins and reacted with light. The air shifted, the smell of iron and magic swirling with the wind as a portal gaped open behind Amelia. She stared at the entrance, surprised by how quickly it opened, while Malicine knew they no longer needed to cast magic circles or even spill blood. With the amulet forged from different lives across different times, they could open portals with magic alone.
“You belong in your world, Amelia.” Malicine knew that humans could not exist any other way. Lore would claim Gyldan was prosperous because of gold. People would fight wars and kill each other over it, refusing to see that such trivial minerals would never save them. These were the stories the victors would tell, a romanticized history to mask their own greed as they destroyed the world for it.
Malicine flicked their staff and sent a gust of wind, knocking Amelia on her heels. She reached a hand toward the demon, mouth open to protest, before the portal swallowed her whole and she disappeared.
In the human world, she would return to her regular body. But when Malicine returned, they would remain the same.
They stepped away from the portal and stared at the rest of the Otherworld. A deafening silence hung across empty land, whereonly death and ash existed. Malicine spent the next few minutes wandering across rubble, searching for the charred remains of their father, but he was truly gone. They walked until they reached the black sea, where thick waves slowly rolled to shore, and their wet footprints left soot wherever they went.
Talon hopped on a boulder overlooking the water. There was nothing beyond the darkness.
“We will have to return eventually,”he croaked.“There is nothing left for us here.”
Malicine sat next to him on the boulder. If they strained hard enough, they could make out their reflection in the sludge from the ocean, the way even tar could arrange together their features that they tried so hard to escape.
They had refused to hear what Amelia had to say, because it didn’t matter if she wanted to seek another world with Malicine. No matter where they went, there would never be a place where Malicine would find home. They would return to the human world, and the two of them would lead separate lives: Amelia becoming the next queen of Gyldan, and Malicine remaining in shadows.
Behind them, the portal was still open, waiting for their entrance.
“We will return,” they told Talon. “I just couldn’t say goodbye to her.”
CHAPTER 31
FLAMES LICKED HER heels as Corin climbed on Malicine’s back. The demon’s wings flapped hard, sending a gust of wind so fierce it allowed them to puncture through fog. Corin gasped for fresh air as they soared into the sky. Below them, Autumnland turned into blazing trees and crimson mountains.
Her heart still hammered against her chest as she clung onto Malicine’s scales. She had watched them transform into a dragon and kill the monster that tormented them with a fiery tidal wave. Relief filled her body as parts of her pieced back together, rematerializing once the demon burned down their nightmares.
But Corin looked back at the island and felt her heart drop once again. It took only a breeze to cool the fires down. Tree stumps grew back to where they once were, skeletal arms and withered leaves that haunted her moments ago. Thick clouds wrapped around the island like a cocoon. Through the fog, a monster’s growl echoed, the faint roars of thunder muffled behind an invisible fortress. Restored to its original form, the island told Corin that she may have left, but the land would always remain. A secret stored in the back of her conscience that she would never truly erase.
She had doubled over with nausea by the time they reached Summerland, despite the salt air and jewel-blue ocean welcoming them. Talon’s familiar croak greeted Malicine at the shore while Corin tumbled on her hands and knees. Her palm squeezed fistfuls of sand, the sun’s warmth trickling between her fingers, a sensation she never thought she would feel again. She focused on the gentle waves of the ocean and the birds cawing in the sky. The sounds, the touch, all the reminders she needed that they were safe now.
Except none of this was real, either.
Grief crashed back into Corin as she remembered her sister’s blue lips and cold skin. Her ragged fingernails with dirt packed beneath. The way her body sagged in Corin’s hands. Corin rolled over in the sand and threw up. The sickness didn’t stop, even as Malicine transformed back to their original form, knelt beside her, and healed her wounds. Her flesh may have reassembled whole, but pain ate at her heart until she felt like there was only a gaping hole left inside her chest. What had once filled its place, a little girl who never grew up to be cherished.
What future could they ever have together but an imagined one?
Corin did not know how long she cried. Time stretched and warped, the sound of waves crashing to the shore along with her sobs, then returning to the ocean, leaving her behind. Her cheek had stuck to the sand, the sideways clouds she watched crawling for miles across blue. She didn’t get up. Neither did Malicine or Talon, who sat quietly by her side the entire time.
Across the ocean, the island rumbled. Waves left behind clumps of seaweed that glittered under the light. Black kelp crawled across the sand like snails, slowly inching their way toward Corin’s body. Their slimy arms wrapped around her ankles, and she was readyfor its pull, wanted it to bring her down to the depths of the ocean where darkness would drown her.
“You’re doing it again.” Malicine’s voice cut through the seaweed. Corin felt magic tingling her skin as the kelp unwrapped itself from her ankles and retreated to the ocean.
“Doing what?” she muttered.
“Punishing yourself.”
Corin watched the water swallow the seaweed until it disintegrated, leaving black residue even where light refracted. It was guilt that once made her nearly drown, the truth in the back of her mind when she had swam with Elly and knew it wasn’t real. Corin didn’t know any other way to continue existing without harming herself. She didn’t know how it was possible to keep living without suffering too.
She wanted to ask Malicine who else she could be angry with, but the question died on her tongue, the answer coming to her first. There had been a person who tried saving her from drowning, reaching out with gentle arms and telling Corin not to fight her grief. In the end, her kindness had been deception. This person should have known it was crueler to let Corin believe in the light refracting in the water rather than the darkness below.
At last, Corin sat up. Grains of sand trickled down her cheek, following where her tears had dried. Her eyes narrowed in resolve, staring at the sun that burned so bright she wanted to stab into the star and watch it sink, so that she would never see the light again.
Her voice willed itself to stay calm as she turned to Malicine and said, “Take me to Briar Rose.”
• • •
