Malicine was right when they said she couldn’t truly escape her nightmares. The harder she tried not to think of something, the more she did.
Even if she closed her eyes, she knew who would speak next.
“You should have been there for me.”
Corin turned to the body draped over the landslide. A white film had washed over Elly’s eyes like clouds. Corin’s silhouette looked too big, too monstrous in the reflection.
“You’re not real.” She repeated the words like a mantra and clamped her hands over her ears, but there was no point. Her sister’s voice rang clear between muddy walls.
“It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m real,” Elly said. “In the end, I’m still dead. Don’t you understand?”
Elly didn’t blink. Ants crawled between the gaps in her teeth as her cracked lips parted. Collarbones protruded from her dirty shirt like a jagged tooth. Tears burned Corin’s eyes. Her hands fell to her sides, no longer blocking the truth. She could pretend to believe in two versions of her sister: the one covered in wildflowers, waiting for her safe return, or the one covered in dirt, cursing her for abandonment. But as long as both versions continued breathing, neither was truly real.
“I’m sorry, El,” she pleaded. “I’ll never forgive my—”
“Being sorry doesn’t change what happened.”
Elly’s words settled into Corin’s skin. The hard lump in her throat burned as if it had caught on fire. Her feet sank into the soil, the roots twisting around her limbs and pulling deeper. It was happening again. She was supposed to make it through the island. She thought she was stronger than this. But maybe that had been a lie too, one of the hundreds she had told herself.
Why had she come here in the first place? Her willpower dulled, as if she were observing herself in a dream. No, she needed to remember. She came here for someone, and she needed to return into the arms of another someone too. Yet she couldn’t forget the person she came for in the first place, long ago in the tunnels.
Maybe it didn’t matter, the difference between real or fake, living or dead. There would always be a girl etched permanently in Corin’s mind, one that her sad little heart could never erase. Thecomplicated feelings she had for that girl were real. They had made her wretched life worth living too.
Corin willed herself not to turn away. Instead, she strained in the howling wind to remember the girl. If she listened closely enough, the wind could remind her of a wailing baby that once squirmed in her arms. The wet dirt could feel like sticky palms she’d held on to whenever they crossed the street. The feeling of wanting to curl in bed could be accompanied by a familiar body next to hers, breathing down her chest, arms wrapped around her stomach like an anchor that brought her home.
She let that familiarity guide her, even though she knew the words she’d hear next.
“I hate you,” Elly said.
Corin opened her eyes and faced the mirage of her sister. “No, you don’t.”
Elly blinked slowly. The clouds in her eyes flickered, as if uncertain of whether a storm would arrive. Corin pulled her legs out of the sinking soil and trudged over to her sister. Muddy walls framed Elly’s body like a painting. The girl only existed because Corin had twisted her memories this way, letting grief and shame sculpt the creature before her. Maybe, if she remembered other truths, she could look at this scene again in a different light.
“I know you don’t hate me, because when you were five, you held my hand every time we crossed the street and wouldn’t let go. When you were seven, you collected rocks so I could paint again, thinking they were the same thing as charcoal. When you were nine, you got in trouble for stealing a peach from the marketplace, because you were worried I’d go hungry. And when I yelled at you in front of the shop owner, you saw I pocketed the rest of the peaches behind his back, and we ate them on our way home.”
Corin’s hand stretched to Elly’s cropped hair, fingers threading through rough spikes with all the gentleness she could hold.
“The truth is you always loved me, El,” she said, “and that’s better than anything I could have ever dreamed.”
Clouds dispersed from Elly’s eyes, leaving behind a pool of black that reflected Corin’s own face. She saw the projection of what she told herself through her sister, the nightmares that tormented her conscience with reminders of their past. But accepting the pain of losing Elly meant accepting that they had loved each other too.
Corin couldn’t punish herself anymore. Not when they needed a better future.
“Come with me,” she said. “We can’t be together in the real world, but I promise we will be in this one.”
Ants dispersed from Elly’s face, the white clouds in her eyes parting in new clarity. Color restored to her skin, deep brown like fresh summer soil. Light gleamed in the dark pools of her irises as she grasped Corin’s hand. Their fingers interlocked in a tight squeeze, and Corin vowed to never let her go, even if her sister was only a memory.
A deep rumbling echoed over their heads, followed by screeches of a familiar voice. Panic struck Corin’s chest. She climbed over the landslide and helped Elly up. When they reached the top, the smell of burning wood struck her nose. Wildfires had spread throughout the forest. Trees burned to crisps and splintered like spiderwebs. Above, the skies glowed red. The air no longer had its frigid chill, but a suffocating heat that pressed onto the island.
A wide trunk split in half and crashed, sending another wave of heat. Corin motioned for Elly to follow her. They crawled over jagged roots as thick smoke muffled their violent coughs. Corin found cracks where the ground split open, the source of theearthquake that had nearly dragged her into oblivion. As she followed the fissure that trailed the earth like open veins, they led to a wider mouth in the center of the forest, a hole that spewed light and magic.
Dread curdled inside the pit of her stomach as she recognized the smell of blood. Surely the island was playing tricks on her. The earthquake and fires weren’t signs of intruders disrupting their dreams, but manifestations of her fears. The prince was not actually here, but a vision she conjured up again, an exhibition of her most selfish desires.
If so, she could not explain the three bodies littered on the ground. The faeries were face down, limbs bent, dresses swallowed up by flames. Elly ran to their side, attempting to put out the fires. She rolled over their bodies to face up and jumped back upon the sight of glass eyes and bloodied chests.
Their stab wounds were the size of her fist. The blood gleamed fresh, the faeries killed immediately upon arrival, as if someone had no use for them anymore once they arrived.
Corin and Elly fell back as the earth shook again. A monstrous scream split the sky, one that chilled Corin’s bones. Only one person could make that sound. Elly pointed above the line of trees, where she’d spotted the flicker of a tail, heard the echo of a dragon’s screech.
