Corin grabbed Elly’s hand as they ran inside the sooty heart of the island. Burnt branches scraped their arms as they bounded through crackling woods. Corin refused to tear her eyes away from the sky, hoping she would catch a flicker of scales again, some confirmation that they hadn’t lost Malicine. The farther they ran, the farther the demon crossed off the path, stomping toward a rocky cliffside at the edge of the forest.
Corin yelled Malicine’s name. They didn’t hear it. The dragon had fixed their vision onto a stone figure at the base of the cliff. Scales shone in the flames, yet below, something burned brighter. A gleaming sword, an angry man. A walking nightmare.
Ezran hadn’t changed since the last time Corin saw him. White-blond hair glinted in the fire, as if he were a blinding ball of light, too bright to stare at closely. His ivory armor was impeccably clean despite the rainfall of ash, which dissolved upon touching his glowing sword. Weaponry aside, it was his features that intensified his wrath: the tight lock of his jaw, the narrowed slivers of his eyes. He possessed an anger that had been broiling for centuries.
With each step he took, ground crumbled beneath him. White fragments scattered in the trail of his shoes, bursting in flames and ruin. Everything he touched fell apart, as if the world couldn’t piece itself together under his ire. A swing of his sword and an entire row of trees sliced open, roots split as if struck by lightning. Heat sizzled the air as Malicine breathed a tidal wave of fire in retaliation. It wasn’t enough. He needed only a simple flick of the wrist to tilt his sword and send the flames ricocheting back.
Corin could barely comprehend magic, yet even she knew from the sheen of his blade that the faeries had enchanted his weapon. As he lifted his sword, the blade absorbed the flames and glowed a deadly light. Her eyes burned so bright she didn’t realize he lunged forward until the sword sliced the dragon’s throat.
Corin knew then that Ezran was real, for Malicine’s cry was worse than anything she could have imagined.
The demon plunged down the cliff. Corin let out a scream and raced to the bottom, trying not to spew her heart out of her chest. The base of the cliff had hollowed out into a jagged cave, where old rainwater filled the space and soaked her pants as she wadedthrough. By the time Elly caught up to her, she found Malicine reverted to their regular form. The demon’s body had strewn across rocks, their wings covered in pine needles and dirt. Corin collapsed at their side and didn’t stop shaking them until they rolled over and retched into the water.
“You need to run,” they groaned.
“No,” Corin argued. “I came here for you!”
Malicine grabbed her hand and squeezed it so tight she thought they would break her bones. When they pulled away, the broken shard of an amulet glowed in her palm.
“Take this to Briar and open a new portal. Run to a place where he will never find you.”
“Not without you,” Corin.
Malicine’s eyebrow arched, making Corin overly conscious of the gaping wound in their throat. Desperation overtook logic. Survival required believing they could remain whole, together.
Light glowed from Malicine’s palm, and Corin felt the tug of the chain around her neck. The amulet fused inside the hollowed pendant that she carried close to her chest, becoming one. Malicine tucked the necklace back under Corin’s shirt, and she felt a heavier weight on her body, as if she held the pain of every past self that had been sacrificed for the amulet. She didn’t know if she could carry such responsibility, not when she could barely reconcile her own past.
“The world is falling apart,” Malicine rasped. “If you stay here, you will never make it out, and this will all be for nothing. Get out of here. I’ll hold him off.”
Corin stared at the dribble of blood down their chin, the fading green of their eyes. Leaving Malicine behind wasn’t fair. She had seen the torture they endured in Autumnland, the words andviolence hurled at them throughout their life. They had no reason to help anyone but themselves.
“You don’t have to be good,” Corin said, fighting back tears.
The ends of Malicine’s lips twitched. Long nails scraped Corin’s cheek as they cupped her face.
“I was wrong, Corin. I shouldn’t have left your world behind,” they said. “Some of you are worth the sacrifice after all.”
With the last burst of their magic, Malicine sent a gust of wind that sent Corin and Elly flying off their feet. The sisters barreled backward into the forest, where the trees sensed their presence and swayed their trunks to clear a path. Corin coughed black flakes of smoke. The fumes cleared when she got up and her line of sight revealed Ezran.
He was too far away to notice her, fixated on the wounded demon at the bottom of the cliff. The man stood in front of the caverns, a gaping hole that looked smaller beside his towering figure. Darkness radiated from his body, as if his presence sucked in all the shadows and left behind a void. With each step he took, fragments of the ground disappeared, the dreamworld they had carefully constructed dissolving like sand. He was stronger than Autumnland, a hero and nightmare in one.
His command was hard as stone. “Let’s finish what we started, demon.”
“Go to hell.” Malicine spat blood at his feet.
Ezran let out a cruel laugh that made the hair on the back of Corin’s neck stand stiff. It was the sound one made after waiting over a hundred years for this victory.
“That’s reserved for monsters like you,” he said, before plunging his sword through Malicine’s chest.
Corin clamped a hand over Elly’s mouth, dampening her sister’sscream so they would not be caught. She bit her tongue so hard it bled as they watched Malicine slump forward. It took all her willpower to hold back from lunging at Ezran and sobbing over Malicine’s body. She couldn’t. Not if she wanted to throw away everything the demon had sacrificed for her and Briar. Her other hand let go of the amulet before she could shatter it in her tightly wounded fist, letting the gem dangle from her necklace and safely under her shirt.
As they ran, Corin could only think about how the fairy tales were wrong. There were no heroes to save them. They were only stories written by invaders—not the ones from faraway lands who sought refuge, but the very men who tore down their homes, claiming heroism in their own violence.
CHAPTER 38
100 YEARS AGO
THE NIGHT WAS pitch black as Amelia tore through darkness. She could hardly breathe through ragged sobs, the lump in her throat a burning coal. The sweeping curve of trees was her only semblance of a trail, though she knew Ezran would catch up to her if she stopped. She let the forest eat her whole, hoping the woods would swallow her into darkness and leave no trace of her behind. Thunder boomed from skies as if the clouds lamented with her. The blur of tears delayed her realization that rain had started pouring.
