Thunder boomed loud enough outside to shake the foliage. The wooden clock hanging above the hearth rang. Both dials pointed to the top, signaling midnight. Light glowed from her head like a halo. For a moment, she thought a magical part of the curse remained, ready to take her life at eighteen. But sweet fragrance wafted from her hair, and she remembered the moonflowers entwined between her locks. They looked like orbs of light in the mirror, their petals unfurling into full moons. This wasn’t a crown, yet it reminded her of royalty somehow. She stared longer into the mirror until she pieced together the answer.
The moonflowers looked like pearls.
Lilith had said they would bloom when Amelia turned eighteen. The flowers would die in a few minutes, while Amelia would keep living, like a cruel miracle.
No, this couldn’t be her fate. She didn’t want to endure the daily wars in her mind or heal the darkness in her heart. Life was not worth fighting those battles. All the sadness she swallowed threatened to burble up to her chest and spew out. She could hardly breathe as her body gravitated toward the spinning wheel. The corners of her vision darkened, the sharp tip of the spindle the only point of clarity.
“Amelia.” Malicine’s voice rang like a warning. “I told you I revoked the curse.”
The demon’s words were like rain, a background noise that muffled her ears. She picked up the spindle and traced her finger over the tip. A trickle of blood slipped down her hand. How easy it was for her thin skin to be sliced open with just a prick.
She turned to her companion, whose face twisted into newfound fear, as if reading her mind.
“I’m sorry, Malicine.”
The demon lunged to stop her, but it was too late. She locked her grip onto the spindle with both hands and thrust the sharp end into herself. Pain bloomed from her chest as her vision turned blurry. Malicine’s scream sounded like a distant echo, their arms a faraway embrace. She didn’t know she had collapsed to the floor until blood stained the moss. There was a softthump, thump, thumpof her heart slowing down, like a hummingbird laid to rest, its wings too tired to fly.
Shrill cries muffled behind walls of vegetation, voices she might have recognized if she had the energy to focus. Sparks of light slashed the vines open. Rain descended from the sky once more, their cocoon disappearing and giving way to clearer noises. There was the whinny of a horse, overlapping voices, and shouting, so much shouting. Amelia could not make sense of the cacophonywith her ears pressed against soft, blood-soaked moss. She heard Malicine yelling for their raven, the tear of fabric, their flesh splitting apart. A silhouette of a winged creature transformed before her. A monstrous roar shook the trees. The earth erupted into flames. They warmed her bones and covered her like a blanket.
Her pain started to fade. It hurt to breathe, but Amelia wouldn’t need to do that anymore. She could feel her potential slipping from her lips, and with a final breath, she closed her eyes forever.
CHAPTER 39
CORIN RAN OFF the island with gritted teeth and a shattered heart. Shadows surrounding the woods stretched tall, rows of swaying silhouettes that reenacted the fairy tale once more: the knight in shining armor, the dragon slain by his strength. A sword raised in the air, a blade plunged through the monster’s heart. She pressed her palms to her ears, but she couldn’t forget the sound of Malicine’s screech as Ezran killed them.
The ocean rolled waves of mist by the time she stumbled to shore alongside her sister. The rowboat looked like a speck in the fog, something Briar Rose must have sent back once she retreated to safety. Corin hauled Elly inside before jumping in the seat, then stopped when she spotted a shadow among the trees.
She wanted to believe the tears she’d been fighting back simply blurred her vision. Yet as the figure approached closer, she couldn’t deny the rising panic in her throat from seeing Ezran’s ivory armor. Her heart lurched just as her body did over the boat, hooking Elly’s neck with her arm to dive forward. Water filled their lungs as she pressed their backs against the bottom of the wooden craft and resisted the urge to choke or risk giving themselves away.
His shadow stretched over the water as he stopped at the shore. The larger his figure grew, the smaller they shrank in hiding. She couldn’t tell if the trembling of her skin was Elly’s or her own.
While Ezran towered above, pressure built in Corin’s chest. Her body screamed for air. She focused so intensely on not passing out that she nearly let out a gasp when a pinprick of something cold hit her cheek. Elly picked the tiny orb from Corin’s face and held between her fingers a glistening pearl.
Corin watched in a confused daze as more emerged from the black abyss of the ocean floor. They floated like bubbles, a shining tidal wave of gemstones that reached the surface. Ezran’s shadow shifted in the ocean’s reflection. His fingers plunged through the water to grasp the pearls.
She watched his shadow go still. A memory she couldn’t decipher swirled like air bubbles. Something dark and mournful pressed onto her chest, as if she were truly drowning underwater. But the pain wasn’t hers. Neither was the guttural howl that came next.
The sound split the ocean in multiple pieces. Waves ripped her body from the boat, wooden splinters flying in different directions alongside her. Her hands lost grip of Elly’s, their fingers ripped apart from one another. Salt poured down Corin’s throat as water drowned her yells. They expelled to make room for sand filling her mouth next, and she found herself strewn over a narrow strip of land, where water drained away and left behind barren patches of mineral and earth.
Corin knelt over sand and clutched her burning throat, gasping for air. Without water, the land turned blank, a bright nothingness that set fire to her eyes. She blinked hard, readjusting her vision to find Elly a few feet away from her. Her sister crawled out frombeneath the overturned boat, and when she pulled her pant leg up, a large splinter had stabbed through the meaty flesh of her calf. Elly ripped the wood from her leg and let out a cry.
“I can’t run,” she winced. “It hurts too much.”
“Then hold on to me,” Corin demanded, already snaking her arms beneath Elly’s armpits to hoist her up. She carried her sister on her back, but barely kept balance as the earth beneath them shook. A dark gloom stampeded over the dried well where the ocean once was. They looked up to see what the prince had become. Shadows wrapped around his limbs, turning his figure amorphous. His form was massive enough to puncture the sky, and he absorbed every cloud he touched until they became part of him, rain and lightning swirling inside a chasm of darkness and grief.
With each step he left behind, cracks splintered the ground and opened to swallow what was left into an empty, endless gulf. Corin heard distant animal cries behind her, and as she looked back at Autumnland, the island slowly sank into a white void.
The dreams were collapsing. Creatures that once terrorized her screamed as they tumbled into the void and disappeared forever. Trees that previously shrouded the island and scratched her limbs were sucked into the chasm, leaving no trace behind. The nothingness spread like disease beyond the shores so that even the sand surrounding them crumbled to dust. Corin backed away from the void, realizing it would reach her too. Her hold on Elly tightened as she turned the other way and ran. For the first time in their fragile lives, she didn’t want to disappear.
• • •
THEY COULD NO longer find Ezran by the time they reached Summerland, and it both relieved and terrified Corin. Her chest wanted to collapse over her entire body from how heavily she panted in exhaustion, but her hand grasped the amulet tucked safely underneath her shirt, a reminder that she needed to find Briar Rose before Ezran would. Yet every time she touched the gem, it became less of a resolution and more of a worry. She could not tell if Malicine’s magic contained in this tiny rock would be enough to save them all. It wasn’t even enough to heal Elly’s wounds.
When they reached the emptied shore, the gash in her sister’s leg had widened farther. Her skin had split open not to reveal flesh and bone, but a white mass of space, just like the disappearing land that surrounded them.
No, Elly couldn’t disappear. Corin wouldn’t allow it.
“You’re going to be okay, El,” she said, still carrying her sister on her back. Despite her attempt to stay calm, her voice rose in panic as sand dissolved behind her steps. She hauled them both through jungle foliage and tangled vines, sights that should have been familiar, except the picture was now askew. Apricots had fallen from trees and split open to reveal swarms of ants and rot. Tropical flowers had shriveled into wilted petals and sagging leaves. She felt the first chill of Summerland as the sun above the canopy blinked like a dying light, and she knew then she would no longer feel warmth from this land.
