Elly’s lashes fluttered as she barely opened her eyes. “Corin,” she managed to say. Her breaths came out faint and shallow. Foolish hope rose in Corin’s chest anyway.
“El. El, please. Don’t leave me.” Corin wiped tears from her face and clutched Elly’s face with wet hands. “It’s going to be fine. I’ll find Briar Rose. She’ll open a new portal. We’ll make a newworld, and we’ll be safe, and happy, and everything will be okay. I promise, El. I’m never going to let you go.”
Corin thought it had been Elly trembling until her sister placed a hand on her arm, stilling her.
“I’m already gone, Corin.”
“But you don’t have to be,” she begged. “We can still be together.”
Corin clung tighter, but Elly felt too light, like a candle flame one breath away from disappearing. Her sister gave a tender squeeze to Corin’s hand.
“We had fun, but it’s time for me to rest.” Her voice was so gentle it split Corin’s heart in pieces. “You can let go now. It’s okay.”
Corin could feel her sister fading, yet something pulled Elly still, a taught string. Slow understanding washed over Corin like an ocean wave. Elly, who never had the patience for anything, had waited for her all this time.
Deep down, Corin knew this moment would come. She had evaded it for so long, distracting herself with fiery anger and self-loathing, petty arguments and desperate promises. Her avoidance had only prolonged the inevitable pain. And so, slowly, she loosened her grip. Finger by finger, each bone in her hand weighing down on Elly’s flesh, she forced herself to lift off.
Her tears fell on Elly’s cheeks. They pressed into the girl’s skin and left tiny holes like constellations. Light poured from Elly’s lips as they parted for a whisper.
“I hope someday,” she said, “you’ll love yourself as much as you loved me.”
Corin nodded, quietly weeping, and leaned down to press a soft kiss to Elly’s forehead. She placed Elly back in the soil and watched her sister’s face shift to permanence. Her lashes drooped over herstarry cheeks, and her lips opened to a small part where her last breath escaped.
Elly never opened her eyes again. But she looked peaceful, like she had been tired for a very long time, and could finally sleep.
Withered sunflowers trembled from the wind. Brown petals unfurled and smoothed over their wrinkles, as if waking up to a breeze. Their stalks lifted from the ground and carried Elly’s body in a bed of leaves. The smell of fresh soil wafted in the air, and for a moment, the sky washed over in yellow, like sunlight spilling across the atmosphere.
The flowers grew tall enough to reach the sun. At the first trickle of light, they burst into stars. Bright shimmers painted the atmosphere before the fractures of sky appeared again. The last stalk floated toward the void, revealing a fox waiting behind the maze. Cracks formed in his clay skin, but he was still whole, his brown eyes gazing upon Corin.
With the flick of his tail, he turned around and hopped away, melting into the light. So, too, did Springland disappear.
CHAPTER 40
100 YEARS AGO
ONCE PAIN FADED from her chest, darkness came to welcome Amelia in death. It hugged her like a warm blanket, wrapping its arms around her body until fully enveloped as one. There was peace in dying, the kind of serenity that made her forget how she ended up here, but not question how she should go back. Eighteen years of fighting to have some meaning in life, and all she had to do was give up to finally find comfort.
A prickle of light peeked through like holes in a kaleidoscope. The light expanded wider until it eventually swallowed her. Stars exploded in her body, the particles of herself swirling like grains of sand in a windstorm. She hurtled through the air, only slowing to a gradual float, drifting toward nothing.
Then she lay in emptiness.
At first it hurt to open her eyes. The light was too bright, and she had been used to being swathed in darkness. Once her vision focused to clarity, she felt dizzy, stumbling. Her surroundings turned pure, blinding white, an ever-stretching field of nothingness. She lookeddown and watched her body materialize into existence. Pale limbs filled a white dress, bare feet hovering over a blank abyss. She didn’t know where to move, because she had not been standing anywhere. Miraculously, incomprehensibly, she did anyway.
The first step poured a patch of grass beneath her toes, like ink on a page. She took another step and watched the grass expand farther. Daisies sprang from the ground, blades of grass curling around her ankles. The smell of spring wafted in the air, poppy seeds and acorns and sweet florals. She looked up to watch the sky wash over blue like ocean’s waves. The color stretched endlessly, the horizon never fading.
It was impossible. And yet, as the song of a hummingbird whistled in her ear, it became impossibly real.
“Amelia!”
She spun around to see Malicine and Talon surface from the blank canvas of her surroundings. Relief flooded her lungs as she watched green skin and black ink feathers fill the void. Colors that were once frightening, now familiar and safe.
“Am I dead?” she asked.
“You were close to dying, thanks to that senseless stunt you pulled.” Malicine scowled as Talon flew in circles around the emptiness. “The only way I could stop it was restoring the curse so that you’d fall asleep.”
Malicine tilted their chin and watched tufts of clouds materialize along Talon’s flight path. Blue skies stretched above their heads like paint spilling over a blank board.
“It was our best chance for escape. That prince came looking for you and brought your godmothers for help. I gave them what they wanted: a reason to feel like heroes.”
