She gasped a lung full of air and pulled herself out of the water. Her arms wrestled across ice, the amulet tucked under her vest, glowing through the fabric and shimmering red across glaciers. She dragged herself across the lake until she could reach snow again. Her teeth chattered like they would fall out. It took everything in her willpower to charge forward, no matter how sharply the wind bit into her skin.
She followed the trail of dead crows leading to the caves. Glaciers glowed a bright blue light, and the open mouth of crystals swallowed her in its entrance. A bitter cold filled the cobalt-colored space. The cavern walls, once glistening like jewels, dulled into a muted gray. Darkness clouded beneath the ice floor, the silhouettes of whales drifting by as limp bodies. The ice no longer vibrated with a rhythmic pulse, but a deep, droning sound of death.
Footsteps echoed from the other side of the cave. She turned the next corner and pressed her back against the wall. The ice felt too cold against her skin, like it was biting through her clothes. Ezran’s presence brought a different chill as he roamed down the corridor.
Icicles turned black in his reflection. Darkness spread acrosscracked ice, but if she stared closely enough, she could make out an expression in the amorphous gloom, the vague silhouette of hollowed cheeks and mournful eyes within the nebula. He drifted through the caverns like a ghost, yet there was a steadiness in every step, a heavy weight he carried like a dragging shadow.
As he moved, the walls beside him glowed with new visions. Scarlet burned across icy rocks and swirled into a kaleidoscope of scenes unfamiliar from Corin’s memories. Ocean waves under a colorless sky. A young blond boy sinking alone. The bitter smell of salt and tears wafted through the caves like a crisp morning.
Then ocean hit the walls, and water trickled down the ice, eroding away into a new memory. A necklace of pearls tucked inside wooden cases at a marketplace, a slender hand snatching them amid distracted eyes. The ice fractured, and those same fingers interlocked with another’s. Her skin was tinted brown next to his pale hands, yet when the glaciers stretched high enough to reveal the woman with dark hair, the pearls resting on her collarbone made it known that she was his.
She had belonged to him. Until she wasn’t anymore.
The walls shattered as hundreds of pearls splashed to the floor like teardrops. Ezran reached to grasp them, but they melted past his shadowy limbs. A sorrowful groan reverberated through the caves. A hollow voice scraped the ice.
“We were supposed to be happy together. Until that family ruined it all.”
Though his amorphous form didn’t have a face, Corin could tell Ezran had turned to her from the way the shadows shifted. She pulled back to hide behind the wall, but there was no use. In every broken piece of ice, she could see his permeating gloom reflected.
“You destroyed my dreams, Amelia. Now it’s time for me to destroy yours.”
Ice shattered like starlight across the walls. Water burst through the caves, a typhoon disaster exploding and sending Corin off her feet. As quickly as the glaciers fell, the darkness lunged toward Corin. She swung her dagger, but the weapon caught between his shadowy fingers, wispy limbs curling around the blade and cracking the ice. The dagger shattered in her hand and cut her skin. She yelped in pain before a force kicked her chest to the ground. A heavy weight dropped onto her ribs as his shadow clouded her vision. She choked for air, while his darkness wrapped around her throat, strangling her.
“I assumed you were a petty thief, but it’s worse than that. You think you can change and be a hero now. Perhaps that’s why you love this fantasy world so much, how it feeds your delusions. But remember this: You ended up here by chance. You took my place that night, and it was never yours to begin with.”
His voice was smooth and rich, the kind of sound that lingered on skin in its echoes. It reverberated through the walls even as the cave slowly disappeared into the void. He pushed her skull toward the empty mass beneath the ice, and she could somehow hear the nothingness, the way it was close to taking her with it to nonexistence.
Corin strained to see past his shadowy form for proof that something still existed beyond the darkness, even if they were dangling icicles. A dark reflection in the broken ice stared back at her. She looked like a skeleton, all broken skin and brittle bones. So small and inconsequential that once she disappeared with the rest of this place, she would not even be noticed.
But she wanted to matter. Even if for a moment outside time.Even in an imaginary world that was crumbling apart.
So she stared directly into the darkness and said, “I didn’t take your place. I saw the opportunity to stand where you never did.”
Corin grabbed a fistful of broken ice and held it to the void. Refracted light poured from her fingers and tore through the hazy figure. Ezran recoiled under the fluorescence, his wisps shrinking back. Slivers of flesh flickered in his silhouette. She aimed for skin and not shadow, smashing the ice into his head, feeling the crack of bone. Gloom slipped from his figure as blood dripped from his skull and down his cheeks.
Ezran staggered back, which freed up enough room for Corin to get up and jump across the sleet. The ice below her fractured into pieces. Chunks floated to the sky, gravity disappearing as quickly as melting water. She grabbed onto an icicle that floated in the air. Her feet dangled dangerously over the tides, but even more terrifying was the water dissipating below, vanishing into a white void that stretched beyond the horizon.
Corin couldn’t cling onto the icicle forever. It melted between her fingers. She swung forward to land on a field from the other side of the caves, where animals made of glass crumbled in the blizzard. Behind her, the caves burst like a dam. She rolled over the snow and crawled as far away as she could to avoid disappearing along with it.
Black branches swayed frantically in the storm, as if beckoning her to hurry. Corin tried to get up before Ezran’s hand grabbed her ankle and pulled her down with him. He had blended with the rest of the snow when he jumped with her, his lashes clumped in powder over his pale face and white lips. The pallor made it look like he was decaying, as if the magic that had granted him immortality drained from his bones.
His free hand dragged through the snow until the ice formed a sword as long as his reach. The blade swung at Corin’s legs, and the cut was deep, tearing into fabric and bone. She let out a cry and fell. He got on top of her again, locking her body between his knees. The hilt of his sword slammed into her eyes, nose, and teeth. Bones cracked like porcelain, and snow soaked in red. Her vision turned hazy, and she no longer knew if it was the world slipping away or her own life.
Ezran forced her to stay conscious as he gripped her hair and pulled her up to look at him. Silver eyes bore into hers, filled with rage, and yet, somewhere in the dying flecks of light, there was a deep sorrow that had been harvested for centuries.
“When you die, history will forget you,” he snarled, “and I’ll be the one who fulfilled his promise.”
Ezran dropped her limp body to the snow and stood straight. His arm swung back, the blade of his sword pointed to the fractured sky. Corin was too tired to close her eyes. She would not even flinch. Instead, she would let herself see the sword plunge into her chest and meet death face-to-face.
The blade lunged forward before an arrow shot through the wind. It barely missed the space between his sword and arm before landing in snow. Ezran released the weapon in shock, but it did not fall on Corin.
Everything stopped moving. The snowfall. The cracks in ice. The crystals that drifted from a broken sky. They hung suspended, frozen in motion. The sword dangled above Corin’s face, yet to drop. The only movement was the breath escaping from Ezran’s lips as he stared at the arrow. Corin followed his shifting gaze to the black trees across the field.
Bare-bone branches hardly camouflaged the girl standingbetween them. Broken sunlight made her blue dress gleam in the emptiness, a beacon to signal exactly where to find her. Corin had become so used to the different versions of Briar Rose that the real girl looked plain in comparison. Her skin was pallid, her hair limp with uneven shades of dull yellow. Her dress looked too flat, the muddy fabric draped over inelegant limbs. There was no glamor, no magical adornments. Only her.
Amelia dropped her bow. The branches where she stood curled together, and the trunk bent over with a mournful groan. She walked along the trunk like a bridge, finally meeting the man who had been trying to wake her for centuries. But the reunion was no amicable scene, and the prince’s distorted smile did not convey love.
“You missed,” he sneered. “All these years, and you still can’t do anything right.”
