The Secret World of Briar Rose(15)
He pushed the chalice farther away from him. Drunk eyes roamed across the wolfskin blanket that lay scattered in front of the fireplace. Preserved skulls and animals sat on the mantel. The room had been decorated with relics from Victor’s younger days, a time when he was a hunter, before he became king.
Amelia had heard stories about his own father taking him to the woods, shooting the creatures that inhabited the wild, and coming home to make fresh stew. He had shared his childhood tales with pride, his chest puffed, his face flushed with glory. This was what it was like to be a man, and wasn’t that what made a person stronger than all?
“I’m not afraid of my daughter dying,” he said. “I’m afraid of her growing up to be a coward.”
Murmurs shifted among the godmothers, but their responses faded in Amelia’s ears. Her feet slowly backed away from the door before sprinting down the hall. She reached her room and dove into bed, burying her face in pillows and hiding from the rest of the world.
That night, she understood the cruel irony of her birth. When Amelia was a baby, her godmothers had blessed her with three gifts: beauty, song, and true love’s kiss. Beauty proved itself whenever men ogled her pearl face, golden hair, and long lashes. Song revealed itself as handmaids fawned over her voice echoing down the corridors, sweet and light as a hummingbird’s. True love’s kiss promised itself to be the cure to her curse, the answer for whenever she needed a reason to wake up and keep living.
She was born a beautiful girl with a beautiful life.
They told her she could become anything.
And so, she became nothing.
CHAPTER 7
LIGHT SWALLOWED CORIN, scattering pieces of her into fragments as fine as windblown sand. Stars exploded around her ears. Their debris peppered her skin and sank beneath to set her veins on fire. Rays broke through every particle in her body as she punctured through an ocean of bright blue.
Water filled her lungs before they turned to air. Bubbles burst from her feet and then transformed into clouds. Her limbs flailed forward, her body hurdling between ice crystals in the atmosphere. Wind whistled through her hair and whipped her face as she descended through an endless sky. A white flash ripped into her bones before she came together again, the tiny particles of her conscience clustering together to form a body landing softly in snow.
The wind slowed to a stop.
Then the world waited in silence for her.
She opened her eyes to a hole filled with light in the sky, its rims swirling in a thin coat of red. Blood slipped from the fringes and scattered into pieces. One fell in her palm like a snowflake, drying like a scab, before it dissolved. The hole closed above her, as if it had never existed at all, and the sky returned to normal as a portrait of pure white with saw-toothed trees. One branch bent beneath her weight, its wooden arms cradling her in a blanket of soft snow as if she were a newborn.
Across from her, between another tree’s limbs, someone was watching.
The stranger was different in an otherworldly way. Pearls glistened across her cheeks like teardrops and embedded her porcelain skin, dappling around her chin and forehead. Snowdrop flowers intertwined her silver hair, spilling over a pale lace dress with nightingale embroidery and beaded feathers. Her eyes looked like sea glass, narrowed and glaring, as if Corin were an intruder that she would kill with her bow.
Corin should have retreated at the sight of the weapon, but she couldn’t move. The stranger’s gaze pierced into her skin, as if she were peeling the layers underneath to look inside. Their eyes held each other for an infinite moment, the soft fall of snow blurring in the background, clumps of snowflakes catching in their lashes. The quiet gripped Corin, bit into her skin, left her feeling raw.
Because the stranger didn’t just look at her. She didn’t speak to Corin, spit at her, or even pity her, as if Corin was a ghost who had already passed.
This person saw her.
And that was the most dangerous thing of all.
Then a breeze came, and the stranger’s expression shifted into softness. Her eyebrows raised, her lips parted, as if realizing something Corin couldn’t pinpoint. She lowered the bow and tucked away the unused arrow. Her silver hair flickered in the sunlight as she fell backward, disappearing into the snow like a mirage.
Corin lunged forward and tried to peer below the branches, but the girl’s lace dress and powdered hair vanished in a blanket of white. Not even the slightest sign of footprints marred the earth. She disappeared as quickly as she’d appeared.
Corin’s eyes darted around the tree in panic. Her leg stretched to another branch as she tried to maneuver herself on to it. She hooked her arm over one of the limbs and thought she had a good grip, until the wood snapped.
She yelped when she fell, but the landing was soft and rendered her quiet. Bits of crystal fell from her hair as she turned around and scanned her new surroundings. The sun barely rose from the mountains in the distance, rays of light shining between the cracks of trees. The bright colors were too overwhelming for her senses. She rubbed her eyes before stopping from a disturbing realization.
Her hands, once shattered, were now whole.
She took off her gloves and flexed her fingers, waiting for something to crack, yet every bone remained in place. Her fingers ran through her coarse hair, nails digging for dried blood and open wounds that no longer existed.
No. This wasn’t right. Her breaths quickened, panicking. She wanted to scream that this was a trick, some trap to catch her off guard. She should have been dead, but the fact that she was alive scared her. The gentle snow of this place was more frightening than the bitter cold of Gyldan. It told her that she did not belong, because she was not suffering.