The Secret World of Briar Rose(17)
“Stop running off,” she snapped. “We can’t get separated again.”
Elly spun around. “Then why didn’t you stop me before?”
Cold air stung Corin’s cheeks. A crack formed in the ice, and it sounded like it came from her chest. She let go of Elly’s hand and opened her mouth to speak. Once again, nothing came out. It was becoming harder to provide answers to her sister. The last time she did, Elly ran away.
At her silence, Elly scoffed. “You were glad I was gone.”
“That’s not true.” Corin’s assertion sounded more like a plea. It was easier to pretend they had just gotten into another fight. But this was different. She remembered Elly’s last words to her, the pain that laced her sister’s throat as she said it.
I hate you.
Corin reached out for her sister until a violent gust of wind ripped her fingers from Elly’s cheek. Their feet were torn off the ground, their bodies lifted in the air, tugged like puppet strings by some invisible force. Elly’s back struck against tree bark while Corin’s body flung in the opposite direction. Wide cracks burst open in the lake like an open mouth about to swallow her. Her legs fell into freezing water, shocking the rest of her limbs. She shouted for Elly, but her sister looked dazed, as if the girl were fighting off unconsciousness.
Corin climbed over the ice with chattering teeth and frozen limbs screaming in pain. An earsplitting screech rang in the air and forced her to look up. The world peeled back branches as a winged creature tore across the sky, landing in the snow and rumbling the ground. A long neck craned around the edge of the lake before fixing upon her through slitted eyes.
Poison-green irises narrowed into knife slits. The creature charged forward, shaking the ground with each step. As fire broiled inside its mouth, Corin realized this was no ordinary monster, but a dragon about to kill them both.
CHAPTER 8
136 YEARS AGO
ONCE UPON A time, on the coldest night of the darkest winter, Malicine was born.
Bright white stars gazed upon snow-frosted trees. Clusters of nymphs gathered in the forest, their bodies cloaked in silk gowns and fluttering between branches. Their excited whispers disturbed the forest’s silence before bells chimed in celebration.
A newborn faerie was arriving soon. A little girl, one who would surely be small and wide-eyed and beautiful, just like them.
The naked moon smiled upon them in the sky, but it especially shone for three faeries. They pushed each other to the side so that they could get the best view of the newborn. Dahlia, the oldest faerie of twelve years, walked ahead of the other two, her chin held high the entire journey as if to prove a point.
She shot a dirty look at the middle child of ten years, Iris, who kept collecting snowflakes in her knitted gloves and getting her hands wet. But it was the youngest sister that Dahlia lectured the most. Clover, despite being eight years old, had yet to learn manners. Her teeth chattered loudly in the frost, and steams of breath blew out of her pouted lips whenever she complained about the cold.
Someday, when they visited the King of Gyldan, Clover would have to learn how to make a proper impression with human royalty. The winter nights were bitter, but if they secured a spot in his council, their new, luxurious lives would become the envy of the other nymphs.
Still, an unspoken silence cloaked the three of them like a patch of ice fog. A new faerie meant the king’s attention would be further divided. Already the three sisters together felt stifling.
They stood in the inner rows of the circle that gathered around their mother. Sweat slicked across her pale forehead as her back strewed over a bed of moss. She took refuge underneath a willow tree, where nymphs gathered a barrier of twigs and leaves, casting magic to prevent snow from falling inside. A few faeries brushed moist strands of hair away from her face. Others counted her deep breaths and extended glowing palms, keeping her warm.
The baby was coming soon. They could feel it in their bones like the chilling cold.
Dahlia’s heeled shoes tapped against the snow. She told herself the gesture was from impatience, not dread. Yet she couldn’t help but replay the past few months in her mind. She remembered the wails of pain and several times she watched their mother nearly collapse, tears streaking from bloodshot eyes. Their mother described the pain as a beast clawing its way out of her womb. She would squeeze out a few words before reeling forward and clutching her stomach, shrieking at the sharp kicks against her insides. On her worst days, when the three sisters clamped their hands over their ears to shut out her earsplitting wails, Clover would cry in fear that their mother was dying.
Tonight, her screeches made the saplings shiver around them. Dahlia had witnessed the birth of her two sisters to earn this intuition, but this birth felt different. A bitter wind nipped their ankles, like teeth scraping against flesh. She sensed the baby emerging soon.
With their mother’s final push, the head of the baby came into view. But rather than a round head of flesh, a pair of horns tore through their mother, ripping her apart.
The nymphs screamed. The baby had sickly skin, green as old spinach. Its cries pierced their ears, a wail that turned garbled as it began choking on their mother’s blood. Sharp nails grew from tiny fingers, gnarled and twisted like hooks. The sisters recoiled in disgust as the baby slithered out of their mother, who remained limp in her bed of dead leaves, the frail fragments of her life draining.