The Secret World of Briar Rose(3)
“No squatters,” one of the men yelled. “You’re on our turf now.”
The distant roar of bulldozers made the floorboards rumble. The walls trembled, as if they could tell another man-made machine was coming. Corin’s pulse raced as she rifled through her bags and fished out crumpled documents.
“I rent under Woodbine,” she spat, as if the name of a rich landlord meant anything. Her pointer finger stabbed the bottom half of her papers, where both of their signatures were scribbled beside last year’s date. She had recalled the day she met the old man with as much regret as getting talked into holding a knife, even though she’d never made the cut. His pale eyes had locked onto her first, sensing her desperation even from across his shop. His smile had chipped incisors, like a wolf baring its teeth at his next prey. She knew she’d made a mistake shaking his hand and it had haunted her ever since.
The only consolation from their deal should have been the new roof over her head, even if it was in a decrepit building. But the soldier barely glanced at the document she presented. His disinterested expression felt like a rock sinking in her stomach. She understood, even before he spoke, that any prior agreement she’d made was for nothing.
“Woodbine sold ownership of his land and left Gyldan. Demolition orders call for any illegal housing to be claimed under Zilar military.”
The soldier stamped the Zilar flag, a striking blue marked by an eagle and a coat of arms. He raised the pole high enough to puncture the boarded rooftop. Corin watched the flapping cloth in the sky with shaking anger. Her curled fists wanted to smash Griffith’s pallid face. He had put blood on her hands the day they traded favors, and the desolate excuse for a home she was about to lose had not been worth her sacrifice.
The barrel of a gun pressed into her back, forcing her to move. She couldn’t even walk a clean path to the door as hordes of men swept the home for valuables. Metal detectors crawled the floorboards like mechanical spiders, hunting for hidden gold from a once prosperous land. Corin sneered at their pointless search. Greedy men who already had everything always wanted more. Her family had escaped Zilar for refuge in Gyldan, only for their home to be stolen once again.
If they had asked, she would have told them there was nothing to seize. She’d sold Elly’s old toys and baby clothes for a pathetic amount of bills after her sister outgrew them. She’d already thrown away palettes and brushes when she gave up on art. At least when they took her parents’ home, there was furniture to overturn and memorabilia to destroy. Old paintings and cracked pottery and things that could have mattered if she still had a family.
They couldn’t take from someone who had nothing left now.
Yet something floated behind a tattered sheet, small and round and strung by a metallic chain nailed to one of the scorched beams. Instinct crackled her heart and made her lunge for it. The sudden movement caused a soldier to knock his gun into her head and force her knees to the ground. He pressed a boot to her back and grabbed the chain. The pendant, a hollowed ring where a gemstone should have been, dangled between his narrowed eyes. He let out a snort, dropping the necklace to the floor where her cheek pressed against wood.
“Worthless,” he muttered.
He was right. Her grandmother’s pendant held no monetary value, the lack of gemstone turning the necklace into nothing more than a misshaped copper band. There was no practical reason for Corin to keep it like a family heirloom. And yet, his disgust at the ornament, as if it were as insignificant as the rest of her ancestry because they weren’t gilded by fortune, made something snap inside her.
Corin snatched the chain before standing.
“You’re wasting your time,” she spat. “There hasn’t been gold on this land for centuries. The only thing you’re digging up are the graves you’ve made yourselves.”
She had already braced herself for the soldier’s retaliation when his gun barrel swung down, metal crushing against her eye.
CHAPTER 2
103 YEARS AGO
PRINCESS AMELIA DID not believe in true love, but her faerie godmothers thought she did.
The three of them floated behind the painter, who had been toiling over the royal family’s portrait for hours while Amelia sat with her father and stepmother. One faerie pressed her fingers to both corners of her mouth and flashed sparkling teeth.
“Think of the true love you’ll meet someday,” she said, “and how excited you’ll be to fall for him.”
Ah, yes. A handsome man to provide reason for Amelia to smile. This was the motivation to keep living, despite the curse that promised she would sleep forever when she turned eighteen. Clover had granted the gift of true love’s kiss to break the curse, so of course the godmothers believed in it. Their entire credibility depended on the cure, lest their reputation be tainted.
Amelia forced her lips into a smile. The godmothers clapped for her like she’d performed a magic trick.
Still, she felt nothing.
She possessed a face that every painter loved: bright eyes the color of sea glass, waves of golden hair rolling past delicate shoulders, porcelain skin with blushing apples on her cheeks. Her face had the symmetrical shape of a heart that pinched to the dainty point of her chin. The smile she wore highlighted the pink blooming from her lips. People compared her to roses, even though she never cared for them.