The Secret World of Briar Rose(47)
The demon tilted their head back. Their horns created a stark shadow over the sand, a shape of two crescent moons that no longer hid in the skies. The sun beat against their green skin, and they lacked any shame to hide it.
“Why fight to stay in a world that’s not worth saving,” they said, “when it’s so much easier to be on our own here?”
Corin’s gaze drifted toward Elly. The girl swam back to shore, her hands cupped over a collection of shells. Shades of pink and translucent blue sprinkled across her palms. They reflected light into her widened eyes, gleaming in wonder at the novelty in her hands.
It would have been so easy for Elly to be happy, Corin thought. If she was born in the right place, the right time. The right family.
“All we’ve ever done is fight to survive,” Corin murmured.
“Maybe your sister doesn’t want to survive,” Malicine said. “Maybe she just wants to live.”
Corin didn’t respond, because Malicine was right. Elly should know what it meant to enjoy simple pleasures. Swimming in water. Feeling the sun on her skin. Being loved. The weight of Elly’s wet clothes should have dragged her down, yet she bounded across the sand as if she were light as air. This was what someone looked like when they weren’t restrained by cruel soldiers or selfish sisters.
Corin let out a long exhale, shoulders sagging. Fine. She would settle inside this moment, even if it was fleeting. Elly’s laughter was rowdy and obnoxious, the kind that demanded attention. Corin wanted to bottle the sound in a jar and shake it beside her ear so she could hear it even in the darkest of nights.
She took off her boots and swam in the ocean, catching up to Elly. “You learn fast,” she said, then splashed water on her sister’s face.
Elly kicked her feet forward. “Bet you can’t catch me.”
Before Corin could reply, Elly already dived below. Corin followed without hesitation, puncturing clouds until they turned to white foam, deep blue-greens transforming to bursting corals, fuchsia, tangerine. She locked her arm around Elly’s waist and thrust her other hand over Elly’s stomach to torture the girl with tickles. Her sister’s laughter came out in bubbles, and she silently flailed until they reached the surface again, gasping for air.
Corin listened to the steady beat of Elly’s heart as they held each other. Sunrise turned the waves to gold, the horizon a line of silver. Waves rippled gently against their brown skin. She stared at her sister and wondered how someone could grow so fast. Despite her best efforts to hide Elly, the girl was too bright and beautiful. It scared Corin, knowing the world was cruel and often took beautiful things away from her.
As they breathed the briny air and tasted ocean salt, she wondered if this was what life would look like without fear. The lull of the ocean, the swell of the waves, her sister beside her. The feeling of being safe in an infinite world.
But this isn’t real.
Salt trickled in Corin’s eyes and burned. A blot of ink stained her vision. She blinked hard, yet the black spot did not disappear from the horizon. A dark patch had disrupted the silver line, so pervasive that even when birds flew toward it, dusk swallowed their silhouettes.
Thick clouds wrapped around the island in a gray halo. Among the swelling sea, the island looked dead. When had this island appeared? Or had it always been there, and she hadn’t remembered? She realized too late that someone had been calling her name. The wind had drowned out Malicine’s voice, barely carrying it over to her ears as she turned around and saw the demon’s face had contorted to panic.
“Get out!” they yelled. “Don’t go any farther!”
Corin didn’t have time to react. Lightning struck the island, turning the sky white. Seaweed wrapped around her ankles and pulled her down. She lost grip of Elly as the waves pushed them apart. Elly yelled her name, but it was too late. The rope of seaweed had already dragged Corin below to darkness.
Her body struck a rock at the bottom of the ocean. Fish scattered and reefs disintegrated into sand. Black squid ink permeated the trenches and shrouded her body like an ill-fitting blanket. Corin pulled her limbs and tried to scream, but there was no sound. Panic overtook her. She didn’t stop thrashing, her pulse racing to burst from her skin. Her wedged foot turned blue. Bits of her flesh ripped from bone and scattered in the water.
In the corners of her vision, rocks twisted into a tunnel path filled with starved bodies and bones. Death’s stench permeated her nose. Gloved hands reached for her shoulders, and she recognized the pattern of holes in the fabric, the cuts on Harlow’s knuckles, every detail stained in her memory after hours of painting next to each other, foolishly believing their art could mean something just because they wanted to make it.
Strips of kelp hung from Harlow’s body like flayed skin. Her fingers were like dripping strands, wrapped around Corin’s throat in a chokehold. Black water streamed from the dead woman’s eyes, the hole in the back of her skull, even her chapped lips as they ripped open to a distorted cry.
“I trusted you, Corin. How could you?”
Corin wanted to scream, but the stench of brine and rot filled her mouth. Ghosts invaded her vision: Maggie’s cracked lips, Rowan’s broken nose, and a smaller, pale face with blue lips, but she couldn’t make out the exact arrangement of features, nor did she want to.
Her eyes clenched shut, and her body sank deeper into an abyss, where rocks that once trapped her melted into soil, damp with blood. Pearls grew in place of budding plants. A flicker of moonlight revealed a woman draped in white, her limbs stiff, her dress stained with scarlet. They were in the woods, but the smell of death was stronger than the wilted flowers.