The Secret World of Briar Rose(60)

Then she heard a low groan.

The sound rose above the whistle of wind and creaking of branches. A long and brutal moan, like an animal dying. She held the torch in the air and scanned the leaves.

“Who’s there?”

The groaning continued, horrible and pleading. She followed the sound, feet moving as fast as her pounding heart. Her chest slammed against a wall of dead ivy and she fell to the ground. A hard blink, and she realized it hadn’t been a wall at all.

The man turned around, slowly, torturously, like a creaking door about to rip open its hinges. Antlers protruded from his head like a gnarled crown, exposing muscle and oozing blood where the tusks had been jammed in his skull. Matted fur covered his cape, mangy and rotten with fleas. He looked like a skinned animal hanging from a mantel. Her skin crawled like the flies latched onto his graying skin.

“Do not defy me, Amelia.”

His mouth gaped wide open in a continuous groan, deep as grit and gravel. She swallowed down her vomit and dared to speak.

“What happened when she defied you?”

Fear sparked in his hollowed eyes, and he lunged forward. The stench of blood and animal and death was so foul Corin jumped back. She thrashed the torch in his face, but couldn’t deter his arms from reaching out and shoving her. They both fell to the ground. His weight pressed on top of her like a colossal animal. She couldn’t breathe through crushed ribs. The flame of her torch was too weak and died instantly.

She struggled fighting back, grasping his neck to strangle him, but brittle leaves covered his throat like a dying tree, and her fingers dug into black crumbs and foliage. Rotten berries spewed from his mouth and drenched her face. She thought she would drown in sludge, choking in both of their bile.

A blade swung in the air and struck him. His weight stiffened on top of her, allowing a sliver of time to kick him off her. She heard the pierce of flesh as he rolled over, a sword wedged deep through his heart.

Corin bit back a scream. The man dissolved into leaves, yet as she backed away from his body, she felt the graze of another one. A litter of dead soldiers had been strewn around the woods, as if she’d been caught in the aftermath of a bloody battle. Her trembling hands shook their bodies and met the clanking sound of empty armor. She ripped off their helmets. Where their heads should be was nothing but a black void.

Her breaths turned quick and panicked. Corin raced across the forest, but the trees twisted into columns, the damp soil solidifying to hard marble. Faces in the bark turned real, blurry men and women and faeries that chattered around her without making a coherent sound. She wanted to shout that the antler king was dead, and it had been her fault, her fault, her fault.

She continued fleeing through the woods, for the only thing Amelia knew how to do was run.

What? No—this was Corin.

The only thing Corin knew how to do was run.

Her foot hit something hard and she fell forward. She looked over her shoulder and sucked in a sharp breath at the body writhing behind her. Dead foliage stuck to the person’s skin like a suffocating suit. The woman’s lips moved soundlessly, a cry for help, yet no sound escaped her lips. Hollow, vacant eyes stared from behind a mask of twisted branches and decay. The white pupils reminded Corin of pearls.

The body began to sink as a hole opened in the ground like a stretching mouth. Panicked, Corin jumped forward to grab her. She didn’t understand why desperation compelled her to cling onto this woman. Regret settled in as the branches twisted around her arms and pulled her down below. Dirt filled her lungs and muffled her screams. Twigs and sharp leaves cut her skin as she descended into the rotten core of Autumnland.

Her body struck hard rock. She gasped in familiar pain. Darkness carried her to a familiar place with stagnant air and winding paths, where the trapped woman was nowhere to be found. Sharp gravel stabbed her back as she rolled over dirt and coughed out dust. When she got up, she stared into an abyss. Her hands blindly reached for the walls, now solid rock instead of debris. A stench of rotten eggs wafted under her nose, and she wanted to gag.

Then a voice echoed down the passageway. Not the woman who had been trapped in foliage, but someone she recognized. Elly was calling her name.

“El?” Corin shouted, terror overtaking her shaking breath. Elly wasn’t supposed to follow her. Her sister would not survive the island. Her hands slammed against the walls until rocks scraped her skin raw. “El! Get out of here! Run!”

She couldn’t tell if Elly responded or if the sound was too far away. Maybe Elly couldn’t even hear her. Corin ran through the tunnels, yelling until her throat turned hoarse, slamming her shoulders against boulders until her body felt like it would break apart from fear and desperation. She couldn’t lose her sister. Not when they had been through so much together. Not when they were finally repairing the closest thing they had to family.

The exertion made the rocks spin around her. Corin knelt over to heave, but nothing came out of her parched throat. She hadn’t eaten or drank in the several hours she wandered through these tunnels. Or had it been days? She couldn’t remember. Time slipped through her fingers. The walls were shrinking. The stench of death became suffocating. Bodies grew from soil, sprouting from the seeds of her mind. She saw Harlow’s cracked skull, the pale sheet of Maggie’s cheek, Rowan’s twisted limbs. Her friends buried in the dirt with the rest of their forgotten dreams. Then there were the other corpses, strewn around the passages, time eroding their skin until they were nothing but bone. How many people had died in these tunnels, searching for the princess?