The Secret World of Briar Rose(87)

Surrounding trees morphed into screaming faces. The arrangement of bark twisted into familiar features belonging to Harlow, Maggie, Rowan, everyone she had lost. Cold breezes dissolved to whispers like their voices, pleading for her to look at them, remember the taste of death and regret. Corin shook her head, trying to ward off the memories. This wasn’t real, she kept telling herself. The island used her subconscious for tricks, reflecting the darkest of thoughts the deeper she crossed. As long as she remembered light existed too, she could escape the island with Malicine, both their minds intact.

Corin cupped her hands over her mouth and continued shouting the demon’s name until it strained her throat. The darkness was so vast that she couldn’t tell where they were or if they even heard her. Dead trees remained still, as if nothing changed. The wind howled mockingly, drowning her voice.

She took another step until the ground rumbled once again. Branches rattled like bones before the sound of split wood tore the sky. Violent tremors pushed rocks off a mountainside. She dodged the boulders, but mud gripped her ankles and pulled her down the landslide. The sudden descent was too familiar. It terrified her as the ground swallowed her whole.

Debris and snapped branches collapsed on her body, pinning her down the bottom of a hole. Mud slicked her clothes as cold air breathed into reopened wounds. There came the pain again, one she knew too well. It bloomed in the pit of her stomach and rolled waves of nausea across her skin.

Malicine was right when they said she couldn’t truly escape her nightmares. The harder she tried not to think of something, the more she did.

Even if she closed her eyes, she knew who would speak next.

“You should have been there for me.”

Corin turned to the body draped over the landslide. A white film had washed over Elly’s eyes like clouds. Corin’s silhouette looked too big, too monstrous in the reflection.

“You’re not real.” She repeated the words like a mantra and clamped her hands over her ears, but there was no point. Her sister’s voice rang clear between muddy walls.

“It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m real,” Elly said. “In the end, I’m still dead. Don’t you understand?”

Elly didn’t blink. Ants crawled between the gaps in her teeth as her cracked lips parted. Collarbones protruded from her dirty shirt like a jagged tooth. Tears burned Corin’s eyes. Her hands fell to her sides, no longer blocking the truth. She could pretend to believe in two versions of her sister: the one covered in wildflowers, waiting for her safe return, or the one covered in dirt, cursing her for abandonment. But as long as both versions continued breathing, neither was truly real.

“I’m sorry, El,” she pleaded. “I’ll never forgive my—”

“Being sorry doesn’t change what happened.”

Elly’s words settled into Corin’s skin. The hard lump in her throat burned as if it had caught on fire. Her feet sank into the soil, the roots twisting around her limbs and pulling deeper. It was happening again. She was supposed to make it through the island. She thought she was stronger than this. But maybe that had been a lie too, one of the hundreds she had told herself.

Why had she come here in the first place? Her willpower dulled, as if she were observing herself in a dream. No, she needed to remember. She came here for someone, and she needed to return into the arms of another someone too. Yet she couldn’t forget the person she came for in the first place, long ago in the tunnels.

Maybe it didn’t matter, the difference between real or fake, living or dead. There would always be a girl etched permanently in Corin’s mind, one that her sad little heart could never erase. The complicated feelings she had for that girl were real. They had made her wretched life worth living too.

Corin willed herself not to turn away. Instead, she strained in the howling wind to remember the girl. If she listened closely enough, the wind could remind her of a wailing baby that once squirmed in her arms. The wet dirt could feel like sticky palms she’d held on to whenever they crossed the street. The feeling of wanting to curl in bed could be accompanied by a familiar body next to hers, breathing down her chest, arms wrapped around her stomach like an anchor that brought her home.

She let that familiarity guide her, even though she knew the words she’d hear next.

“I hate you,” Elly said.

Corin opened her eyes and faced the mirage of her sister. “No, you don’t.”

Elly blinked slowly. The clouds in her eyes flickered, as if uncertain of whether a storm would arrive. Corin pulled her legs out of the sinking soil and trudged over to her sister. Muddy walls framed Elly’s body like a painting. The girl only existed because Corin had twisted her memories this way, letting grief and shame sculpt the creature before her. Maybe, if she remembered other truths, she could look at this scene again in a different light.

“I know you don’t hate me, because when you were five, you held my hand every time we crossed the street and wouldn’t let go. When you were seven, you collected rocks so I could paint again, thinking they were the same thing as charcoal. When you were nine, you got in trouble for stealing a peach from the marketplace, because you were worried I’d go hungry. And when I yelled at you in front of the shop owner, you saw I pocketed the rest of the peaches behind his back, and we ate them on our way home.”

Corin’s hand stretched to Elly’s cropped hair, fingers threading through rough spikes with all the gentleness she could hold.