The Secret World of Briar Rose(89)
“No,” Corin argued. “I came here for you!”
Malicine grabbed her hand and squeezed it so tight she thought they would break her bones. When they pulled away, the broken shard of an amulet glowed in her palm.
“Take this to Briar and open a new portal. Run to a place where he will never find you.”
“Not without you,” Corin.
Malicine’s eyebrow arched, making Corin overly conscious of the gaping wound in their throat. Desperation overtook logic. Survival required believing they could remain whole, together.
Light glowed from Malicine’s palm, and Corin felt the tug of the chain around her neck. The amulet fused inside the hollowed pendant that she carried close to her chest, becoming one. Malicine tucked the necklace back under Corin’s shirt, and she felt a heavier weight on her body, as if she held the pain of every past self that had been sacrificed for the amulet. She didn’t know if she could carry such responsibility, not when she could barely reconcile her own past.
“The world is falling apart,” Malicine rasped. “If you stay here, you will never make it out, and this will all be for nothing. Get out of here. I’ll hold him off.”
Corin stared at the dribble of blood down their chin, the fading green of their eyes. Leaving Malicine behind wasn’t fair. She had seen the torture they endured in Autumnland, the words and violence hurled at them throughout their life. They had no reason to help anyone but themselves.
“You don’t have to be good,” Corin said, fighting back tears.
The ends of Malicine’s lips twitched. Long nails scraped Corin’s cheek as they cupped her face.
“I was wrong, Corin. I shouldn’t have left your world behind,” they said. “Some of you are worth the sacrifice after all.”
With the last burst of their magic, Malicine sent a gust of wind that sent Corin and Elly flying off their feet. The sisters barreled backward into the forest, where the trees sensed their presence and swayed their trunks to clear a path. Corin coughed black flakes of smoke. The fumes cleared when she got up and her line of sight revealed Ezran.
He was too far away to notice her, fixated on the wounded demon at the bottom of the cliff. The man stood in front of the caverns, a gaping hole that looked smaller beside his towering figure. Darkness radiated from his body, as if his presence sucked in all the shadows and left behind a void. With each step he took, fragments of the ground disappeared, the dreamworld they had carefully constructed dissolving like sand. He was stronger than Autumnland, a hero and nightmare in one.
His command was hard as stone. “Let’s finish what we started, demon.”
“Go to hell.” Malicine spat blood at his feet.
Ezran let out a cruel laugh that made the hair on the back of Corin’s neck stand stiff. It was the sound one made after waiting over a hundred years for this victory.
“That’s reserved for monsters like you,” he said, before plunging his sword through Malicine’s chest.
Corin clamped a hand over Elly’s mouth, dampening her sister’s scream so they would not be caught. She bit her tongue so hard it bled as they watched Malicine slump forward. It took all her willpower to hold back from lunging at Ezran and sobbing over Malicine’s body. She couldn’t. Not if she wanted to throw away everything the demon had sacrificed for her and Briar. Her other hand let go of the amulet before she could shatter it in her tightly wounded fist, letting the gem dangle from her necklace and safely under her shirt.
As they ran, Corin could only think about how the fairy tales were wrong. There were no heroes to save them. They were only stories written by invaders—not the ones from faraway lands who sought refuge, but the very men who tore down their homes, claiming heroism in their own violence.
CHAPTER 38
100 YEARS AGO
THE NIGHT WAS pitch black as Amelia tore through darkness. She could hardly breathe through ragged sobs, the lump in her throat a burning coal. The sweeping curve of trees was her only semblance of a trail, though she knew Ezran would catch up to her if she stopped. She let the forest eat her whole, hoping the woods would swallow her into darkness and leave no trace of her behind. Thunder boomed from skies as if the clouds lamented with her. The blur of tears delayed her realization that rain had started pouring.
She could hardly feel the pinpricks of ice while running until she collided against a tree. Her body hunched over a gnarled root and vomited in dirt. Rainwater swirled the bile, sticky and rancid. Beneath her enchanted beauty and golden blood, perhaps this ugly mess was truly what she was made of. She no longer wanted to pretend.
She just wanted to disappear.
Bile burned her throat as she turned over her stomach with a low moan. Twigs dug into her skin, scraping to pry flesh open. Rain pounded against her deflated dress, where mud streaked the torn fabric, now a dirty champagne. She could not will herself to move. Her bones weighed too heavy, her heart too fractured. She hoped the rain would pour hard enough to drown her.
There was no way to tell time in the fog of her mind. By the time Malicine found her, she had already been half asleep. She woke to the demon shaking her by the shoulders.
“Amelia,” they yelled over the rain, “what are you doing here?”
It was strange how seeing a familiar pair of horns and red-eyed raven brought a small sense of comfort. As Malicine examined her injuries, Amelia realized they must have sensed she was nearby and came for her. She thought she’d been running aimlessly, but this was no coincidence. Subconsciously, she had searched for Malicine, the only creature who’d seen the darkness inside her, because they shared it as well.