Forever

by Chanda Hahn

  “No, there were moments when I was,” he spoke softly. “When I dethroned my parents and banished them to the swamplands for what they had done to me—that made me happy. When I finally found you after a hundred years, and I began to spin your life into tales, like I had done to your ancestors—that made me happy. When I wreaked havoc on your school—that made me happy.”

  “That’s because you’re a monster.” She didn’t care if she angered him and brought out the beast.

  “You’re right,” Teague answered his voice going low. “It seems that I’m happiest when I’m tormenting the Grimms. Now that I have you, I’m bored. Thank you for reminding me that there’s still another Grimm left to torment. I’ll say hello to your brother for you.” He sat up abruptly and left.

  “No wait!” Mina cried out in desperation, but it was too late. She was left alone in her cell to ponder what horrible fate would befall her younger brother and her friends.

  ***

  She paced constantly now and worried her thumbnail as she watched for signs of Teague’s return. She was desperate to hear whether he’d found Charlie and the others and—if he had—what he was doing to them. Mina had even begged the Fae light to bring Teague to her, but he never came.

  She had cried enough tears to last a lifetime, and she couldn’t cry anymore. She spent hours trying to summon Fae power to her to open the wall, but nothing happened. She screamed at the wall and wished she had her brother’s gift. She pounded, and dug her fingers into the mortar, trying to pull out the brick, but only ended up with bruised and scraped hands. Before she had tried to play the obedient servant, to live a quiet and solitary life, and to avoid angering Teague, but those days were gone.

  “There’s your fire.” Teague said appearing beside her.

  She turned, fist raised and tried to hit him for being away so long, but he caught her wrist mid-strike. Mina fell into Teague and buried her face in his chest, fresh tears surprising her. Maybe because they came from a well of relief rather than worry. She clung to his jacket.

  The shift from attacking to clinging took Teague aback. He didn’t know how to fight her.

  “Please tell me he’s still alive. Please just tell me he’s okay. Even if he’s not, lie to me and tell me he is,” she gasped out between sobs as she held onto his shirt.

  His grip on her wrist loosened, and he let go of it, gently placing his hands on her shoulders. He didn’t push her away, but paused a few moments. Then Teague very slowly wrapped his arms around her and touched his chin to her head.

  “He’s alive,” he answered.

  Mina gasped in relief. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she repeated into his chest. She could smell the scent of his clothes, the faint smell of the soap he used. As she looked up along his jaw, her heart raced. It had been so long since she had human contact, she didn’t realize she craved it.

  It was so easy to pretend he wasn’t evil, but she knew so very much of him was. Even as her ear pressed to his chest, she could hear the heartbeat pounding softly, quickening in excitement. Her hand was pressed ever so softly over his chest, right over where she knew the scar was, and she wondered just briefly if she could use her power to lure the poisoned tip out.

  But that could destroy him if she wasn’t careful. Maybe what she could focus on was slowly pulling the poison from him. But clearly, she couldn’t do that from within this warded prison. She needed to be free. She needed to earn his trust, but he’d see through her if she lied. So she couldn’t lie to him, ever.

  She let her fingers brush against his chest and thought about her feelings for him—for Teague—back during the choosing ceremony. They were conflicted, but when given the choice at the time, she did choose to stay with him. And right after she had had chosen him, someone else had come in and ruined things, poisoned his heart against her. Why should she not fight for what they could have had? Shouldn’t love conquer all?

  Mina lifted her gaze to Teague, only to see he was already staring down at her, his eyes half-closed, his face a mask. She ached to know what he was feeling. Was it in any way similar to her feelings? He swallowed, and she did the same. He leaned forward, his head bent low, so she closed her eyes and lifted her mouth.

  “What are you plotting?” he whispered into her ear. It wasn’t said in anger, but in a teasing tone.

  “I’m plotting my own demise,” she teased, keeping her eyes closed. “Because I know that falling for you will be the death of me.”

  She heard a swift intake of breath, as his hands dropped from her shoulders.

  And then she was left standing alone.

  Chapter 21

  The next morning when she woke up, Teague was sitting there watching her. “Would you like to come with me?” There was a twinkle in his eye, and he looked like an eager child.

  “Where to?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Does it matter if you get out of the cell for a while?”

  “I guess it doesn’t,” she said, moving toward the exit. “Yes. I’d like to get out awhile—anywhere.”

  He blocked the door with his body so she almost ran into him. “Not so fast. I can’t let you out without a warning.”

  “A warning?”

  “Promise me you’re not going to run away. Not now. Not ever,” he said softly.

  She hesitated at his tone. It wasn’t a command. Teague wasn’t demanding it of her. He was asking her, needing her reassurance.

  “I promise.” She had to press him, find out how much he was softening toward her. She lifted up her iron cuffs.

  “No, I can’t.” He looked disappointed in himself.

  “It’s okay.” She shrugged it off and looked back to Teague. “Let’s go.”

  “Aren’t you the eager one?” He offered a rueful smile. “Well, come along.” He held his hand out in front of him.

  For the first time in weeks, Mina left her prison. Outside her cell, the floor moved beneath them like an escalator as it carried them up and then left along a passage. The bricks continued to move out of their way, opening up for them and closing behind them after Teague passed through. Finally, they were deposited in the main hall. She turned to watch as Teague stepped through the wall after her, and their passage disappeared.

  The palace looked nothing like she remembered it. Gone were the elaborate tapestries, statues, and sparkling marble columns. Instead there were fragments of burned cloth, scorched walls and columns, and headless statues. Cobwebs and layers of dust had laid claim to the place. She was looking at the destruction Teague caused the day he was reunited with Jared. That day, the Fates lost the war. He had banished them to the swamp. No hand, human or Fae, had restored the palace to its glory.

  He led her up the winding stairs to the second floor and out onto a balcony that overlooked the lake. She glanced across the water, imagining the invisible veil that sat midway. One of the griffins flew low over the water. But something was wrong with the picture.

  The surrounding lands—now as brown and ugly as the swamp where the Fates hid—used to be green and flowing with life.

  “It’s dying,” Mina stated.

  “I know,” Teague snapped.

  “Can you stop it?”

  He turned to her, his mouth an angry line. His nostrils flared, and she could see that he was barely keeping it under control. “I’m…I’m not sure I want to.”

  “This was your plan all along, to destroy everything you loved?”

  He looked pained, and his hand kept going to his chest and scratching. “I’m not… I don’t… I…” He hissed between his teeth and pulled away. Turning to give her his back, he leaned over the balcony and caught his breath.

  “Teague, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

  “No,” he growled. A few seconds later, he straightened and turned to look back at her. She felt uncomfortable under his gaze.

  “Teague.” Mina walked over to him. “Does this hurt?” She touched his chest.

  He turned away and mumbled. “It’s been hur
ting more and more lately. It’s enough to drive someone mad. But I ignore it. The pain makes me weak.”

  “No, ignoring your feelings is weakness. Listening to your heart is a sign of strength.”

  “That being said from a girl.”

  “I may be a girl, but I can kick your butt…in a game anyway.”

  He snorted. “I know how uncoordinated you are.”

  She shrugged. “Okay, I’ll cheat. That’s the Fae way, isn’t it?”

  He grimaced. “Yeah, it is our motto.”

  Mina reached for his hand. He immediately stiffened.

  “Why am I here, Teague? What do you want with me?”

  “I don’t know anymore,” he said simply, and he walked off, leaving her alone on the balcony. She waited a few minutes, gazing out across the dying land, but he didn’t return.

  This was a test. It had to be. She wanted to believe he really didn’t know, that he was changing. But part of her feared he was waiting somewhere to see if she’d run away, so he’d have an excuse to kill her on the spot. The poison in his heart wasn’t his fault, but it certainly made him dangerous to try to predict.

  She retraced her steps through the empty palace. Where was everyone? There were no servants, no guards, barely any signs of life. And what little there were seemed to be dying. The large double doors of the main hall taunted her, tempting her to try and escape. But she was invested. She needed to follow through for so many reasons. Her pulse raced, wishing it were as easy as walking away, but it couldn’t be.

  Besides, she didn’t have the seam ripper. And if she did leave, Teague would have every excuse to destroy her brother and friends.

  This was the test. He wanted her to break her word, so he could destroy everything important to her.

  She clenched her fists and headed in the opposite direction. She would not be the one to break her promise. Teague was a trickster, a cheat, and a liar—the most dangerous one alive.

  After a few turns, her little Fae light surprised her in the hall—at least she thought it was her Fae light.

  “Can you take me back to my room please?” she asked.

  The light bobbed in response and floated about happily. Mina followed with cautious steps down a wing with double doors on the end. The light stopped in front of a door on the left, not quite at the end.

  “This can’t be the door to my room. There was no door. We traveled through the walls and ended up…” She turned and tried to follow the direction of the walls with her eyes. She shrugged and opened the door.

  It was her room—as far as she could tell. But this time, when she entered, she made sure to wedge a book in the doorway to keep it from closing and locking her inside. She didn’t want to upset Teague, but she also didn’t want to be locked in again.

  She waited hours. He never returned to either lock her door or close it.

  The next morning, she changed clothes and ate the food delivered to her. Then she decided to explore the palace. There had to be someone left. She found her way to the sitting rooms, where she had waited during the choosing ceremony. The wing full of rooms the girls had stayed in, the library, and the palace kitchen—all of them empty.

  The kitchen was depressing. Everything had been abandoned, left as it was when the servants ran away or disappeared. Old bread on the table was hard and dry, dirty pots and plates left in the sink. No fire had been made in ages, which meant no food had been prepared recently here either. So whoever was preparing her meals wasn’t doing it from the kitchens. She did find buckets, mops, soap, and the water pump. She could do more than just mope around the palace.

  She spent a few hours working in the kitchen, cleaning out the fireplace, finding the woodshed, and restocking the logs in the grate. She found some kindling and searched for a way to start the fire but was at a loss. She couldn’t find any matches. Then she noticed an odd red Fae light hanging just outside the window.

  Mina opened the window, and it came in and moved toward her stack of logs, brightening. She jumped as a spark of light shot out, and her kindling lit. A few seconds later, she heard the crackle of wood and could feel the glow of the fire. Mina blew on the flame and fed it more kindling until a steady fire burned.

  She smiled at the Fae light. “Thank you.”

  Mina heated water over the fire and brought it carefully to the sink and added soap shavings from a jar on the shelf. She washed dishes for what seemed like hours. More Fae lights joined her, watching her move about the kitchen as she tried her best to put things away. If she moved a pot to the wrong spot, a light would move over and direct her to the right place.

  Soon, she began to talk to the lights like she did her personal light, the one that watched over her in her room. And she realized they were all different. Some were larger than the others. Some had a hint of a different color. Some moved slowly. Others zipped about the kitchen.

  She laughed as a few of the lights seemed to get in a tizzy over who got to guide her. One of them began to pull on her shirt, and Mina followed as it led her to a wooden chair. She sat down and watched as two of the larger Fae lights attempted to move a large broom between them. Two more joined in and, all together, they were able to sweep the floor.

  Entertained, Mina clapped in encouragement to them, and they shone brighter. But something suddenly startled them, and they scattered, hiding.

  Teague stood behind her, surprised.

  “What did you do?”

  “Cleaned.” Why did she feel unsure now of all she and her Fae friends had accomplished?

  “Why?”

  “It needed to be done and…” She paused in thought before answering. “And because it made me happy.”

  He gave her the most disgusted look, and she had to cover her mouth to hide her smile. It really did make her happy. She had found a purpose, something to occupy her thoughts from worry.

  “Like mother like daughter,” he said as he gazed around the kitchen, his face unreadable.

  He said that as if it were an insult, not a compliment, and his careless words stabbed at her barely healed heart. She tried to not let him know how much those words hurt her.

  “I guess,” she answered stiffly.

  “You did this by yourself?”

  “I had help from the lights.”

  He turned to her in surprise. “Really? Interesting. Where are they now?”

  “I’m not sure.” She glanced around the kitchen and couldn’t find a single one.

  Teague gave her an odd stare and abruptly left. It took a few minutes before she could get her heart rate under control. She thought she was in trouble.

  She made herself get back to cleaning and, after a few minutes, the Fae lights came out of hiding. They helped her tackle the hallway. They swept, mopped, and washed the high arched windows. Before she knew it, it was evening, and she was famished. When she returned to her room, warm food waited. She devoured it all and slept soundly, her door never closing.

  The next morning when she went to the kitchen for soap and water, even more Fae lights greeted her.

  “Are you here to help?”

  They bobbed and blinked excitedly.

  “Well, then we need to take down the remnants of the old tapestries, and we need to replace or repair the paintings. I hate to get rid of them, but they need to be fixed. Can you handle that?”

  Before she had even finished, a third of the lights dashed out the open window. Another group—the ones she figured she worked with yesterday—worked together to carry large pots to the pump.

  Mina went out to the main hall with a bucket and started gathering large pieces of the broken column. She didn’t know how they were actually going to clean up the pillar. She definitely wasn’t strong enough to move it.

  The double door behind her banged wide open, and she smelled it before she dared turn to look. A large fur-covered beast stood peering over her shoulder.

  Chapter 22

  Mina swallowed a scream and scrambled backward, tripping over the rubble s
he was trying to clear. The white-haired beast stared at her, its gruesome teeth lifting into a half-smile, making her knees shake. He was huge—easily over twelve feet tall—with white and gray tufted fur covering his whole body. His nose was apelike, and his teeth were large and flat. Her first thought was Yeti.

  His furred hand reached for her, and she rolled out of the way, scraping her stomach across the sharp pieces of marble and stone. When she stopped moving, she had time to notice it wasn’t attacking. It was actually hefting the large broken column onto its shoulders and turning to walk back out the doors. A few minutes later, he returned and picked up another piece of the colonnade and dragged it out.

  “Careful,” Mina called out, utterly relieved. “We don’t want to scratch the floors.”

  A long rumbling sound echoed from the thing. She wasn’t sure, but it could’ve been laughter. She worked side by side with the furred beast for a good part of the afternoon. He took down the broken tapestries and paintings and put them on the floor, and he cleared the rooms of the large debris, stone, and destroyed doors.

  The Fae lights returned and worked on cleaning the scorch marks from the walls and clearing cobwebs.

  The beast carefully opened up another door and entered the throne room. Mina followed at a distance. This room was the worst. Both of the Royal thrones were destroyed, burned to a crisp. The curtains were in a pile on the floor, and the portrait of the Fates had been blown up. All that was left was the frame.

  They got to work cleaning up the throne room, and it felt weird. She wanted the palace to be put back together, but she didn’t know why. Maybe the Fae part of her soul wanted order restored. More Fae lights came in to help, and the yeti cleared out the destroyed chairs. Within a few hours, even the pillars were fixed.

  “Well, now that it’s cleaned, what do we do? We can’t leave it empty.” Mina said to the Fae lights as she looked around the Great Hall.