Chapter Nine - What A Painful Sting
Hey guys! Once again, Dagger has managed to update twice in a day! :O Amazing, isn't it? cx Anyways, this will probably be my last update on this for a little while, seeing as the end of this week is upon us. However, if any of you read Killer of My Heart, that's going to be next, and I'll be excited to see if I manage to complete it or not in that time! Whatever the case though, I hope you guys won't mind being left hanging on this story for a little while.
09Who knew90 : I'm glad that it was an amazing twist! ^-^ I'm also glad that last chapter was amazing, and that Prince Teague was Teague-y. As for Jared? Well, I can't tell you what exactly is going on with him. :p What exactly he did and didn't know will be seen soon, maybe even this chapter. cx As for Teague taking Mina early? I didn't even realize that was the case. I thought I'd done the math correctly on the day, but maybe I didn't? I can't tell you what Jared did or didn't intend, but I will tell you one thin- actually, I'll let the Story tell you that. c; I'm glad that Prince Teague coming fit together so well! And I'm glad there was only one typo. c: And haha, well I'll keep thanking you for reviews either way. ;3 I would've responded to more of the review and had something a bit longer here, but if I did I would probably end up giving stuff away. That would not be good. xp I definitely agree on this fandom seeing much more like a family than others; I tried writing a 39 clues fanfiction - which is kind of just collecting dust, as I haven't felt inspired to continue it - and the community seemed a lot more critical and not really as friendly. I'm glad it's better here!
Now, how about I stop my rambling and we get on to actual story? cx
He gives a light chuckle, and releases me as he steps back. Now, I get a good look at him, and he's just like I remember. He has icy blue eyes that chill the soul, and almost give you the feeling that he can see exactly what's going on inside your head. His black hair is a mess, but it's the drop-dead-gorgeous kind of mess that people - me included - think is attractive. He's dressed head to toe in black - which reminds me yet again of Jared, making my heart hurt even more - although unlike the first time I saw him, he doesn't have gloves or a cape. When I think about it, he almost looks like a normal person, except for the fact that he's dressed in black.
He chuckles at my comment. "You certainly have a tongue. But tell me, do you have claws?"
"I'd rather keep my life in tact for now." I cross my arms, looking Prince Teague in the eyes. "If I showed you those claws, I'd be signing my fate."
"Fair enough." He laughs for a moment, but then becomes rather serious. "Of course, you were fine with playing around with your life, what, five days ago? And if you wanted to keep your life in tact, you would've thought of that before you ran."
"You're going to kill me?" I swear I nearly have a heart attack. Jared said Prince Teague would be mad. But I never imagined he'd be mad enough to kill me!
"No." He shakes his head, and I let out a sigh of relief. "But you might wish I had."
That stops me dead in my tracks. "Jared wouldn't tell me what the Grimm curse entails. No one would. I just know it's going to be awful. What exactly is it...?"
"Patience, my dear Mina." I don't know how I feel about him calling me that. "Patience. You'll find out in due time what the final phase of the curse - the worst part - entails. But, for now, I believe you're to come with me." He extends a hand. "The question is, are you ready?"
I have a feeling he'll take me even if I say I'm not. "Yes."
Taking his hand, I can only hope that I haven't made a mistake.
Mina's Point of View
I swear I nearly puke when Prince Teague pulls me across the planes with the help of the seam ripper. It makes me sick, and as I hold my stomach I can hear him chuckle.
"I'd ask you if you're alright, but I can tell that you aren't." Still chuckling, he gives me a moment to compose myself - allowing him some time to stop being so amused as well - before he continues. "Seeing as you've been driving around for your entire sixteenth birthday, I'll leave this up to you. Would you rather go sleep, or celebrate a bit?"
"You mean I'm not starting the curse right away?" I ask, dumbfounded.
Teague looks shocked. "You must think that I'm cruel, if you think that I'd make you start right away." If I'm honest, I can't say that I don't think he's cruel, after what I've heard, but the time I actually met him he was really nice. "You get a day before you start, so generally speaking the girl in question starts at sun down after she arrives. Since you ran though, it's a bit shortened. Whenever you wake up tomorrow, we'll start."
"Fantastic." I mutter, biting my lip.
"It's not like I made you run." There seems to be more behind that statement, but I can't figure out what. So, I ignore it. "Now, back to my question. Would you rather go to sleep, or celebrate your birthday?"
"I'll take rest, thank you very much. It sounds like I'll need it." I respond, and Prince Teague grabs my hand.
"Alrighty then." With a snap of his fingers, we're no longer standing in the woods. Instead, we're standing in a luxurious, white room. Literally everything in it is white except for me and the Prince, who looks quite out of place in his black get up. "This is where you'll be sleeping. Tomorrow, I'll provide you with more suitable clothing for what you'll be going through."
And on that ominous note, he disappears, and I'm left to my own devices in here. I guess technically I could run, but I'm sure there's things in place to keep that from happening. Not that I would run. There's no point in it, seeing as I have nowhere to go. So, I flop down on the bed, and drift off to sleep.
"She knows too much, Mrs. Grimm." I sit on the stairs inside the Grimm mansion, listening intently to the conversation commencing. They don't realize I'm listening though. They think I'm sitting outside on the porch, waiting. Of course, I never intended on doing that, because he never wants to talk to my mother. The fact that he does makes me nervous. "I'm going to have to wipe her memory."
"And how much are you wiping, exactly?" My mother responds, and I'm not sure where to peg her response when it comes to the emotion.
I can almost hear the frown in his voice as he pauses. "I suppose wiping is the wrong word. I would just be...altering it. Ever since I've arrived, she's learned too much, and connected too many dots. She knows who I am, and I'm positive she'll figure out some way to use that to her advantage when things start to get tough. I don't need that sort of weakness. She can't remember that we ever had interactions before the normal two week point. We weren't even supposed to, but that stupid pixie interfered with it..."
"She's actually quite intelligent." My mother's reply shocks me.
Apparently, it shocks him too, because his response is frustrated. "Please tell me you weren't actually stupid enough to try and hire her to kill Mina."
"That child is nothing but a nuisance. I want her to be gone. Why can't you just have her taken now?" It stings, to hear my mom say that, and tears prick at my eyes.
"Because that's not the way this works! She has to be more grown up. And because you've gotten that pixie to become her official Godmother - and because I haven't managed to catch her since she tried to kill Mina - Charlie, your beloved son, will be mute. Not that he has really spoken very much already, but that was your fault, not mine." The angry response terrifies me even more than hearing about my memory possibly being altered, although even that is still only just starting to sink in.
"You can't do that!" My mom sounds like she's going to shriek, and I don't want to hear her do that. Siren Calls hurt my ear, even though when I get mad enough I can pull one off.
"Yes, actually, I can." The furious reply comes, and he adds, "I don't even care if I have your permission to alter her memories to not include me or not anymore. I'm going to do it either way."
"You act like it's to protect her. I think it's to protect her." My mom snaps at him, and then I hear footsteps.
Gray eyes meet mine as he turns the corner, and he runs a hand through his black hair, obviously shocked. "M-Mina? What are you doing inside?"
"You're going to alter my memory?" My voice quivers as I whisper the words to him.
"So you don't remember me. Yes." His response is quiet, and he takes my hand. "I'll be back though."
"You're my only friend!" I cry, throwing my arms around him. I may be thirteen, but I'm a child at heart.
He sighs, and a hand touches my head. "I have to do this though."
"Princ-" I don't get to finish the statement, because everything violently shifts and spins, and suddenly I'm not in my house anymore.
"Hello?" I call out, looking around me. I'm in a pitch black...room, I guess. Or space. Space seems safer, since I don't know what I'm in. "Is anyone there?"
A sort of twisted laugh hits the air, and I spin around, trying to find the source. I can't see anyone though, and I'll admit that I'm starting to panic. Who made that sound? My answer comes quickly, when someone behind me grabs my neck.
"I might've failed twice, but I won't this time." The hiss of Ever - who sounds much more frightening now - comes as she tightens her hold on my neck. "There's no one here to save you now, is there?"
"Please!" I choke out. "Please, somebody, save me!"
My vision starts to go black, and then she vanishes like smoke. I'm now standing in a field, where a beautiful, crystal clear stream bubbles. I walk over, smiling a little when I see it. But then, the water takes on a crimson quality, and I gasp. What just happened? When I turn my head, I can see there's somebody laying in the water. Is somebody injured?
I run over, and instantly I wish I hadn't as I sink to my knees, covering my mouth to try and muffle my scream. Nix is laying in the stream, coloring it red with the blood from a wound on his neck. His red hair is all wet, and that's not even showing his clothing.
As I begin to cry, I try to shake him. "Nix! Nix! Nix, answer me! Please!"
There's no response from him though, and then the stream bubbles into a river, pulling him away.
"No, Nix, no!" I scream, standing waste deep in the water as his body is ripped away. "Nix, come back! No! Please!"
I can feel myself starting to get dragged under, and gasp when my lungs fill with water. Lungs. Normally when I go underwater, my gills emerge. But they don't this time. I claw at my neck, trying to pull myself upwards. It doesn't work though, and I find that the more I try, the further down I go. When I try to scream, more water comes in.
Suddenly, air bursts in as I find myself in a room that seems to be made of gold, although there's practically nothing in it. There's a golden throne in the middle though, and someone is sitting in it. I can't see who though. I walk around slowly, and when I see who it is, I gasp.
"Miss me, love?" Templestiltskin stands up, dressed in gold like he was when I met him before.
"You!" I back up, but the walls of this room have suddenly come much closer, and the throne has disappeared. "Jared got rid of you!"
"So you hoped." He reaches out with an ungloved hand, touching the strand of hair he touched before. It turns to gold, and I cry out in pain, because this time it hurts. Actually, it doesn't just hurt. It burns. "But I'm afraid it will take a lot more than that to get rid of me."
Then, he touches my face. It feels like all of me is on fire, and slowly I find that I can move less and less. It's getting hard to breathe, and when I do, it hurts. I want to cry out, but I can't move my lips at all. My silent screaming fills my own ears, but no one else's.
And then, like everything else so far, the scene slips away, to be replaced with the lunch room at school. However, it looks like something you'd see in a horror game. The lights are mainly off, although there are a few flicking on and off here and there. The eerie silence fills the entire room, and it's almost suffocating. There's not a person in sight. I walk around the room, touching each table and frowning.
"Going somewhere, Grimes?" I turn around to be faced with none other but Savannah.
Except, she's not her typical 'Savannah looking' self. Her golden hair is a mess of tangles, looking more like a rat's nest than a brat's stunning hair. Her sapphire-colored eyes seem almost void of emotion. But what takes the cake is the deranged smile on her face. That just makes the whole 'creepy factor' go up from one hundred to a million.
"W-What's it to you?" The quiver in my voice causes me to back up a step, but Savannah just steps closer.
I can see now that she's closer that her mascara is running down her face, and her lipstick is a darkish purple that almost makes her lips look bruised. The creepy factor is climbing upwards. That's not to mention the cut above her left eye that I can now see. What on earth happened?
"Nothing." I frown when she says this. What? "Seeing as you won't be."
"Why do you say tha-" I don't get a chance to finish, because she punches me in the face, and it sends me spiraling through the wall.
I go plummeting downwards through the dark, and I try to scream when I do. At the speed I'm going though, I can't even hear it. So, I flail my arms instead, trying to figure out what I can do to slow my descent. Things fly past me - going up - almost like in Alice in Wonderland, but I can't manage to grab any. Tea cups, tables, pictures, flowers, a cow, and other things fly past, but they're all too fast. The one time I manage to grab a top hat, it slips right through my fingers, as if it's not even there. When I finally land, every part of me is screaming in pain. Again. That's a common theme right now, isn't it? Once again, I find myself in the Grimm house. This time, it's dead silent though. I'm standing at the top of the stairs that lead from the first floor down to the ground floor. Hesitant now, I creep down them, cringing at how loud they are. When I turn the corner, I scream again. My father is laying on the ground, like he was the day Prince Teague came.
This time, he's not dead yet, but he's on his last, dying breathe. And he uses it to say one thing, "This is your fault."
I sink to my knees as the light fades from his eyes, tears streaking my cheeks as my knees hit the cold, kitchen floor. "No! No, it's not! Please, Dad, I didn't mean for this to happen! I didn't choose any of it! Just come back! Make it better!"
"It's your fault, Wilhelmina. All of it." I hear her before I see her, and when I turn, there's my mother.
I begin to cry even harder, shaking my head. "N-No, no, it's not!"
"It is! You foolish, stupid, little girl. I wish you'd never even came into existence. You've brought nothing but misery upon my family." She's acting like I'm not even her's! "You are worthless trash and a pathetic excuse for a creature. You don't even belong on this plane, because you're fully Fae and you've never learned how to fit in. You have no friends. After all, who would want to be friends with a freakish nobody like you?"
"P-Please stop." I plead, shaking my head even harder.
A malicious glint entering her eyes, she opens her mouth to continue. And then, she falls down, and the entire ground swings down like a trapdoor from underneath me. While she and my father slip down, I find myself standing as if I'm still on the ground, even though it's definitely not underneath me. I don't dare move though, in case I do and I end up falling instead. Everything has turned black yet again.
"Hello up there!" I look down to find a small looking girl standing there. I can't make out the details though, and so I squat down to try and look better. Another, taller girl stands beside her, but she doesn't speak. Instead, the first girl calls up again, "Do you need help?"
"I-I'm not sure!" I call back.
After everything that's happened so far, I'm hesitant to approach anyone.
"Jump down!" The same girl calls. "I've done it myself! I promise, you'll be fine!"
So, far some reason unknown to me, I decide to believe her. I come flying downwards at a breathtaking speed, but when I land my legs crumble beneath me. The pain that crackles through them makes me aware that it's possible that I broke them. Not good.
Forcing myself to stand up, I turn around and scream. Again. The second girl is dangling from a noose in front of me, very much dead. Her pointed ears suggest that she's an elf, but I can't make out anymore details. Except for the dagger in her hands, which promptly disappears.
"Was that fun?" I turn around to find the first girl in front of me, and she's speaking. Up close, she doesn't look quite as pleasant. She's small, and I think she might be a dwarf. Or a gnome. "This will be just as fun."
She raise the dagger I saw just moments ago, and I scream. "Jared!"
The dagger plunges into my chest, and I fall to the ground. The gnome-dwarf-girl disappears like smoke, and I'm left lying there, watching myself bleed. And then, the world spins around me, causing me to almost puke, but I'm still in a pitch black room. The dagger disappears, as does all the blood. But I can still feel the wound. I force myself to stand up, but I'm quickly shoved back by someone. A boy, by the looks of it.
"Jared?" I don't scream this time. Instead, I ask it, almost nervous after everything I've been through. Did he come when I called for once?
The boy has black hair that I can barely make out in the light. He's dressed in a mixture of gray and black; he has a black t-shirt, gray pants, and black shoes. But I can't see his eyes, which confuses me. It's got to be Jared, hasn't it?
"I'm here." His voices echoes in the dark room I'm in.
"Oh, Jared, thank goodness!" I whisper in relief, but then I peer at him closer as light appears in his hands.
His eyes are certainly gray. But his hands are covered in flames, which are the source of the light, and I suddenly feel that Jared is not a safe person to rely on anymore. He steps closer, and when he does, I see his eyes shift in color. They become icy blue, causing me to try and scramble backwards. However, I'm frozen in my spot.
"Please go away." I whisper.
He just smirks in response. "I'm not going anywhere, Princess."
And then he lights me on fire. I let out a horrendous scream which is wordless at first and filled with pain. But, it slowly morphs into me screaming at him. "Prince Teague! Prince Teague, please! Stop!" I find that I can move, but I only manage to writhe in pain. I'm being burned in pain. "Prince Teague!"
At first, I think he's mocking me when he calls my name back. "Mina! Mina! Mina!" But then, it starts to sound more worried and concerned. "Mina! Mina, wake up!"
I jolt upwards, to find none other than Prince Teague sitting on my bed. I gasp, almost beginning to cry. Whether from fear from what I just experienced or from relief that none of it was real, I'm not sure.
I don't even give him a chance to speak. "It was just a dream?"
"Yes." He nods his head, and I can see sunlight streaming through the windows. "I heard a scream, and so I came as fast as I could. It took me forever to manage to wake you up though. I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to, after I failed to the first few minutes."
"You heard me?" My cheeks go a little pink.
"Indeed I did, Princess." He grins a little. "You scream pretty loudly."
That makes my heart stop short, and my mind thinks back to the first part of my dream, and then the last. "Where did you hear that?"
He pauses before answering. "What do you mean?"
"You're him! You're Jared! All along, you were him! You purposefully crashed the car! You convinced me to run away to see if I would do it! All of this was a set up! I trusted you!" I begin to cry, shaking. "You were toying with me!"
"Come on, Mina." He doesn't respond to any of my accusations. "It's time to start the Grimm curse."
"You despicable creature." I shake my head, feeling a mixture of sadness and anger.
"Come on." He says it a bit more forcefully this time, taking my arm and leading me along to a room.
On the pedestal in the room is the Grimorie. I saw him - Jared, who apparently is Prince Teague - suck Templestiltskin into that. I assume he sucked Ever inside too. No wonder it's here. But why am I looking at it?
"You're going in there." He says it simply, but my heart stops.
This is too much to take in at once. "What?"
"You heard me." He responds, obviously not wanting to repeat it.
"You can't put me in there! People who want to kill me are in there!" I'm beginning to despair.
"This is your curse." He says. "You either find a way out alive, or you die in there. I'll know what happens the moment it does either way."
I don't get a chance to formulate a protest, because he picks up the book, and opens it. It seems to respond to his will, and the light I saw when he used it on Templestiltskin crawls out, creeping towards me. I run for the door, but with Fae Magic he shuts it. I'm trapped, and I think we both know it. So, I decide to be brave, and instead of cowering like a coward as I wait for it to get me, I walk into the light, although it is quite bright. It grabs a hold of me quite tightly, dragging me towards the book. And then? It begins to drag me upwards, no doubt to pull me into the book.
Everything goes black when it tries that.
Woah, wait, what? That's a lot to take in! Prince Teague can be nice sometimes? And what about that crazy nightmare? Did it mean anything? And wait, Jared is Prince Teague? And woah, Mina has to go in to the Grimorie for the curse, and she has to figure a way out? That's crazy!
I hope you guys enjoyed the crazy long chapter, and pleas review! This will be the last update for a bit, but you guys should check out some of my other stories! (Shameless advertising, I know) I'll be updating Killer of My Heart - as I've mentioned before - for a week now. c:
Until next time! Let me know what you guys think of this chapter, and any reactions or suspicions you guys have!
~ Dagger