Reign (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale Book 4) (13 page)

Mina kept her eyes on the ground and
followed, only pausing when she thought she heard something. It sounded like
the troll had spoken—but that was impossible.

His lips were sealed shut.

Looking at the troll from the side wasn’t
as dangerous as a straight on. So Mina stopped and looked at the monster. He
hadn’t changed since she’d seen him a few months ago. More of his face had
turned to stone, but his eyes still moved.

He blinked a few times and tried to turn
his head to look at her. The sound came again. It
was
coming from the troll.

Mina stepped closer, keeping just out of
his line of sight. He was trying to speak to her. She leaned in to listen as
the troll tried again.

“Soooooon!” the troll hissed.

Chapter 13

That one word made Mina’s whole body
quake in terror. No one else seemed to hear the troll’s veiled threat since
they had moved on and down the hall. She picked up her pace and joined the rest
of the group.

Constance stopped in front of a large
bolted door surrounded with golden seals. “Before you go, Mina, there is
something I need to mention.” The Fae music teacher turned to look toward Ever,
Nan, and Nix. “You are taking on the responsibility of deciding how much you
want to endanger your friends. Do you understand that?”

Mina swallowed but nodded. It was a hefty
burden, but at least they’d be together. If she left them here, she had no idea
what they’d face. And they wouldn’t know what she was up against either.

Constance raised her hand, and a glow
emanated from her palm. The seals mirrored the glow until Mina heard a set of
clicks and the sound of metal sliding into its casing. Constance pushed the
door open, and a soft white light poured from within.

“Come,” she beckoned. Nan hesitated only
a second before entering.

Mina, Ever, and Nix followed and spread
out to surround a small glass table which held on it an inscribed and gilded
wooden box.

Constance waited until the door behind
them had completely closed before she spoke. “Nix please lock the door, I need
to put up a ward so nothing escapes.”

He turned the deadbolt on the door and Constance—Mrs.
Colbert—sang a scale of disharmonic notes. The letters on the box lit up,
and Mina heard another click as if the box had unlocked.

Nan looked scared, but her curiosity got
the better of her. “Escape? What’s go—”

Nan froze. Mrs. Colbert finished waving
her hand in the air and let it fall to her side.

“What did you do? Unfreeze her now!” Mina
rushed to her friend and checked to see if she’d been harmed.

“She’s fine and will unfreeze momentarily.
We just need a minute without her to discuss our terms before we proceed.”

Mrs. Colbert gently opened up the lid and
then pulled the sides open to reveal a hundred small compartments, each covered
with a unique symbol. Her fingers flowed across each of them as she searched
for the one she wanted.

“Aha!” she said softly. As she pulled
open the small compartment, a tendril of light began to trickle out of the box.
She wound it around her finger, and it solidified into a small golden charm.
Quickly, she closed the drawer, as another tendril of light wanted to escape
after the first one.

“What is that?” Mina asked, wondering if
these were the charms her mom wore.

“Pandora’s box,” Mrs. Colbert answered,
walking toward Nan with her hand outstretched.

“Like the Greek myth? Where Pandora
opened the box to release all of the evil into the world. Is that the same
box?”

“No, that box was destroyed. Since then,
Pandora has tried to make up for her transgression by collecting the strongest and
best attributes in the box as a way to make amends. We’ve been the protectors
of this box for over a century now. This is Pandora’s jewelry box.”

Nix moved over to stand closer to the
box, highly interested in the other symbols, his lips moving as he read them.
Ever kept to the edges of the room as she watched in silence. She had her arms
crossed in front of her and leaned against the wall, pretending she wasn’t
interested in what was happening.

But Mina could tell. She was as curious
as Nix.

“It took many years, but we were able to add
locks to each compartment.” Constance approached Mina and leaned down to speak
quietly with her. “The Guild and I have spoken. We listened to your request for
help, and we’ve voted in your favor.”

“Meaning?”

“We’ve decided to allow you one.”

“One?”

“Yes, you are allowed to tell one human.
We will allow only one to know of our existence. Other than your immediate
family of course...and your Fae friends.” She looked over at Ever and Nix.

Mina was quiet for a second,
contemplating how wrong all of this was. There were hundreds of Fae that knew
about her, but she could only tell one human person. She had already told Brody
and now Nan knew. She was already over her allotted human limit. “What happens
if I want to tell more?”

Constance shook her head. “We can’t allow
that. We would have to erase their memories ourselves. Any more and they become
a liability to us, to you— to all Fae. So I have to ask you now…” She
held out the small gold charm in the shape of an anchor. “Is Nan Taylor your
one?”

Mina’s eyes flew to Nix who leaned back
in surprise. He pinched his lips tightly, signaling that he wouldn’t say
anything about Brody knowing. Now—when they were locked into a magic room
with Pandora’s box—was not the time to argue. But this clearly made him
even more interested in the box full of charms.

When Mina hesitated, Constance added,
“Because if she’s not, we need to erase her memories before she leaves this
room. And unfortunately, we aren’t as skilled as the Fates in doing it.”

Her veiled threat made Mina rush out her
answer. “Yes, yes. She’s my one.”

“Okay then. The Guild will be happy to
hear you’ve chosen.” She waved her hand and Nan picked up right where she left
off.

“—ing to escape?”

“Nothing that you need to worry about.
Here, Nan. Take this charm and wear it, but do not ever take it off.” She
pressed the small key-shaped charm into her hand. “It will help unlock your
memories and keep them from being altered in the future.”

Nan looked at the little golden key
charm. “Sweet.” She lifted it up in the air and promptly dropped it. The charm
slipped across the floor. “Oops.”

Nix moved away from Pandora’s box and reached
down to pick up the runaway charm. He handed it to Nan, shooting Mina a disappointed
look.

Mina understood. If the Guild caught
her—she’d just chosen her best friend over Brody. They would once again
be back to square one in their relationship. But in that moment, she’d had to
make a choice.

She would just have to make sure the
Guild didn’t find out.

Mina was silent and despondent as Constance
led them back to the main hall. Nan seemed as chipper as Mina had expected and
took everything in great stride. She had a spring in her step. It also helped
that Nan held onto the charm and continued to rub her finger over it like it
was a good luck token.

“I’m to bring you to the hall of mirrors,”
Constance said.

“Ooh! Sounds interesting,” Nan smiled and
came over to squeeze Mina’s arm.

The hall of mirrors was a white circular
room filled with mirrors of all shapes and sizes. Mina had been in there once
before. With Jared.

The door they entered disappeared into
the white wall, making it almost impossible to detect in the rounded room. The
mirrors covered almost every square inch. One was the size of a small moving
truck with an illegible plaque next to it. Many had ornate frames of gold or
silver; a few had simple wood frames.

Mina walked past an antique mirror, the
glass now cloudy with dust. There was no shadow of movement behind it and she
briefly wondered if that was because the Grimm it watched had passed on. There
was no reason to clean a mirror if you weren’t looking into it every day.

Usually she could see at least the barest
glimmer of a silver shadow before it came into focus. But now she noticed more
mirrors had no movement behind them. They were just lifeless.

She was drawn to her own looking glass, a
smaller handled mirror that hung on hooks on the wall across from them. It took
only a moment after her finger brushed the surface for her image to appear in
her mirror. This time she didn’t look around searching for the hidden cameras.

Nan had moved over to a large mirror to
check her reflection. She was studying the spot on her forehead where there’d
previously been a cut, but jumped in surprise when someone else’s image
reflected back at her.

Mina turned to see who was in there. A
large man in his fifties, wearing a suit, sat eating a bratwurst at his dinner
table. The colors of the kitchen and the cabinetry didn’t look American. It
must be one of the distant Grimms over in Germany or Europe somewhere.

Something moved near the edge of the
frame, catching Mina’s eye. A little brown mouse perched precariously on a wooden
ledge, watching the goings on in the mirror closely.

Nan waved her hand in front of the man’s
face but nothing happened. “Hey. Hey you!” The man continued eating, oblivious
to the fact that he was being watched in the mirror. “This is so creepy.”

Nix had apparently never been in the
mirror room and was writing in the dust on all of the old mirrors. When he
walked away, they read NIX in capital letters.

“Why’d you do that?” Nan asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Now they will
have to be cleaned.”

“Dork,” Nan rapped his shoulder
playfully.

“Sprunk.” Nix answered, his face lighting
up.

Nan looked taken aback. “I don’t even
know what that is.”

“And you think I know what a dork is?”

“Ha, ha. Very funny. That is exactly
something a dork would say.”

“Not only are you a Sprunk, but you’re a
Feeter too!”

Her eyes went wide, and she called out in
a whiny voice, “Ever?”

Ever held up her hands. “Don’t drag me
into this name-calling game, or both of you will lose.”

Just then, Mei entered the hall of the
mirrors, rejoining them.

Constance moved to a small door near the
floor and gave a slight knock. The door opened, and a little white mouse
wearing spectacles and a blue robe stepped out.

“Hello, Constance, Mina, and friends,”
the small mouse said in greeting. His high-pitched voice was soft and squeaky.
Nan squeezed Mina’s arm in unbidden excitement at seeing the talking mouse. He quickly
ran up the closest frame, perched at eye-height for Constance.

“Hello, Baynard. What is our current
situation?”

Baynard rubbed his small paws over his
eyes and adjusted his glasses. “It’s not good, not looking very good at all.
They’re disappearing at random.” He ran across the frame and crawled up a wire
to the frame around another mirror. “Our sources say that this one is next.” It
happened to be the same mirror that Nan had been looking into earlier. Baynard
hopped onto the same ledge as the little brown mouse, who moved over so he
could sit by her.

“What’s going on?” Concern gripped Mina.
Were the Grimms disappearing?

Constance rubbed her hands together and
then pressed them to her lips. “We’re not sure, but once we heard Mina’s
concern about her brother, the Guild has been monitoring the other Grimms more
closely. We’ve noticed that they are fading.”

Mina’s heart beat a little faster at that
word. Fading?

“The watchers seem to have discovered a
pattern.”

“What kind of pattern?” Nix asked, moving
to get a better view of the mirror everyone was now crowding around.

Baynard nodded his head and looked at a
small pad of paper that the brown mouse held up for him to see. “We don’t know
for sure that it’s a pattern, but all of our research points to Leonard Grimm
as the next one.”

“Next one to do what?” Mina asked,
feeling extremely anxious. She wondered what in the world Constance meant by
“fading,” but now wasn’t the time to ask. Everyone was busy watching Leonard.

Mina wanted answers, and grew more
frustrated by the second. She was bored with watching this distant relative eat
his dinner. He had polished off his sausage and was now working on the
sauerkraut. He burped, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and then speared another
sausage for his plate. He began cutting the sausage and stabbed a piece on his
fork.

Mina’s stomach was queasy just watching
him eat, and she wanted to turn away, to look anywhere else. But everyone seemed
to be waiting for something. So she watched the silver tined meat-bearing
instrument head to his mouth and those fat greasy lips.

The fork never reached Leonard’s mouth.