Forever (11 page)

Chapter 12

While Ever and Nix positioned
the mirrors in her bedroom, Mina and Nan threw things into suitcases as quickly
and quietly as they could. Charlie only woke up once, and that was when they
were shuffling him out to Nan’s Volkswagen beetle. When he saw Mina, he
immediately closed his eyes and started crying.

He was mentally exhausted,
and she felt terrible about it. She stopped in the middle of the yard and
wrapped her arms around him. “Listen up, bud. Nan is going to take care of you.
You’re going off on an adventure together. You like adventures, don’t you?”

Charlie’s head bobbed yes.

“Well, she’s got the best one
planned, and when you get back, we will have this all figured out. Okay? Can
you do this for me? Can you listen to Nan and be a good kid?”

Charlie sniffed and looked
over to Nan, who sat back watching them. Hands shoved in her coat pockets, her
head dipping down. Nan was crying as well.

Charlie let go of Mina and
walked over to Nan, sliding his smaller hand into hers. He smiled wanly up at
her and said. “I’ll protect Nan.”

Nan looked at their clasped
hands, and the tears flowed freely.

“Ah, little buddy.” She met
Mina’s eyes, her voice filled with promise. “You know I’d give my life for him.
You know that right?”

“That’s why it has to be
you.”

“You give the word, and we’ll
be back,” Brody said as he packed their sleeping bags into the back of the car.
She never had any doubt that once he knew what Nan was doing, he’d go with and
watch over her. That was why Mina needed to get Nan to agree before she told
Brody.

“You have to go quickly.”
Mina tried not to look at her watch in front of them.

They had spent hours packing
and getting ready for this trip. She had only a few hours left. She wanted her
friends far away. She didn’t want Teague to stop her—or to find them if
he changed his mind.

Nan opened the car door, and
Mina buckled Charlie into the backseat and ran her hand over his hair. He’d
need a haircut soon, and his birthday was coming up. She hoped she’d be alive
to celebrate with him. She had packed his suitcase with clothes, jackets, and
his favorite toys—even his
Star
Wars
light saber.

“I love you, Charlie,” Mina
whispered as she gave him one last hug and kissed his forehead.

“Love you back,” he whispered
with a bear hug.

She wouldn’t have let him go
ever, except that he was the one who let go of her first. She wrapped the
blanket from the sofa around him, and his head started to droop. Exhaustion was
catching up with all of them.

“You’ll explain everything to
him, right?” Tears fell down Mina’s cheeks as she softly closed the back door.

“I wouldn’t have to if you’d
let us stay to help.” Nan’s blue eyes were glassy but on fire with
determination.

Mina shook her head. “You
know this is for the best.” Mina closed the passenger door, but Nan rolled the
window down.

“I’ll take care of them,”
Brody said across the roof of the car. “And I’ll find a way for you to get a
hold of us if you need to.”

“Don’t tell me. It’s best if
I don’t know.”

“Mina, it’s just…” Brody
trailed off.

“It’s okay. I’ll always love
you, just not the way you deserve. But Nan will.”

Those words seemed like the
confirmation that Brody needed. He came around the car and pulled Mina into a
hug. “Be safe.”

He was going to make her cry.
Mina gently pulled away, “You need to go. Get them somewhere safe.”

He climbed into the driver’s
seat and started up. Nan leaned forward and waved as he backed her car up and
drove down the driveway. Mina watched the taillights until she could no longer
see them in the darkness. She knew the car would turn left, away from town and
onto the highway.

She stood frozen in the
middle of her driveway. Tears poured freely down her face. Her knees buckled
beneath her, and she collapsed onto the gravel. It was for the best, she kept
trying to tell herself.

But if it was for the best,
why did it feel like she’d just ripped out another part of her soul?

The screen door slammed, and
Nix stepped outside. “Mina? What’s wrong?” He rushed to her side.

“He’s gone,” she whispered
sadly.

“Who?”

“Charlie.” She sniffed, wiped
at her eyes, and slowly stood up to face Nix.

“How’d this happen? I promise
we’ll get him back.” His voice grew angry, but he gathered her into a hug.

Mina took comfort from his
hug but gently pulled away. “No. We won’t.” She watched his eyes frown in
confusion. “I sent him away.”

“What?”

“It’s better this way. I
begged Nan to take him away, and Brody went with.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Wrong,” Ever’s voice cut in.
“It’s exactly what she should have done. She was smart.” She had come out to
stand on the porch and listen. “She’s cutting her losses, before Teague can use
them against her. She’s thinking of what’s ahead. And this war is no place for
a young Fae boy that just lost his mother.”

Nix scowled. “There could
have been another way.” He reached for Mina’s arm, but she wrenched it free and
took a step back.

“I just lost my mother,” Mina
hissed between clenched teeth. “I almost lost all of you. I’m not about to lose
my brother. He’s the only family I have left. Don’t judge me. You would have
done the same thing, if you were in my position.”

Nix stared at her, his eyes
filled with pity. “No, I wouldn’t have.”

“I guess that makes you
better than me.” She didn’t really mean it, but it was easy to lash out when
she was in so much pain. She stormed inside, away from Nix’s pity and Ever’s
shock.

Mina stormed up the stairs to
her room. Locking the door, she pressed her back to it and tried to hold in the
sobs that threatened to tear her chest apart.

She moved toward her bed,
trying to ignore the plethora of mirrors that now surrounded her room. She
pulled back the covers, and something soft slid to the floor, landing with a
thunk. Mina picked up the petal dress she had worn to the ball the other night
and felt along the side for the hidden pocket. Her hand reached in and pulled
out the dagger.

She dropped it to the floor
and stared at it. She’d forgotten that she slipped it in there. It wasn’t the
sight of the dagger that startled her. It was the rust colored spots of
Teague’s dried blood on it.

She wiped it off as best as
she could, placed the dagger in her bedside table, and shut the drawer. Mina
crawled under the comforter and rolled over to stare across the room and into
the mirror that faced her bed.

He was winning. The Story was
winning, and she was losing the will to fight. She heard knocking on her
bedroom door but ignored it. She needed to mourn, to sink into her feelings and
feel the pain, the betrayal, and the anger. Anger at her mother, anger at
herself. When she had thought through every scenario, it always came down to
what was best for her brother.

She was down to two hours
when a crazy idea came to her. She climbed out of bed and got dressed. This
time, she was going over-prepared. She changed into jeans, boots, a white
t-shirt, and her olive green jacket. In her backpack, she loaded food, water,
and a flashlight. She looked at her nightstand, debating on whether to bring
the dagger. She needed a weapon, but having one on her might make her life
forfeit sooner than she had planned. When she was as packed as she could be,
she grabbed the seam ripper from the top of her dresser.

There was more to using the
seam ripper than just opening up a gate between the planes. With enough
willpower, maybe she could direct where it opened a gate. How else could she
explain her fall from the tower to land in Wilhelm Grimm’s hospital room? Or
how Queen Maeve was able to zone in on her and show up wherever Mina was with
the seam ripper.

Now, it was Mina’s turn to do
some popping-in-uninvited of her own.

She held the silver
lipstick-sized tube and clicked the small gem.
The Fates. Take me to the Fates.

The seam ripper glowed, and
she drew a large oval, creating a gate between her world and the Fae one
outside of the mirror-circle. The portal glowed, and she tried to look through
to the other side.

Worry and doubt wedged
themselves in the bottom of her stomach, but Mina pushed those feelings aside.
She needed help, and she wasn’t going to sit back and let her friends do all
the work.

Taking a deep breath, Mina
closed her eyes and stepped through the gate.

Chapter 13

It was night, and Mina was
not surrounded by the normal sweet aroma of the Fae plane, but by an odorous
sulfur-like smell that burned her nose and made her gag.

“Ugh.” Mina covered her nose
with her shirt. Had she ended up in the wrong place? Was she even on the Fae
plane? She would have doubted it, but she looked up at the night sky and saw
continually moving stars above. The Fae plane could be as fantastic as stories
made it out to be, but it was also as deadly—with sea witches, giants,
trolls, ogres and more. She couldn’t let her guard down for one second.

She pulled her small
flashlight out of her backpack and began walking. Mina didn’t get far before
she slipped and sunk into mud. She struggled to regain her footing on the path,
but then the very next step, she was knee deep in the mud again.

She flashed the light around
in an arc to see that she was surrounded by swamp and curly green grass. Maybe
it hadn’t worked? Maybe trying to direct the seam ripper had failed. She wasn’t
anywhere near the Fates’ palace. She was in the middle of a stinking swamp.

The hair on the back of her
neck stood on end. The odd chirping and grunting noises of the swamp creatures
suddenly stopped. All was silent, except the slushing and sucking noises she
made as she tried to free herself from the mud and get onto the path. Once in
the grass, she froze and crouched low, listening in fear as she tried to
silence her frantic breathing.

After a minute of silence,
Mina stood up and carefully continued her trek through the swamp grass. A
squelch and popping sound followed each of her steps, but something warned her
to move, to run. Mina tried, but suddenly slid waist-deep into water. She tried
to wade through it, but she was too late.

Lights exploded around her,
blinding her. She was unable to blink or even cover her eyes from the onslaught
of the bright light. But that was their way of keeping her from seeing them.

She could hear voices, see
shadows move beyond the light, but she couldn’t identify her captors.

“So you have returned, have
you?” A woman’s voice echoed with authority through the swamp. “Do you see the
mess you have caused, child?”

Mina couldn’t see her, but
she recognized the voice of Queen Maeve. The balls of light dimmed, and she
could see the queen standing in front of her. Her dark brown dress lacked the
finer adornments and was a sharp contrast to the shimmering silver colors she
preferred. Her hair was plaited in a long simple braid down her back. King
Lucian came up next to her in similar clothes in earth tones.

Mina suspected it was to help
camouflage them in the swamps. She wasn’t sure, but she had a feeling that they
weren’t here by choice. They were hiding.

The hold on Mina’s body
lessened, and without the support of the power holding her in place, she
slipped and fell into the muddy water, barely catching herself before her head
went under. She stood up to face the Fates and tried to keep her body from
shaking with the cold.

“I came to ask for help.”

Queen Maeve barked a derisive
laugh. “Help! I blame you for this.” She waved her hand to the swamp around
her. “This is our home now, thanks to you. All you had to do was stay on the
human plane, never let him cross back over. But now we’re doomed.” Her regal
face crumpled, and Lucian slipped his arms around his wife.

“Now, now, darling.
Everything will be alright,” he whispered softly to her.

“What happened?” Mina asked.
“Why are you in the swamp?”

“Because of our son,” Lucian
answered. “He’s too powerful. Even our armies. He controls them all now, the
giants, griffins, ogres, trolls. We dare not go up against him and what’s left
of our royal guard alone. This is all that is still loyal to us.”

The Fae light around her
dimmed. Beyond the Fates, about twenty or so soldiers from the palace stood in
the nearby reeds. Their uniforms and armor were covered with mud and starting
to rust. They looked tired and worn out. Not fit to storm the palace and fight
Teague. Among them, she recognized Captain Plaith. But their numbers were
dismal.

“What do we do now?” Mina
asked.

“We?” Queen Maeve scoffed.
“You’ve done enough.”

“Now, Maeve,” Lucian
chastised.

She gave him a seething look.
“I wouldn’t trust that human any more than I’d trust a sea witch.”

“Well, she can’t be all
human. You saw how the bowl reacted to her in the test. She’s strong, and…
ahem… our son has a fondness for the girl. She could be our only hope.”

“You once came to me for
help,” Mina reminded the Fates. “When the Grimoire ended up in the hands of a
renegade Reaper, you sent me after it to protect a part of your son.”

“That Reaper would have
destroyed him—or worse, reunited him with himself.”

“But I saved him, at least a
part of him.”

“You were the one who turned
him into the beast that he is now! He wasn’t like this until that night in the
tower. That night that you poisoned our son against us.”

“You don’t know what happened,
do you?”King Lucian turned to her, looking extremely interested. “What exactly
happened?”

“He was stabbed with the
dagger of Erjad, and he was dying, but I healed him… Only I didn’t know that a
piece of the dagger was still inside. It changed him and turned him into…” She
trailed off, not needing to say any more about their son.

“And how did this dagger end
up in our son? You were the one who was with him.” King Lucian’s eyes glowed,
and Mina felt pressure around her throat. She grasped at the power that began
to strangle her.
So that’s where Teague
got his temper.

Her mouth opened and closed
as she tried to breathe. She looked at the king’s glowing eyes, and she wasn’t
afraid. She closed her own eyes and imagined his power snapping back on the
king like a rubber band. She felt the power break.

King Lucian cried out in
pain. He gasped, looking at her in awe. “How did you do that?” A small smile
formed at the corner of his lips. “You used my own power against me.”

Mina ignored the king,
rubbing at her throat. She stared directly at Queen Maeve and said two words.
“The Godmothers.”

Queen Maeve sighed and rubbed
her forehead. “I wondered. They’ve always had it out for the ruling family. But
they used to be mere pests, with the occasional assassination attempt. They
believe we are evil dictators.”

Mina raised an eyebrow and
scoffed. “Do you blame them? Look what’s come to pass. They acted based on a
prophecy that foretold all of this. Do you know what it’s like to watch your
loved ones being hunted—toyed with—only to fall victim to mindless
quests? In fact, they
weren’t
quests.
They were traps. You
never
intended
to break the curse over my family.”

“Of course not. Teague was
set on destroying your family, no matter what we did. We could neither stop him
nor close the gates between the planes—not when our son was on the human
plane.

Tears of frustration filled
Mina’s eyes. “Well, you should have. He would have been happy—at least a
part of him would have. I would have seen to that. And then Teague wouldn’t have
killed my family.”

“Perhaps there is truth in
what you say. But it’s too late for that now,” Queen Maeve admitted sadly.

“What about splitting him
again?” Mina asked, her voice filled with desperation.

“We never wanted him split.
Just his powers bound.”

“The first who attempted and
failed now sleeps in stone at the bottom of the lake.” King Lucian’s voice
carried an edge of anger, and Mina couldn’t help but wonder if he referred to
the siren.

“The second Fae split him
into two. Although she didn’t fail, she didn’t do what we asked. That sprite
was not who she said she was, and we banished her to the human plane,” Queen
Maeve said.

“Oh,” Mina said sadly.

“Even if we were able to
split him again, there’s no guarantee that Teague’s personality would divide down
the same path. You could end up with two different personas of the current
Teague,” the queen said sadly. “And as dangerous and unpredictable as he is,
I’m not sure that’s worth the risk.”

“Plus he would never let us
get that close to him again,” King Lucian said. “We barely escaped with our
lives at our last encounter. You on the other hand…” His voice trailed off as
he studied her thoughtfully.

“How?” Mina asked. “You’re
the ruling Fates. How did one boy overpower the both of you?”

Queen Maeve looked pained at
the question. She brought her finger up to her lips and made a shushing noise.
“Follow us.”

She beckoned Mina to follow
her through the reeds. A few feet away, the grass parted before the Fates, mud
slurping out of the way, reeds bending backward to clear a path so they could
move to an area outside of the swamp. They walked to a grove of willow trees.

King Lucian pulled the low
hanging branches apart and let his wife enter the shelter of one, and then
Mina. As Mina passed through, she could hear the faint sound of crying.

Apparently, in the Fae plane,
the willows really did weep. Mina had never seen a weeping willow so large or
beautiful. Its long, hanging branches appeared more white than green as they
formed a swaying rooftop.

Within the protection of the
boughs, King Lucian waved his hand, and gold magic wove up and around the tree,
encasing them within a cage of power.

“No!” Mina rushed to the
side, but King Lucian stopped her.

“Don’t touch the ward. You
will be instantly killed.”

Those words didn’t make her
feel any safer. She pulled away from the king and stood awkwardly in the center
of the cage.

“It’s only a sound barrier to
keep prying ears from hearing,” Queen Maeve
 
waved her hand, and silver willow
branches slowly dropped from above to form a small swing for the queen to sit
in. She smoothed out her skirts and watched her husband expectantly.

King Lucian rubbed his beard
and nodded. He prepared to sit on air, when a large purple mushroom formed
beneath him, creating the perfect stool.

Mina felt a little bit
perturbed that no one offered her a seat, but why should they? They were the
Fates. They created their own seats. Using anger more than common sense, Mina
focused on a small blue flower. Envisioning what she had in mind, she felt the
prickle of power come to her and pushed it toward the flower.

She couldn’t hold back the
smirk when the flower grew and morphed—not into just a larger version of
itself. Three of the petals grew exponentially larger, one creating the back
and two others forming armrests. Mina didn’t just create for herself a chair to
sit on in front of the Fates. She went so far as to challenge them by
fashioning herself a flower throne. She was about to sit on her throne when she
noticed how covered in mud she was.

Well, that wouldn’t do. She
pushed the power and made the mud disappear from her clothes. Then, crossing
her legs, she settled back in the throne and waited.

King Lucian laughed. “Well
done. Well done, girl. I see you have not only power, but sass. I like that. I
like that very much.”

Queen Maeve just shook her
head at her husband’s verbal adoration.

“You were about to say?” Mina
prompted them with a nod of her head. Her smile did not dim in the light of the
king’s laughter.

“What we are about to tell
you cannot leave this tree.” Queen Maeve warned, her voice threatening.

Mina would have none of it.
She leaned forward on her throne, her voice matching the queen’s with its own
threat. “One of your Death Reapers took my mother. I make no such promises. I’m
here for revenge. I’m not worried about wounding your pride.”

This time it was Maeve’s turn
to look shocked but pleased. “Very well. But you must know this is very
sensitive information we are going to share.”

“Then why share it with me?”
Mina asked. “Especially if you blame me for what happened to your son.”

Queen Maeve stilled her eyes,
slowly closing them with barely hidden anger. “Even though I may not trust you,
and despite what the Godmothers believe, we do care for our people. And you,
child, can save not only your world but ours as well.”

“How exactly can I do that?”

King Lucian crossed his arms
and spoke slowly. “We are chosen as the Fates, because we are the most powerful
Fae. We marry into powerful lineages to protect our line.”

“That’s why you have the
tests,” Mina answered.

“Exactly,” the king said.
“But if one far stronger than us comes to power, they can wrest that title from
us. Our son was strong, the Fae magic almost too much for him to handle. He
feared he would lose control of the power. We had hoped that by finding his
match, it would help balance him, and one day the pair would become the Fates.
But in his fury, he has taken that from us all on his own. He is now the lone
Fate, and with that title he holds control of the army.”