Reign (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale, #4)(23)

Nan sat next to her wearing red skinny jeans and a chevron striped shirt with bangles up her left arm. Her blonde hair flowed down her back, and she looked angelic, with the sunrays coming through the bus windows making her hair glimmer.

Night and day. Dark and light. Fae and Human. Her two friends, worlds apart yet so similar. Mina sighed and ran her hands up and down her sensible denim shorts and Dead Prince Society shirt. This one was a faded gray with black letters, which were perfect with her gray All-Star shoes. Mina didn’t curl her hair, but let it hang loose in ponytail over her left shoulder.

“Um…that one.” Nan gestured with her head toward the front of the bus where a gentleman in a suit sat reading a paper.

“You sure?” Ever pulled the glasses down to zero in on her target.

“Yep,” Nan answered.

“Child’s play.” Ever flicked her finger toward the man and then quickly turned away.

Not Nan. Nan leaned forward and watched as the newspaper flew out of the man’s hands and scattered across the bus floor. He quickly jumped up and tried to pick up the pieces before they were stepped on by the oncoming passengers.

“Well, then you pick one,” Nan whispered trying to not laugh or look in the man’s direction.

“Fine, but see if you can catch me doing it.” Ever smiled and waited for the new passengers to enter the bus and find seating. When the bus had closed its doors and pulled off again, she picked her victim.

At first Mina couldn’t see what Ever was doing. But then she saw that a plump red-haired woman reading a very large hardcover book was having issues turning the page. The exasperated woman gripped the back of the book and tried to separate the page she’d just finished from the ones in the back. It held.

She picked at it with her nail. Still nothing.

The woman put the book on her lap, and all of a sudden, all of the pages started flipping. They stopped at the last page.

She stuttered out in surprise but looked relieved that the pages turned. Until she realized she couldn’t get the book to open from the beginning.

“She doesn’t need to be reading those kind of books anyway,” Ever said. The woman exited the bus at the next stop, and the girls watched her throw the book in the nearest dumpster. “That’s right. The end.” Ever smiled.

“That was so cool!” Nan fawned a bit, and Ever shrugged her shoulders.

“It seemed kind of mean,” Mina said.

“Eh, it’s not that great a book. I’ve read it. She’ll thank me for saving her five hours of her life. The main character dies in the end.”

The bus dropped them off three blocks from Lacey’s Boutique. And Mina had just explained about the Grimoire and the curse.

Nan frowned, “So does it strictly deal with the Grimm tales?”

Ever nodded her head. “Most of the time, yes. They’ve gotten harder over time, though, because they morph as they unfold. Truthfully, I’m not sure even if Mina finished the tales that the quests or demands would stop.”

“Why would you say that?” Mina asked, feeling sucker punched. She hadn’t expected someone to come right out and say there was no way to beat the curse.

“Well, because I remember where I come from. I know what it’s like on the Fae plane. I knew him before he was—” she made a splitting motion with her hands. “When that happened, I chose to follow his good side here.”

“Ever, can you tell me about it?” Mina asked.

Her teary eyes flashed in anger, and she shook her head at Mina.

“Pretty please with pixie dust,” Nan begged. Mina was irritated when Ever gave in to Nan’s request.

“Back then he was just Teague. He was betrayed by someone he cared about. The betrayal tore him apart on the inside. It brought out the worst in him. He was extremely powerful, and the Fae feared for their lives. He was obsessed with opening gates to the human world and sending the Reapers. Then he turned them on his own people.”

Nan shook her head. Mina wondered if this was hard to believe.

Ever’s eyes looked sad. “Even the Fates didn’t know how to make the pain stop. Truthfully, I think his heart was already in two before the sprite split him.”

“Well,” she continued, “all this happened right before the Grimm Brothers made their appearance on the Fae plane. The King and Queen had their hands full with keeping Teague from destroying the kingdom and then to add a portal between the two worlds? It spelled bad news for both sides. They just came up with the quests to distract the brothers from their larger problem: what to do with Teague and Jared.”

“So they never intended to keep their promise,” Mina deduced.

“I don’t know what they intended. I’m not a Royal, okay? I only know this…because I was living at the palace at the time.” Ever was clearly irritated, rolling her eyes. “I just know that the sprite split him into two parts and bound them to two books or something. They sent the Grimoire and Jared to the human plane with the Grimm brothers, without them ever knowing what they had. And they kept Teague in the Fae plane. Teague and Jared could travel back and forth between the worlds, but only a Grimm could return the book to the Fae plane.”

“I didn’t know that’s how it happened,” Mina said.

“Of course you wouldn’t know. You’re not a Fae, and even most Fae don’t know all of the deets, okay? But Teague figured out that the more quests the Grimms did, the stronger he became. He’d make the Grimms fail on the quests, so the curse would move on to the next one. As much as he loved power, he loved revenge even more.”