Verena #2
I reach an out-of-the-way section of the maze, where a large stone fountain bubbles happily with a golden statue of Gilda perched on top. I finally stop and try to catch my breath, my lungs burning almost as angrily as the thirst squeezing my gut.
Fritz stops, too. He's not as winded as I am, and he tips his head as he studies me.
His expression is tender, his touch noticeably cautious as he wipes away a tear I didn't realize was rolling down my cheek.
"Tears, pretty soul? What for?"
"I'm—"
I cut off and swear, realizing I haven't caught my breath yet because I'm hyperventilating. I wipe away another tear, but more hot moisture is rising into my eyes.
"Verena," Eris says, seeming to finally catch up in reflections. He's somewhere in the moonlit, rippling reflection of the nearby fountain. "What just happened?"
I can't tell him. He's going to think I'm insane or paranoid, just like those doctors did.
"Verena?" Fritz repeats, learning my real name. He gently tips my head back so I'll be forced to look at him. I can't decide which iris to focus on. "Breathe out as much as you can for me, yeah?"
I exhale, shuddering and wiping more tears.
"Lovely, now in."
For a moment, Fritz coaches me, trying to help me stop hyperventilating. His soft voice is lyrical and sweet, his smile unbelievably patient.
But then, the sound of a twig snapping makes me flinch. I don't dare move, but the Pied Piper's unique gaze moves to something—someone—standing right behind me.
The change in him is abrupt. Every bit of gentility saps from him, a harsh glare hardening his features. A sudden darkness transforms his voice so much, it makes my heart flip upside down.
"Piss off."
"Or what? Step back from the fool, sweetling."
Even though I've never heard the voice of the man speaking behind me, my nerves turn to ice.
It's him.
My stalker. The man I killed ten years ago.
This can't be happening. It's impossible. It's in your head.
When I don't move as he told me to, too frozen with fear, a sharp ringing sound fills the air—and with a flash of silver to my right, the Pied Piper's head rolls away from his body.
I cry out, shutting my eyes as the warm spray of his blood coats my right side. I hear the rest of him slump to the ground.
The scent is immediate—a dizzying mixture of sweet lavender and bitter rosemary. That dual scent tugs at my hellish thirst so viciously that a sob escapes me. I keep my eyes shut and force myself not to move, no matter how my stomach is trying to heave.
At the sound of my next sob, the man who is now standing just beside me leans to speak in my ear.
"Still so sensitive? God, I've missed that. Relax about the piper."
I can't, because that sweet piper is dead.
It's not the first time this monster has killed in front of me. I should have run faster. I should have jumped into the first carriage and told them to take me anywhere.
Eris swears from the nearby fountain. "Run, Verena! Wulf is on his way, so don't—"
"Ugh, you." King Nemrick makes a sound of ultimate irritation. "Kill him, Druhn."
I don't dare open my eyes, but I recognize the voice of the same cloaked older man who was working with the bandits.
"But…my king, I would have to enter the Mirror Realm to—"
"Enter it, then. I don't fucking care. Whatever it takes, just get rid of him once and for all."
There's a splash, and suddenly Eris's shouts go silent.
No.
"Eris?" I rasp, opening my eyes.
Thawing from the terror holding me hostage, I only take one step toward the fountain before a cold, blood-covered blade presses against the side of my neck. Nemrick keeps it held in place as he walks around me, until finally, I'm facing my stalker once more.
Shoulder-length light brown hair. Blue eyes. Noble features, a cleft in his chin, royal attire…
He has a different face and voice, but I know it's him.
He has the same mannerisms. The same tone of voice. The same habit of baring his teeth for a split second before he says anything.
And he has the same name he tattooed all over me, cooing about how pretty I cried.
"Didn't you get all the royal invitations I told my chamberlain to send you? This would have been a lot easier if you just came to Hamelnmark when I was asking nicely."
Nemrick peruses me while I try to breathe as little as possible, desperate not to think about the Pied Piper's blood all over me. I'm also trying not to panic about Druhn going into the mirror realm, but…
What if Druhn had weapons on him? What if he uses magic to kill my beautiful, lonely Adonis in that world beyond glass?
No. I can't let that happen. There has to be some way into that world to help him before it's too late and—
My brain glitches from pure disgust when Nemrick reaches out to remove my masquerade mask. I want to flinch away, but that blade is still a hair's breadth from cutting into my neck.
"Useless fucking bandits," my stalker huffs. He tosses my mask aside before wiping his hands clean on my skirt. "They were supposed to have you ready for me when my ship landed in the west of Aurefeld. You know what they say about good help being hard to find."
I don't understand. He uses references from my world but talks as if he knows this one well.
Swallowing down bile and terror, I try to speak.
"I—h-how…"
"I. H-how," he mocks before laughing. "You really are the same, huh?"
Damn it, I fucking hate feeling like this. Like I'm that terrified girl from ten years ago, staring at that wood stove in this monster's cold basement.
I'm so angry beneath everything else that Malivant's voice coasts through my head, distant and watery.
"Where are you, that your glorious wrath is so strangled with pathetic terror?"
He's right about this terror being pathetic.
It's the same terror that has ruled me for years, but I finally get words through it.
"How did you get here?" I whisper. "You're dead."
Nemrick snickers. "Aww, you poor little thing. You really don't remember? Come on, think hard. Tell me what you were doing before you came back here."
Back to this maze? I'm confused, and this thirst is making my head throb.
Every tiny inhale I take is tinged with the smell of the dead piper, and that breaks my pounding heart.
"I d-don't know what you're talking about," I tell the psychopath I know too well. More tears are trying to escape, but I don't let them. He's seen me cry enough for ten lifetimes. "It seems like you might be from this world, but I-I just want to return to mine and—"
"But you can't return to that world. Or don't you recall, sweetling?"
He's always used that patronizing diminutive. I've always hated it.
When I can't force more words out, Nemrick makes another sound of annoyance and sheaths his still-bloodied sword. His hand goes around my throat so now I really can't breathe as he gets in my face, wiping more of the piper's blood off my cheek with his thumb.
"I said think hard," he grits. He shakes me by the neck slightly, and I squeeze my eyes shut again. "Where were you before all this, huh? Why were you driving so fast?"
Driving fast?
All at once, it starts to come back to me. The important thing I was doing before I woke up here. The thing I haven't remembered because…I didn't want to.
Deep down, I didn't want to remember how I was weaving through traffic on a highway, my gas pedal all the way down.
The tears blurring my eyes as I checked the rear view mirror again to see him skirting another car to keep up with me.
The fear that whitened my knuckles on the steering wheel, just before I turned it sharply to one side to get away from him, veering by accident into—
"Oncoming traffic."
"Right. You can't return there, because…?" Nemrick prompts, releasing his hold of my neck.
"Because I died," I whisper, the pit in my stomach yawning wider. Tears spill freely from my eyes now, this visceral terror like tar in my veins. "Because…you killed me."
"Ah, ah, ah. You killed yourself trying to get away from me," he corrects, leaning to brush his lips against my temple.
I want to burn that skin off.
"It was your fault I had to take our souls to that world to begin with, anyway," he murmurs, inhaling near my hair.
"Do you even know the trouble I had to go through, swapping your soul with your doppelganger's?
I had to make sure you looked like my sweetling, though.
You've always been my pretty red-haired beauty. "
My world tilts on its axis. My brain is trying to recalibrate through the terror.
"What?" I breathe, the burn in my throat worsening.
Nemrick kisses my cheek now, his words brushing over me like chilled oil.
"If you ever just accepted that you're mine, this would have been put to rest long ago. But this fucking obsession you have with defying me—the obsession you have with those goddamn men. I've had enough. It's eaten all my patience. You can't have them because you're mine, Reinhilde."
Reinhilde.
If this psychopath is telling me the truth, then the queen and I aren't swapped…we were swapped.
And somehow, because I died in her world, I'm now back in this world.
My world.
Where I was supposed to be the evil queen all along.
End of Blood of the Fairest
Verena’s story will continue in Grimm Fragments Book Two: Sins of the Fairest.