A Grim Love: Can't Fight Time (19 page)

If she could have laughed, she would have.

But in those last few moments of life Nina found a realization: she finally realized why her mother had been smiling. Death was an escape from all the pain and torment her father had caused. It was also the ultimate “fuck you!”

Forcing her eyes open, Nina looked at her father’s wide, astonished eyes and his open mouth. Smiling through the pain, Nina robbed her father of the only thing he’d ever wanted, and the one thing he could never have, her life.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Huh!” Grim gasped awake, freezing cold and drenched in water.

“Good morning, Grim!” Felicia’s voice oozing sugary sweetness.

Rolling his head, Grim tried to figure out where he was. Metal chains clanked around his wrists and ankles, sharp stone stabbed into his back, and the smell of mold and dried blood infiltrated his nostrils.

The sensations and smells were painful for Grim; everything was heightened to an almost unbearable degree, and he had to wonder if this was how Nina felt all the time.

“Come now, my king, raise that handsome head of yours.” Felicia stuck her finger underneath his chin and tilted his head up.

The events of the last few hours came back to him slowly, in bits and pieces. Grim remembered being in bed with Nina, waking up without her, being drugged by Felicia, and finally being dragged away.

Grim slowly rotated his head, fighting the pain swimming in his vision and clouding his mind. It looked like a dungeon. Looking up at the ceiling, Grim saw the Castoff insignia: sixteen daggers of varying size positioned in a circle, pointing outwards in every cardinal direction.

Grim knew the symbolism; it was meant to show that no matter where Castoff enemies went they would always be found and killed. It was also a reference to the past, to demonstrate that the Castoff kingdom was always prepared for an attack.

But for Grim, it was the symbol of a kingdom full of traitors.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.” Sarcasm dripped off her saccharin sweet words.

Grim finally forced his eyes to focus on Felicia. The Castoff princess couldn’t be missed in her lime green dress, trimmed in black lace. It was the exact same length as all the rest of the dresses she’d worn, just above her knees. It also had the same long sleeves, gloves, and stockings, the only exposed flesh being her face and neck.

Grim’s voice was raspy and his throat sore. “You’ll have to forgive my appearance, sweetheart, I wasn’t expecting company.”

Felicia smoothed her skirt and scratched at her knees. “Are you hungry, Grim? I had our chef make you something. Your body is more like a human’s now, and will need food to sustain itself.”

Grim narrowed his eyes, as his stomach seemed to agree with Felicia. For the first time in almost millennium, Grim felt hunger clawing at his gut. Before the shedding, before he’d come into his power, he’d been like most humans, feeling varying degrees of hunger and pain… but Grim couldn’t remember the hunger ever being like this.

“I’m fine, thank you.” Grim responded through gritted teeth, using formalities as his only weapon.

The formalities allowed him a measure of comfort, a measure of control that he didn’t possess just then. It also allowed him to distance himself from the pain in his heart and his uncertainty over his wife’s, and his family’s fate.

Felicia flicked her black curls back and delicately scratched at her neck before snapping her fingers loudly. “No, I’m sure you’re quite hungry.”

A cart was wheeled in and a table and two chairs were set up on the other side of his cell. Grim watched as the maid ignored him and set the table, working as if she came down to the dungeon and set up meals for prisoners on a daily basis. The maid took out two covered dishes and placed them in front of either chair.

Grim watched as the maid curtsied to Felicia, never meeting her eyes, and exited the cell. “Are you hungry yet?” Felicia asked as she went and sat at the table, unwrapped her napkin, and placed it over her lap.

As if on cue, Grim’s stomach let out a very loud and long groan. Felicia’s tinkling laughter aggravated him, but he was starving. Aside from poisoning or drugging him again there wasn’t much she could do to the food.

Grim could see her poisoning him, but only mildly. She’d already drugged him, and he didn’t think she’d do it again. Carefully, Grim weighed his options, not sure if he should trust that she had not tampered with the food, or eat the meal knowing that it could burn his stomach and kill him slowly.

“There is no poison in it, if that is what you’re wondering,” Felicia scoffed, as she removed the lid from the plate and revealed an almond-colored soup. “I will swear it on my mother, if that is what you want.”

Grim wanted to cut that smile right off her face, but he knew with his distinct lack of power he probably couldn’t even lift a knife to try.

So then what are my options? Starve or eat
, his consciousness said pointedly.

Unable to stop himself, Grim watched Felicia pick up a spoon and begin to eat her soup. He was so hungry, the feeling burning like acid through his middle.

“How can I eat if I’m chained?” Grim asked angrily, too tired to even rattle the chains.

A snap of Felicia’s fingers had a guard coming to Grim and unlocking him. Immediately Grim collapsed onto the ground, and only after several attempts was he able to get up and stumble over to the table. Every step felt like a mile, and the cold was still mind-numbingly painful, but he was trying not to pay too much attention to it.

Collapsing into the chair, Grim stared at Felicia as she took another bite and delicately patted the corner of her lips. “Please, Grim, eat.” She reached forward and uncovered his dish.

Suspiciously Grim sniffed at the meal, still not positive it wasn’t poisoned. He could have been wrong and she could want to drug him again. Then again, what was the point of either of those things besides pain? Grim didn’t doubt that she wanted to torture him before killing him, but poisoning him in the state he was in was pointless.

So then what was wrong with the soup?
Grim refused to believe it was simply soup. Felicia wouldn’t have corrupted his guards, dragged him from his bedroom, drugged him, and locked him in a dungeon just to feed him.

“Since you say that I should be more afraid of you than the kingdom, what is it that you want, Felicia?” Grim asked as he carefully picked up a spoon and began to sift it through the dish.

Residual spices or powder lay at the bottom, darkened the color, but Grim couldn’t smell a change in the soup, or see any kind of blarring problem with it.

Felicia could just be toying with me, messing with my mind.
He wouldn’t put it past her.

“What everyone wants, Grim,” she said simply, continuing to eat her soup as if they were in a formal dining room instead of a prison cell.

Carefully, Grim took a sip of the soup, preparing for the worst. When pain didn’t immediately seize his body, Grim knew she was probably just messing with his mind. There probably wasn’t really anything wrong with the meal; Felicia had just wanted him to think there was.

“What is that?” Grim asked with strained politeness as he took another bite.

“I want it all, Grim. The control, the power--everything,” she whispered, making Grim paused and look up at her. Cerulean blue eyes danced with mirth and a mocking smile graced her perfectly pink lips.

“How do you propose to get this power, by taking over my kingdom?”

Felicia smiled and set down her spoon. Grim took another sip of his soup and watched her carefully. “By killing everyone who stands in my way,” she said with a too wide smile, looking directly at his dish.

Grim dropped the spoon immediately and stared at the almond colored soup. She wasn’t saying what he thought she was saying. She wasn’t saying that--

“They put up a good fight--your mother and father, but in the end... they lost.”

Grim pushed back from the table and fell off the chair. Still, he scrambled back until he felt the wall of the rocks cut into his back and the smell of blood entered his nostrils.

Calmly, Felicia rose from her seat and went to the place he’d just vacated, picking up his bowl. In a flash she was in front of him, crouched low, holding the bowl between her hands. “Don’t you want to say goodbye to your family, Grim?” she asked with a bat of her thick eyelashes.

“No.” Grim whispered shaking his head. That couldn’t be his father and mother. He refused to believe it. He refused!

Balancing the bowl in one hand, Felicia reached into a pocket of her skirt and pulled out his father’s cravat pin and his mother’s choker, then dropped them into the soup. Her smile was cruel at best. “Yes, Grim. Now, say goodbye.”

***

Dying was a weird process for Nina--not that it probably wasn’t for most people, but Nina’s case was particularly weird.

At the age of ten, Nina had loved anything and everything Frankenstein. Not for the scare factor--in fact the whole plot scared the bejesus out of her--but for the laboratory. There was something about creepy laboratories that had always caught her attention, always struck a chord with her.

So it came as a bit of a shock when Nina found herself laying down, suspended on a metal slab in what looked to be Frankenstein’s lab.
Am I the monster here?
Nina wondered as she peered down at the sixty foot drop and decided to keep laying there looking up into the nothingness.

Heaven, Hell, or wherever she was, wasn’t exactly how she imagined. What Nina had imagined was being either reincarnated, or just slipping off into a black void. Ending up on the set of some Frankenstein horror flick, laying on the bed where a monster should have been, wasn’t even one of the top billion ways she’d thought she’d end up.

And yet, here she was.

“Anyone there?” she asked out loud, needing to hear something.

The pain that she should have felt in her chest was gone, as were all of her clothes, and the only thing that she was sure of what that she was still in her body. Reaching over, she pinched her arm, and yelped as pain shot through her.

If this wasn’t her body, then it was a damn good replica. Same color skin, same unmanageable curly hair, and same platinum and blue diamond wedding rings on her finger. Nina lifted her hand to her face and stared at the only connection she still had to Grim. She was happy that she’d been able to take it with her to the afterlife; it would have been hard to live without them.

You’re not alive!
Her conscious reminded her.

There was no mistaking the feeling of that knife as it had pierced her heart. Even if she remained in the creepy lab forever, she would never forget that feeling. It had been a combination of immense pain and triumph, but one she’d rather not ever feel again.

“Hello!” Nina yelled again, this time with more vehemence.

With a jolt, the machine began to lower her, and Nina just about had a heart attack. The creepy factor only rose as the eerie sounds of the crank moving greeted her ears. She hadn’t heard anyone enter, or even a machine start. It. Was Freaky.

Rolling gently on the table, Nina was able to get the sheet under her and move it to the side so she could tie it off. Leaning forward with the sheet firmly in place, she repeated the action until three knots ran up her side, and the sheet looked something like a dress.

With a final lurch, the slab stopped and Nina peered over to the side to find the table suspended only a few feet off the ground. Swinging her legs over, she looked around the room for any creepy mad scientist lurking in the shadows with a henchman. And that’s when it hit her, mad scientist.

“Yin and Yang,” Nina grumbled under her breath, knowing that it had to be them.

Who else would stick her in the lab of a notorious mad scientist right after she’d died? Maybe Iris had taken her soul to them, and they’d wanted to hype up the drama. She wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.

She knew two things for sure: she wasn’t on Earth--her death had made that impossible-- and she wasn’t in the reaper world, because she didn’t feel the same energy that flowed there. It was weird, but Nina felt something in the air, something that was familiar, yet different. She wasn't sure what it was, but it was there.