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Chapter Twenty-Nine

Grim

H e stood in a forest like the one near Primrose Cottage.

It was the same yet not the same. There was an eerie silence around him, the absence of any sound making the hair rise on his arm.

Making his way through the trees, he looked for clues as to where he was.

Had he entered another tale without knowing?

A flash of pink crossed his vision, and he heard silver laughter.

Serena?

He hurried toward the sound and entered the clearing where she stood beaming at him.

But something was different. Instead of the usual soft pink waves falling down her back, her hair had changed to tight dark curls that fell to the middle of her back, and her eyes were a clear blue instead of their usual green.

“Serena? Where are we?” he questioned.

Instead of answering, she placed a finger on her lips and then turned to look at someone behind her. Her face fell then, and when she looked back to him, tears were falling from her eyes.

“Grim,” she whispered, and he watched in horror as blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, “why did you kill me?”

She looked down to where a blade protruded from her chest and collapsed to the ground, blood pooling around her, soaking her dress and hair in garish red.

“NO!” The word tore from Grim’s throat as he lunged forward, only to have the ground suddenly disappear from underneath him and then he was falling, falling—

“Grim! GRIM!” Someone was shaking him, the voice tinged with panic.

He opened his eyes to see a pale face framed in a pink cloud hovering above him. Her freckles stood in stark contrast to her bleached skin, and she was looking at him with wide green eyes.

“Are you all right?” she asked, frantically. “You suddenly started yelling and thrashing in your sleep and would not wake up no matter what I did!”

“Serena,” he rasped. He sat up and crushed her to him, his heart beating fast. “You’re all right. You’re all right. ”

She seemed to understand his need to reassure himself and patted his back, making soothing noises. He realized he was shaking, the image of her bloody, broken body still fresh in his mind.

“Was it a nightmare?” she asked, softly.

“Yes.”

“Would you like to talk about it?”

“Not particularly—not now in any case.” His face was still buried in her hair.

She nodded easily, and then pulled them both back down, turning so they were facing each other.

“I don’t think I could bear it if anything happened to you,” he whispered, stroking her hair.

She closed her eyes, leaning into his touch.

“Nothing will happen to me,” she said firmly. “We will lift the curse and defeat Lore, and then we will live happily ever after.”

He smiled at the fierceness of her voice and drew her closer to him, until she was completely enveloped in his arms.

The morning light was warm upon his face as he opened his eyes in Serena’s cozy bedroom.

The girl herself lay sleeping soundly in his arms, no trace of last night’s pain on her face.

He couldn’t get the image of her writhing from the curse out of his head.

If something like that happened again, if it was worse, he would be powerless to do anything.

There was no physical enemy to cut down, no magic that would help.

Lore had cast the worst curse possible—one that Grim on his own could do nothing to break.

The only way to get through this was to finish the tales and lift her curse.

Which was unfortunately exactly what the bastard wanted from them.

Memories of what had happened after flooded his head, and he smiled to himself, glad he could replace that horrible image with one of tangled limbs and shallow breaths, of her wide, trusting eyes, giving him the sweetest gift.

Besides him, Serena stirred, giving him a sleepy smile that tugged at his heartstrings. He vowed then, that nothing would stop him from making sure that she was safe. Nothing would hurt her, not as long as he drew breath.

“Hey, sleepy,” he murmured. “Rest well?”

An answering blush rose in her cheeks as she sniffed and looked away. “It was satisfactory.”

“Satisfactory? Is that it? I’ll have to remedy that—maybe a repeat performance?”

He grinned and lunged at her. She shrieked, and dodged his hands, jumping out of the bed, wrapping the bedsheet around her. Backing toward the window, she held out her hands in a remonstrating manner.

“Stop!” she laughed. “Don’t you dare come any closer!”

He had ceased listening, arrested by how exquisite she looked in that moment.

Resembling a beautiful forest nymph, with the white sheet wrapped around her curves, she stood there, bathed in sunlight, her hair a pink halo around her head, falling in soft waves.

Her green eyes sparkled with mirth and affection, and her alabaster skin glinted with the sun’s rays.

She glowed in that moment, like an angel sent to him from heaven.

Noticing his silence, Serena cocked her head questioningly. “Grim? Is everything okay?”

“You’re beautiful,” he croaked in a voice completely unlike his own .

Her eyes softened, and she approached the bed, gently, almost as if she was afraid he would bolt. Placing her arms around him, she rested her cheek on the top of his head and simply held him. As if she knew that that was exactly what he needed to deal with the storm of emotions roiling within him.

“You’re so perfect,” he whispered. “I feel like I don’t deserve you.”

She drew back then and was about to protest, but he placed a finger on her lips. He pulled her closer, until she was straddling his lap.

“I feel like I don’t deserve you, because you are all that is good and pure and beautiful.

It’s true,” he said, when she wrinkled her nose in disagreement, “You are stubborn and temperamental, you hate being wrong, if you dislike someone you will delight in being petty toward them in every way. But you are also kind and forgiving and you have the biggest heart. You saw me as a monster, and you did not avert your eyes. You did not pretend it did not exist, nor did you feed me useless platitudes. You accepted me for who I am, Serena Rose, and I am the luckiest bastard alive for that. What I’m saying is, I may not deserve you, but I will never let you go. Not now, not ever.”

Serena’s eyes were glimmering with unshed tears when he finished. Throwing her arms around him, she buried her face in his shoulders, and he held her tightly. They stayed that way for a while, not saying anything.

Sometimes, saying you understood was in the silence.

The morning passed by quietly. Serena locked herself in the study for reasons known only to her, and Grim decided to use that time to train in the yard.

While he practiced he thought more about the predicament they were in, and wondered not for the first time if he should make contact with the Old Ones to see if they had any useful guidance.

But every time he considered it, he thought back to the first time he had met the cold beings, when the Red Maiden had coolly suggested killing him, and he decided that he was not going to risk them knowing too much about Serena.

He wouldn’t put it past them to decide that her link to Lore coupled with the curse, was a risk to them.

No, he would have to figure this one out himself.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a blur of movement, and he lifted his head just in time to see a familiar squirrel sneaking toward his discarded gloves and arm guards.

He dove toward it, grimly determined the pesky thing wouldn’t get past him this time. The squirrel, sensing it was in trouble let out an indignant chatter and darted away from its quarry, just in time for Grim to snatch them and hold them to his chest, with a glare toward the perpetrator.

“Paws off, you beastly little thing.”

It sniffed at him in outrage and rushed back to its tree.

“That’s right! Run, you coward!” he called out as it disappeared from view, and then immediately felt stupid for yelling at a squirrel.

At least no one had been around to see it.

“My hero,” came an amused voice from behind him. “I guess if we’re ever overrun by an army of squirrels, I can count on you to be my knight in shining armor.”

Sighing in defeat, Grim turned around to see dancing green eyes fixed on him. She had finally emerged from the study, and in typical Serena fashion, at the most inopportune moment. He sheathed his sword with the usual spirit magic and fixed her with a mock glare.

“Finally deigned to step outside, have we. ”

She stretched, yawning theatrically, and grinned. “I thought I would relieve you from the boredom of life without me in it.”

He answered her smile with one of his own. “That is a very pretty dress, milady.”

“Why thank you, kind sir,” she said with a little twirl. The dress she wore was simple, cream colored with short sleeves, a bright red underskirt, and a brown corset with little white flowers painted on.

“Did you paint those flowers yourself?”

She brightened at the question. “Yes! They’re daisies, see?

I also have a white one with little bluebells painted on it, and a bone corset that I decorated with little pearls and shells.

The pearls are fake, of course, but the shells I collected from a beach in Leis and—” She caught herself and flushed.

“Sorry, you’re probably not interested in women’s clothing. ”

Grim, who had been charmed by how her cheeks had flushed with excitement when detailing said clothing, blinked in confusion. “No, by all means go on. I think it’s remarkable that you’re good at so many things.”

Her brow wrinkled. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re clearly a talented herbalist, if the townspeople overcome their superstitions for your aid, you have an affinity for books, you clearly tend to this garden yourself, and now I find out you also make your own clothes?”

Her cheeks were such a fetching shade of pink by this point that Grim wanted to keep going just to see how red she would go.

“I don’t make my own clothes.” She huffed.

“I just… tinker with them. Like this dress.” She swished the skirt for emphasis.

“It’s just an old nightgown of my aunt’s that I altered, and I simply paired it with this red underskirt I repurposed from an old gown of my mother’s that she never wore anymore. ”

Despite her self-conscious babbling, Grim noticed the hint of pride in her tone and grinned. She was so adorable when she tried to fake modesty.

“Speaking of my mother,” she said, her tone turning slightly serious, “I suppose I should tell you what I was doing in the study.”

Rummaging in her pockets, she fished out a letter and handed it to him. He looked at her questioningly and then opened it to find Serena’s slanted writing greeting him.

Dearest Mama,

I hope you are well. I know we did not part on the best of terms, and while I regret that our meeting took a sour turn, I ask that you understand why I reacted the way I did. You hurt me deeply that day, and I cannot bring myself to apologize for it.

Having said that, I would like to say this letter is not to blame you, nor is it to talk about Aunt Maeve and our relationship. This letter is only for you and I.

We have never seen eye to eye on many things, and I know I have not been the easiest of daughters for a mother to have.

Which is why I want you to know that there has not been a day of my life where I have wished to replace you with anyone else.

You have been sister to a woman who preferred to step back rather than to engage in the messiness of family, and you became mother to a girl who walked out to avoid the same.

You have always been the one who stayed, who made the home, who tried to keep it all together.

It could not have been an easy task, and I do not envy you for it.

But I do respect you and everything you have done for us.

You think I think I am too good for our family; on the contrary I have always felt like I am too little.

I cannot make the room laugh like Garrett or charm my way out of a scrape like Emile.

I am not the dependable presence everyone relies on like Papa, and I cannot hold the family together and create a home out of the messiness like you.

I left to find out who I am, not to forget who I was.

I love all of you dearly, and my sincerest wish is that you can all love the real Serena when I find out who she is.

Because she is not the newest debutante, or the Larke family’s latest bookkeeper.

She is not my parents’ daughter, or my brothers’ sister or even Aunt Maeve’s niece.

She’s just Serena.

And I think she’s going to be the best version of me when she finally appears.

I hope you can wait until then,

All my love,

Serena

The letter ended, and Grim looked at Serena, his chest feeling oddly tight. She looked back at him with a half uncertain, half challenging expression, as if she expected him to say something that would deride her.

“Hey,” he said softly, “I think it’s perfect.”

Her eyes became a fraction less guarded, and she rubbed her arms to ward off some imaginary chill. “I just…The last tale got me thinking you know…I know that wasn’t my actual mother but I just thought. If it had been…”

“I get it,” he said gently. “You don’t have to explain.”

She nodded and reached out for the letter, which he surrendered. The mood was still too somber for his taste, so he fished around for something that would brighten her eyes.

“Maybe I ought to write an apology to Nuts as well,” he mused. “I feel like I really hurt his feelings.”

It worked, and she grinned widely. “I don’t know, you did call him a coward. Might have to do a bit better than a letter.”

“You’re right,” he said and leaned over to deftly pluck a ribbon out of her hair. “Maybe this will do as an offering.”

“Hey!” she protested, standing up on her tiptoes to grab it back. “Get your own offering!”

He began to walk away from her, calling out for the squirrel.

“Hey, Nuts! I have something for you.”

“I don’t imagine many squirrels understand human language, you big lout,” she grumbled as she came to stand next to him in front of the squirrel’s tree.

In a flash of movement, neither of them could have predicted, the ribbon was snatched from Grim’s outstretched hand by none other than Nuts himself, and he disappeared in a series of satisfied chattering noises.

The two of them stood there dumbfounded, before Serena looked at Grim very seriously.

“Grim.”

“Serena.”

“What happened just now…” She put her hand on his arm in an all too familiar manner.

“Serena, if you say what I think you’re about to say…so help me—”

“Was absolutely… nuts.”

“I think I might hate you a little.”