by Cameron Jace
“Shut up. Just let go of my daughters.”
“You know the rules, my Majesty. Everything comes with a price,” she said. “What are you willing to pay for the safety of your daughters?”
“Anything you ask of me,” I said.
“I am out of suggestions. Please make me an offer I can’t refuse.”
“I don’t know. It’s you who should tell what she wants.”
“It’s hard to choose, really,” she rubbed her chin, sarcastically. “I mean I could take one of them, and leave the other to you. You’re familiar with concept, aren’t you? You did it before.”
“Did what?” Wendy stared at me pleadingly.
“Nothing, darling,” I said. “Don’t listen to her.”
“No, Wendy. Do listen to me,” Mary insisted. “You mother let your sister kill you in the womb. She gave up on you. Don’t be so giddy with her. She is an awful mother.”
“Is that true, Mother?”
I stepped forward into the circle, wanting to hug her. How was I going to explain this to her? I was splintering into pieces on the inside.
“Don’t touch me,” Wendy cried. “How could you?”
“Wendy, please.” I stepped into the circle and tried to hug her. She pulled away. “Please. I am sorry. I can explain. We need to stay together as a family now. I love you.”
“You do?” Wendy stopped resisting me, and let me hold her hands. “Really?”
“I do, darling,” I hugged her. It felt so good. So unexplainably good. Everything that I had been through felt worth it all of a sudden. “Let me make it up to you.”
“Of course, Mother,” she said, hugging me back. And then suddenly a warm feeling hit my neck. It was hard to comprehend it right away. It didn’t fit with the situation.
But then I realized I was bleeding from my neck. My daughter had just bit me.
I looked at her, perplexed, watching her fangs sticking out. And suddenly, I realized that my daughter had been playing with me. It made sense. How could she have been resurrected by Night Von Sorrow and be so naive?
“I told you mother,” she said. “That I would hurt you in the most unimaginable ways.”
In my weakness, she pulled my hand and smashed me against the mirror where Bloody Mary was laughing at me.
Chapter 76
The Queen’s Diary
What happened after hurts so much now, that I just want to summarize it, so I won’t relive the pain.
Instead of smashing against the mirror, I found myself pulled inside it by Bloody Mary. It’s hard to explain how I felt light, being sucked into a rippling water-like surface that looked like a mirror. Bloody Mary slapped me with the back of her hand, and I was too weak to fight back. Weakened by my daughter’s betrayal. I fell on the ground and fainted.
***
When I woke up, Wendy had left the room, but Snow White had woken up, and was talking to someone. I couldn’t see who it was, and when I tried to walk back out of the mirror, I realized I had become imprisoned inside it. No matter how I screamed and banged on the glass, no one heard me. I was simply invisible to them.
I realized this was what the prophecy had predicted. This was why Dame Gothel didn’t want me to enter the room, because she knew I was going to die inside the room. Night Von Sorrow’s plan was even more wicked than I had thought. He had planned to trap me inside the mirror all along.
Why? I didn’t know yet.
I banged on the inner walls of the mirror again, calling to Shew. Only she could help me. She had to know her mother sacrificed herself in every way for her. She had to know so she could grow up and kill every Sorrow in this world.
Shew still didn’t hear me, but then I saw who she was talking to. And that was when all my hopes withered away. It was certainly the end of me.
I saw Shew talking to a woman. A woman who looked like me.
Shew simply thought she was me, which meant she’d never look for me, because she didn’t even know I was gone.
I slid down against the mirror’s glass, wailing, unheard, as I saw that Bloody Mary had possessed my looks, and acted as if she was me.
This was Night Von Sorrow’s grand plan. Not to kill the Chosen One, but to control her through a fake mother, probably until he found the Lost Seven and the Piper’s flute.
Soon Bloody Mary – disguised as me – would kill young peasants in Sorrow and bathe in their blood to preserve her beauty and rule a kingdom that isn’t hers. Soon she’d bathe in blood, milk, and chocolate.
Chapter 77
The Queen’s Diary
Of course, you would wonder how I wrote the diary inside the mirror. Well, that’s a long story for another time. All you need to know is that the mirror is a world of its own. I learned to find my way in here. I learned how make a pencil and gather leaves for paper and wrap and bind them into a book.
In here, those books are called Books of Sand. They’re only read once every one hundred years.
I don’t recall how long I have been trapped in here, but if you find my mirror please come and save me. Please save my daughters. Save Atlantis from the Piper, that’s if he hasn’t found the flute yet.
Trust me, I tried my best to leave, but failed over and over again. The best I could do was create a bond through some of the witchcraft I have learned. A bond that let me sometimes possess my own body again. That’s why you might see Bloody Mary cry sometimes, just for brief moments, because that would be me, trying to reach out through my body, the one that she stole.
But it’s a weak bond, not strong enough for me to get my body back.
I have nothing more to say because I am weakened by the long years, and need to be saved. And if I’m already dead when you find me, find the Lost Seven. Only they can fight the Piper. That was why Charmwill sent them to Sorrow, waiting for them to grow up. Only the Lost Seven can stop the Piper from finding the flute and playing the unmemorable melody that will forever destroy the world.
All I can tell you is that I know now what it means that the greatest trick the devil every pulled was to make the world think he was someone else.
Epilogue Part One
The Schloss
Lucy and Axel watched the last page in the diary dissolve and turn into sand. Now that they had finished reading the diary, the book had vanished, leaving only a trail of golden dust on the floor.
“I can’t believe what I just read,” Lucy said.
Axel’s eyes were wide open. He looked more scared than surprised. “So Carmilla isn’t Carmilla?” he stuttered. “She is Bloody Mary?”
“The Piper and Night Von Sorrow had planned this all along,” Lucy said. “They had meticulously used Carmilla and Angel as pawns in their chessboard of a journey.”
“It’s some genius plan, I have to admit,” Axel said. “They found Atlantis, probably soon they’d find the Piper’s flute. They got Wendy, exerted control over the poor Shew, and convinced the world that Blood Mary was Carmilla.”
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled…” Lucy recited the quote, almost hypnotically.
“…was to convince the world he wasn’t Bloody Mary,” Axel said, holding to the rail of the castle’s staircase. “I feel like I want to brainwash myself into never having read this cursed diary.”
“Stop whining,” Lucy said. “We haven’t learned everything yet.”
“What’s more to learn?” Axel snapped. “Bloody Mary is going to kill us all. Didn’t you ever hear about her when you were young? She is the epitome of all evil.”
“I am not buying it,” Lucy said. “I feel like we’re missing something.”
“Please, Lucy. Stop digging into this. You breached Bloody Mary’s trust and now she will come and hunt us. I can’t believe what I’ve gotten myself into.”
Lucy neglected Axel’s whining. She paced slowly across the hall, thinking. “If it’s Bloody Mary possessing Carmilla’s body, then why would she keep killing girls and bathing in their blood.”
“Didn’t you re
ad what I just read?” Axel asked. “She needed it to reverse Carmilla’s aging process.”
“I know,” Lucy said. “But isn’t it suspicious that Bloody Mary’s mother, Elizabeth Bathory, also bathed in girls’ blood?”
“How strange?”
“I don’t know. Things seem too coincidental to me. I have a feeling there is a bigger picture why Bloody Mary did all of this for…” Lucy stopped in the middle of her sentence.
The weather outside had suddenly dimmed and lightning struck a couple of times all of a sudden.
Then the door to the castle sprung open.
Axel fell back but Lucy stood her ground, both of them staring at the Queen of Sorrow by the door. Axel’s drool was pretty much audible on the floor.
They both watched the Queen elegantly enter the castle, although Lucy had thought she couldn’t, as this was the reason she had sent her to fetch the diary for her in the first place.
“Thank you for reading the diary, Lucy, although I told you not to,” the Queen said. “I knew you would, out of curiosity. That was why I sent you.”
“You did?” Lucy still couldn’t connect the dots, but she was she wasn’t looking at neither Carmilla nor Blood Mary. “Who are you?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” the Queen laughed. “You were just about to put all the pieces together.”
“So you’re not Blood Mary?”
“Mary helped a great deal. She did her job, but I am not her.”
“Then who?” Axel pleaded. His mind was frying with possibilities.
“I am the witch,” the Queen said. “She Who Cursed Carmilla. She whom the mermaids wanted Carmilla to meet.”
Lucy shrieked. It all made sense. If all of this had been planned from the beginning, then it was the witch who was behind it. “But why?” Lucy asked. “What’s your connection to the Sorrows? Why would they plan this long journey to get you to posses Carmilla’s body?”
“Because according to a long lost prophecy, Carmilla, the girl who lifted the curse and was destined to be the mother of the Chosen One, was the only woman in the world who had a certain power.”
“What power?”
“The power to resurrect me from the dead.”
“You were dead?” Axel said.
“But I am not now,” the Queen laughed again.
It was Lucy who dared approach the Queen. Not that she was brave, but she was so curious she had to ask her question up close. “Why was it so important to resurrect you? Why would Night Von Sorrow and the Piper even care?”
“Because I’m the mother of all vampires,” she said. “It’s true that the Piper created us, but in his war against Charmwill Glimmer and quest for finding the flute, he needed me. There had never been a vampire as cruel as me.”
“Who the hell are you?” Axel pleaded from the back of the hall, his legs cemented in place, although he wanted to run away.
The Queen said nothing, locking eyes with Lucy.
Another bolt of lightning struck outside.
“I know who you are,” Lucy said, taking her steps back. “You devious, horrible Countess.”
“That’s right, my dear,” the Queen said. “I’m Elizabeth Bathory.”
“That’s impossible,” Axel said.
“It’s perfectly possible,” Lucy explained, still retreating slowly. “She is the mother of vampires. For whatever reason, the Sorrows needed her. They couldn’t resurrect her because, unlike any other dead vampires, Bathory was killed by her own vicious daughter, Bloody Mary. There was no way to bring her back but through a certain long-winded ritual,” she gazed back at the Queen for confirmation. The Queen nodded, amused by Lucy’s analysis. “And the host body for Bathory’s resurrection had to be someone as special as Carmilla. I assume the process to have Carmilla vulnerable enough to let you in her body is the reason why this took so many years.”
“You’ve assumed right,” Bathory said. “In truth, Carmilla is a fighter. The prophecy said she was a perfect match for my resurrecting, but Carmilla had to be broken first. She had to suffer, so she’d weaken and I could take her. It had to take years to poke holes in her soul, to turn her into a fragile mush of a confused person. The Seven Seas journey, selling her soul to Fate, Angel feeding on her, and then her sudden aging. All of this weakened her enough for my daughter, Blood Mary, to be able to suck her in and forever trap her inside the mirror.”
“But your daughter hated you,” Axel argued. “She killed you once.”
“Family conflicts, nothing much. We’re a terribly forgiving evil family,” Bathory shook her shoulders. “In the end she belonged to the dark side like me.”
“So why was Shew’s heart so important?” Lucy asked.
“Now you’re asking too much,” the Queen said. “You have no idea what happened the following years after I took over Carmilla’s body. That’s another story of itself.”
“I assume this was when your real conflict with the Lost Seven began,” Axel said.
“That’s not what matters now,” Lucy interrupted. “We need to know why the Queen sent me to read the diary when she already could have.”
“Ah,” the Queen sighed. “Smart Lucy Rumpelstein, you impress me with your sharpness.”
“Just spit it out,” Lucy dared her. Somehow her fascination with the Queen had withered away once she had learned about her being Elizabeth Bathory, the infamous first vampire in human history. Somehow Lucy cared for the real Carmilla trapped inside some mirror now. “Just tell me what you had in mind.”
The Queen smirked, raising her hands sideways, the lightning reaching into the castle itself. A glowing light radiated outward from the Queen’s body. “It’s part of a ritual,” she said. “Someone other than me had to read the diary until its last page. Once the last page dissolved into golden dust, the gate opens for next hundred years.”
“Gate?” Lucy and Axel said in one breath.
“A small gate that I have been trying to open since I’ve arrived into this miserable Real World.”
“Where does the gate open?” Lucy demanded.
The Queen laughed again, and the room was filled with immense light. Lucy and Axel suddenly realized that the light was not just blinding. It was sucking them toward the Queen.
Epilogue Part Two
Candy House
Fable was still staring at the light in the cellar. It had consumed all of the room already, including her, floating like a mist all around her.
The light not only filled the space, but gave way to an opening in the floor. The opening she thought she could see through earlier.
Fable squinted. What she saw was unbelievable.
She realized she could stare right into the Dreamworld. Into the Kingdom of Sorrow.
A girl showed up in front her, partially obscured by the light. Fable couldn’t see her face, but saw her stretching out her hand.
“Come with me, Fable,” a young girl’s voice said. “It’s time for the final battle.”
“Who are you? What battle?”
“To find the Lost Seven and the Piper’s flute.”
“What flute? What are you talking about?”
“The flute that has the power to sing the Swan Song,” the girl said. “The melody that will end everything, and starts anything.”
“I don’t understand,” Fable said. “I only wanted to go back to know about mine and Loki and Shew’s past.”
“You will get to know that, too. But now, none of us are staying in this ordinary world. We’re all going back to Sorrow.”
“Are you saying I don’t have a choice?”
“No one has,” the girl said. “The Queen of Sorrow managed to open the gate when Lucy read the diary.”
“What diary? What about Lucy?”
“One day you will have answers for all your questions. You will read them in the Piper Diaries.”
“The Piper Diaries?”
“Come on,” the girl insisted, sounding a bit mean. “It’s time to leave.”
Seeing the house tumbling, Fable gave into the girl’s hand and followed her into the gate. She had to ask one last question though. “Who are you?”
“Me?” the girl laughed. “I’m the Chosen One.”
“But Shew is the Chosen one,” Fable argued.
“Is she?” the girl smirked, her face showing in the light now. “We’ll see about that. Just call me the Black Swan.”
Thank You
I am happy we made this journey so far in the books. It’s been a long and bumpy road sometimes, but it was definitely worth it. I hope this installment in the series wrapped up the main plot, which now paves the way for more exciting adventures with characters we love – and hate – toward the Piper Diaries. And of course, there are still tons of questions to answer later.
The reasons there will not be a Grimm Diaries Book 5, and that we will be starting the Piper Diaries, are mainly two things: 1) Ladle, Jack, Wendy, Peter, and Marmalade are rich characters who need their own space to shine. Needless to say, all the other characters will present too, but not as much. 2) I wanted to start a pure Kingdom of Sorrow adventure, with no present day or urban interference. Just pure fairy tales, imagination, and a story about finding the lost Piper’s flute that can destroy all lives. Plus, I’d like the Piper Diaries to be accessible for those who’d never gotten into the series. But the books will still be much more fun for those who previously read the Grimm Diaries.
And for the record, good will triumph in the end. It won’t be as dark as this installment in the series, but the price for the good to win may cost a few lives.
I am hoping you will enjoy it.
Thanks again,
Cam the Storykiller
Subscribe to Cameron’s Mailing List
To receive exclusive updates from Cameron Jace and to be the first to know about the new prequels, please sign up to be on his personal mailing list!