The Grimm Files Collection Boxed Set

by Selene Charles

  CHAPTER 36

  ELLE

  THE WINDS, how they shrieked. They reminded me of song—of a dirge, more specifically, a lament full of heartache and desperation.

  I didn’t know if it was just my imagination, or if Grimm literally wept for the birth of something terrible. All I knew was that I was no longer the same. I didn’t think I ever would be again.

  The waters roared as the doorway to the Under came sliding up like an elevator door opening. The seas were parted, and I all I saw below was the glowing blue of krill and the limp fronds of seaweed curling against the sides of the entryway into my father’s water kingdom.

  My sister’s head appeared just a second later.

  Anahita was the beauty of us all, with her impossibly long mane of icy-white hair and eyes the color of tropical waters. Her skin was as fair as porcelain, and her voice sounded like a choir of angels.

  Her intelligent eyes were knowing as she studied my form. I saw the tightening around the fine lines and wrinkles of her mouth—the pinching and thinning of her lips let me know her brilliant mind was putting together what had been done tonight.

  “Sister,” she said in that voice, which had enchanted many leggers in her day. I was mostly human by now, so I was shocked that I did not feel the thrill of her dark magick weaving a spell over me. But I wasn’t just human, either. I was something else entirely.

  I knew what I must have looked like, my clothing torn and ripped from the fight I’d just been through both on sea and land. My eyes were black as the pools of glimmering obsidian in the east. My body was nicked and scraped, cut by countless lashes of sand and thundering waves. My inky black hair hung in limp strands around my bruised shoulders. There wasn’t an inch of me that didn’t hurt.

  Taking a deep breath, fighting through countless emotions of past and present colliding into one soupy mess, I dipped my head. As the eldest, Anahita had always outranked me, and she was next in line to inherit the throne of the mighty water kingdom. Much as I hated my father and thought ill of most royals, there was still a whisper of fondness within me for my eldest sister.

  “Princess of the trenches and the— ”

  She lifted a gem-encrusted hand. Her fingers were bejeweled with dozens of tiny golden hermit crabs in the shapes of rings. “Stop. This formality, it should never exist between us. No matter what’s been done, you are still my sister.” She cocked her head, eyeing me strangely. “My sister, who somehow called me to her through wards of father’s very own making. A sister who no longer smells of the siren and who reeks of dark magick. So tell me, Arielle, what has happened since we last spoke?”

  I snorted. “You always do that.” My voice sounded lighter than how I actually felt, and yet, it was actually nice to see her again. It’d been so long since last we’d spoken. I wasn’t sure how things would be between us, but it was literally as though nothing at all had ever changed.

  Her full red lips curved upward. “I could always read you like a book, little sister. Though”—she paused, eyeing me thoughtfully again—“you don’t look so little anymore. You’re much changed from that girl I once knew. Let me guess,” she said with a soft sigh. “You want safe passage through the Under?”

  I clenched my jaw, my back teeth grinding together. I still felt the power trapped within me, the burning darkness that both thrilled and terrified me, but oddly, I also felt mostly the same. It wasn’t what I’d expected after letting the blackness consume me. Not what I’d expected at all.

  I wet my lips. “Aye. You’re not wrong. But I do not seek safe passage only for me.”

  Uncannily, her eyes zoomed toward Hook’s and Crowley’s prostrate forms behind me. “I heard he’d come back. He always did have a knack for getting you in trouble.” There was an underlying tinge of exasperation in her tone.

  I knew immediately who she was talking about. Anahita had never been a fan of Hook. She hated leggers, him most of all. If there was one flaw in my favorite sister, it was her unshakeable belief that all leggers were wicked at their core.

  Curling her lip, she shook her head. “Truth is, Arielle, I knew you were coming. We all did, the moment you stepped foot into the Never. I told you to stay away. I warned you. But would you ever listen to me? No, you stubborn, foolish, arrogant girl.”

  Her words might have come off as cruel to others, but I heard the emotions behind them, the slight telltale quiver of pain threaded through them that only someone who’d known her as long as I had would ever hear. I frowned.

  Two things I knew at once. Where I’d been in the dark about my true origins, somehow Anahita had known. More than that, she’d known for a while. And two, something bad had happened.

  I swallowed hard, flaring my nostrils. What? I asked silently.

  She didn’t need me to clarify, Anahita had always understood me in a way few others could have. “There’s been death in our waters this night, Arielle.”

  I covered my mouth with my hands, knowing before she ever said it. My middle sister had always been the type to find herself in the middle of trouble without even trying—she’d had a knack for it, in fact. Usually, she found that trouble because of me. And this time… this time would be no different.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I whispered, “Aquata.”

  At Anahita’s sharp intake of breath, I knew I’d guessed correctly. “What hap— ”

  “She was taking a midnight stroll as was oft her way.” She flicked her fingers with a faux-dismissive gesture that I knew was anything but. Her laughter was tight and painful to hear.

  I opened my eyes and noted two quicksilver tears sliding down Anahita’s left cheek.

  “Never saw the blast coming. The Sea Witch is surely back and driven by her vendetta against Father once again. I figured you’d be not to far behind, and my hunch was correct as ever.”

  There was a hint of disappointment there, and I visibly cringed to hear it, feeling like that same little girl who never ceased to be an overwhelming disappointment to her family, no matter how hard she tried not to be.

  “But you should know that Aquata was not our only casualty tonight, Arielle.” Her words were soft but fraught with barely checked emotion.

  I blinked, going cold all over. Aquata was the sweetest, gentlest little hermit that had ever existed. She’d made even the hardest hearts, hearts like father’s, love her, simply because of how pure she’d been. “Father,” I said, already knowing by the visible look of weariness and pain shading Anahita’s cobalt-blue eyes. “That’s why you came to me then. Do you rule now?”

  “He is not dead, but he is gravely wounded and in a comatose state. Lethe is seeing to him now.”

  Lethe was Father’s personal doctor, and having him there must have meant that his injuries were bad indeed.

  “He would have been so happy to see you, Arielle.”

  I looked at her strangely, curling my nose. “Right.” I scoffed. “Sure. The man who banished me and never looked back. Never— ”

  “Say another word about him, and I’ll drown you myself.” Her voice vibrated with fury, and her look was sharp as a blade.

  I felt her anger on an almost visceral level. I swallowed hard.

  “You know nothing, Arielle. That was always your problem,” she snapped. “You thought you did—you thought you knew it all. But you were a simple, foolish, little girl then, and I see very little has changed.”

  I shook with rage, feeling the stirrings of the darkness within me rise. But Anahita’s eyes glittered with tendrils of her own electrified powers—they looked like jagged sparks of lightning rippling through the waters around her. She had truly become the mistress of the deep.

  Her smirk was arrogant and waiting.

  I curled my hands into tight fists, piercing through the meat of my palm with my sharpened nails

  But we only stared at one another. Neither of us, it seemed, were ready to make the first move.

  Finally, she inhaled and shook her head. “I have no time for these silly gam
es. If you wish safe harbor for yourself and your pathetic creatures, then fine. It is granted. But we need to make preparations for Aquata’s”—at that, she forcibly swallowed and looked away for half a second, but not before I caught the fresh sheen in her eyes. She cleared her throat once and looked back at me, her face once more a mask of composed elegance. “Come or stay. The choice is yours.” She shrugged as though she couldn’t care less. “But you will be debriefed shortly on what you know about the Sea Witch and why you’ve released her. After that, the fates will decide.” She turned and left.

  I just stood there, knowing immediately what that meant. Soon, the council of the Undine would learn that I’d given the witch my soul, that I had indeed given her the power to escape the wards of Never, and by so doing had caused the death of my most beloved sister and possibly even the king of all waters. The result would be bad. That much was certain. I would likely be jailed for it, labeled an accessory to the crime. The death of a royal was never taken lightly in any place, but especially not in Undine. If I stepped through these doors, there was a very good chance that I might never make it back to Grimm.

  My sister was giving me the choice. She was letting me know in so many words that once I stepped through, I would be at the mercy of Undine law. Sadly, if I’d had another choice, I would have taken it. But the boys and I wouldn’t survive for long in Never without my tail to see us through the turbulent waters.

  “Feck me,” I muttered. There was an ache spreading, hollow and cold and all the way through me. I’d never meant to bring such harm to my family—we might have been strained, and most of them might not have even missed me, their wayward princess, but we had history that a part of me was still loyal enough that even hearing about my miserable bastard of a father being injured bothered me.

  No power on Earth or in the below could get me out of the tribunal, either. Royal decree superseded all rights of Grimm PD. They weren’t supposed to, but everyone in Grimm understood how the game worked. I’d quite possibly destroyed a dynasty by my actions, and I would be made an example of because of it.

  The darkness within me stirred, and a terrible voice whispered within my soul. You can do it. You can end them all. We have the power now, daughter… I shuddered, recognizing that voice instantly.

  I knew that whatever was going on, the Sea Witch wasn’t actually living inside of me, but when she’d siphoned off part of me, I’d also siphoned part of her. We were mystically bound, she and I. I wasn’t sure how, or what that might mean in the future, but we were connected. I didn’t know what the limits of my newfound powers were, but I suspected that if I really wanted to, I could make all of Undine burn.

  Clenching my jaw and tamping down on that darkness, I snapped my fingers at both Hook and Crowley, stunned when they both actually began floating through the air, linked to me with an invisible tether that I could feel binding all three of us together. They would follow me wherever I led.

  Gods, I was powerful. Scary strong. I squeezed my eyes shut and wet my lips in a nervous gesture. Power always came with a price. I wasn’t sure what it was yet, but I was sure that I wouldn’t like it at all.

  Turning toward the yawning waters of the deep, I took the first step down into the abyss.

  CHAPTER 37

  HATTER

  “SHE’S BEEN FOUND!”

  My head snapped up at the sound of the excited voice of Rotá, the Valkyrie. My brows rose. I’d not showered in days, and my clothes were untouched—I was still wearing what I had been in when Elle and the ship had gone off-grid.

  The sense of overwhelming ineptitude that had flooded me at the thought that I might never again see my partner had nearly crippled me. But I’d stayed the course and charted through maps, building on the very weakest of links to try and trace where the route to Never began. Ichabod had been helpful as well. Together, he and I were sure we’d already pinpointed the exact spot she must have been in Never, doing a type of reverse engineering of sorts on the one thing we still had to use, the blue grains of Never’s sands.

  I jumped to my feet. “Are you certain?”

  “Of-of course.”

  The smile on Rotà’s face fell just an inch. Her lips were tight, the corners of her eyes pinched with forced humor, and my heart sank.

  “What’s happened? Tell me, godsdammit!” I snapped, barely leashing on to my fires. I felt the invisible burn of flames beginning to ignite upon my sensitized flesh.

  I was sleep-deprived. I’d barely eaten a thing in days. My mood was shite, and I knew it. Everyone seemed appalled by my shift in moods, but mostly, they’d given me my space.

  Detectives were a different breed of cop. We didn’t just solve crimes—we did everything together. We were as tight as siblings, sometimes even tighter.

  I’d never intended for what was occurring to happen to me. I never thought I could feel that way again, and I’d tried like hells not to let it be so. For me to attach to anything was dangerous. Attachment was closely tied to my emotions, which I had to leash at all costs, lest I do what I once did, long ago.

  I glowered.

  She twitched and held up her hands as if to ward off the approach of a mad beast. I felt a prickle of shame but still couldn’t seem to contain my behavior.

  “She is safe, Maddox. But Elle’s been captured.”

  “Captured?” I snapped and shook my head. Has the witch taken Elle hostage? Is she broken? Bloody? Crying out for help? Crying out for me? My skin crawled at the thought, and I flexed my fingers in helpless agitation, staring daggers at Rotá as though she could, in any way, fix the mess that’d been made.

  She cleared her throat. “By the acting Queen of the below, Anahita of Undine.”

  “Her sister?” I asked in confusion. “Then she’s safe. Tell me where to fetch her. I’ll go find her and— ”

  “There is to be a tribunal. She is out of our hands right now.”

  I shook my head, still not sure I fully grasped the situation. “But that’s her sister. Surely— ”

  “The Sea Witch was released, a princess was killed, and the king is in critical condition.”

  I went cold all over, the fires instantly popped out of existence, and I plopped unceremoniously onto the chair behind me, feeling suddenly weak in the knees as I scrubbed at my unshaven face. “What? What— ”

  “It doesn’t look good for her, but that’s all I know. I have to go talk with the Captain. I’m sorry, Maddox. I’m sorry.” She did look genuinely sorry. I watched her as she walked toward Bo’s office, feeling numb all over.

  What can I do now? How can I reach her? There has to be a way. But I still wasn’t sure that she wasn’t safe. It was her blood. Surely, there was still a bond in there somewhere. But the truth was I knew very little of siren rule.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I wet my lips. She had to get free. She had to. She’d done nothing wrong. Right? So why couldn’t I shake this feeling of doom gripping me so tightly?

  Where there was a will, there was a way. Once, she’d had to fight for me when I wasn’t around to defend myself, and I could do no less for her. I didn’t know what her situation was, but I wasn’t giving up on getting her back, no matter what the cost.

  Elle

  I WAS SHOVED none too gently into the cell. I hadn’t recognized the guard who’d butted the small of my back with the staff end of his trident, but it’d been some time since I’d last set tail in Undine.

  I turned, staring at the golden-haired Adonis with a question burning brightly in my eyes. Being the disgraced daughter of the king would grant me no privileges. Father had seen that my banishment was absolute.

  The silence between us grew thick. “What now?” I asked brusquely, sure he would not answer.

  His flesh was golden, his hair the brilliant color of morning light, his eyes nearly as electric blue as Anahita’s had been. Males and females were sirens, but few actually knew that. We both could enchant, though the females tended to have a little more charm on the whole. Even so
, I felt a warm tingle spread between my thighs the longer I looked upon him.

  I finally felt the effects of the siren charm as I had not with my sister. His full lips curled into a snarl of disdain, and his voice was heavy and cold as he said, “Jacamoe comes, after that, it is to the tribunal to decide.”

  Reaching over, he locked the water-resistant steel door. It closed with a deafening squeal and a boom that rang of finality. He swam away only seconds later, his black tail sliding into shadow almost instantly.

  I was alone in the darkness of the lowest part of the dungeon keep. Anahita had promised me and mine safe passage, and in her own way, she’d delivered. But her hands were tied, and I knew that. If my actions had caused the death of my sister and possibly their king, I would be made to pay undine justice. I would be held accountable, just as I had been once before. Squeezing my eyes shut, memories began to flood through me of a time not so dissimilar to the current one, when I’d been met with nearly exactly the same fate.

  I opened my eyes and stared at the muck growing upon the bone-white coral walls. Because it was nearly as dark as the trenches of the deep, below, the coral actually glowed. I was in water but had been given safe passage and could breathe as easily down here if I’d been wearing my own gills.

  My shoulders dropped as the enormity of what had been done to me when the witch came upon me. I was not a siren anymore. I tried calling the change to me, but I had nothing but legs.

  I stared at the offending appendages, grimacing as I fought the burn of tears. The curse of being trapped in one of the eternal pools was nothing to the idea that I might never again be able to feel my body in the form it was created to be.