Read Online Blood, Milk & Chocolate - Part 1 (The Grimm Diaries Book 3) by Cameron Jace - Free Book Online

everything came with a price. A price that only I had to pay.
    As it
turned out, the universe always demanded balance. For everything it granted us,
it took something in return—a basic law in alchemy. The curse that had
been lifted when I was born wasn't going to just fade away. It morphed into
another shape of a curse somewhere else in the universe.
    Ironically,
she who lifted the curse had to pay the price to keep the world balanced.
    In my
case, the price I had to pay would seem benign, even shallow, at first. It even
seemed that way to me in the beginning, until I realized the atrocity of such
sacrifice.
    My curse
was simply this: I wasn't allowed to see my reflection in any clear mirror or
reflecting surface for the rest of my life. If I ever did, something horrible
would happen to me and my family and my land.

 

 
    12

 
    It's hard
to describe how an adolescent girl's life without a mirror is like. I can't
even bring myself to remember it now. I need to take a deep breath before I
write about it.
    Give me a
second, please.
    At
seventeen, all the talk about my ancestors soon escaped my adolescent memory. I
don't know what it was that actually made the idea of not seeing how I looked
liked intolerable. I had always thought of it as a great sacrifice. When you're
young and naive, you think that sacrificing yourself for others is a good
thing.
    Maybe it was knowing that I was "prohibited" to see my
reflection. Deny anyone anything and they only want it more. Maybe it was my
hormones kicking in. How was I supposed to walk over the threshold of womanhood
without seeing and—hopefully—admiring my looks? Sometimes, I
wondered if all this was only a camouflage faked by my parents so I never saw
how hideous I looked.
    But it
didn't make sense. How did all those visitors look at me as if I were the most
beautiful of them all?
    My curse
began to bother me. Who was that witch who cursed me, and why weren't we
allowed to speak her name, let alone know it in the first place? Why did she
curse me ?
    Although I
repeatedly asked my parents about her, they never succumbed to my wish to know
her name, or where she was from. All I knew was that she hated our ancestor and
I was supposed to be her nemesis. That was all. They said it was for the best
for everyone.
    Those
unanswered questions weren't helping me occupy my mind, as I needed to forget
about my curse. They didn't help me forget about my reflection and pretend I
was the only one in the world who didn't need to see it.
    My father
and mother grew more concerned about anything resembling mirrors, including my
mother's precious copper mirror.
    Still, my
father and mother worried if my blossoming into womanhood would urge me to
break the rule and have greater interest in watching myself in the water's
reflection, like any normal teen would do. This resulted in me being almost cut
off from meeting any boys.
    As
obedient as I was, I seemed to forget all about mirrors again—which also
worried them. Why isn't she curious about her looks? What is wrong with her? You know how parents are. Sometimes there is no way to please them.
    My parents
worried whenever I neared any kind of water: rivers, streams. Any shining
metallic objects, like armors, worried them, although they believed the curse
specified my reflection in either water or a mirror.
    I spent my
days hearing about girls staring at their reflections in the Pond of Pearls,
debating who was the "most beautiful of them all." The famous and
shiny pond looked like liquid pearls underneath a full moon from far away. I
could only see it from my mother's chamber when I visited, now that I wasn't
even able to leave the few chambers I was allowed to enter in the castle. Each
day I contemplated if I should burst out of the castle and run to the Pond of
Pearls, defying my parents' wishes and having to live with the consequences of
breaking the curse.
    I didn't
want to be special anymore. I didn't want to be a hero, saving the land.