Tear You Apart (33 page)

She downed her second drink—and hoped it would help. It didn’t. It just stirred up more fear. There was no whisper from Henley. No brush of his hand—just people bumping into her from behind.

He could have been caught. A wrong step, a snapped branch, too much weight in the boat. All it took was one person to notice, one to grab the cloak, another to draw his sword.…

Or maybe he hadn’t seen her. Maybe he was hanging around the Twelve Dancing Princesses because he assumed she’d be over there.

“One for the road,” she told the bartender. “That’s a Royal order.”

“You got it.”

He mixed her a third red apple martini and she took it with her, sipping it as she made her way across the dance floor. The apple wedge brushed the corner of her mouth, and she pulled it off, fingers sliding through the glaze.

The glaze was different this time—not caramel, but sticky
red candy, as bright and shiny as lip gloss. Impulsively, Viv pressed her lips to the glaze. The honeyed, tart taste melted on her tongue. Sour apple. Sweet sugar.

It was apple season on the surface. The time for fallen leaves and parties where kids bobbed for apples. When Viv was younger, kids would harass her at Halloween parties, crowding around her with apples, trying to get her to take a bite—as if she had a fatal apple allergy and could be killed by any Red Delicious. She’d eaten one and pretended to die once—then had gotten a serious scolding at home after the adults hosting the party told her father what she’d done.

Most people assumed she hated apples, but Viv actually liked them. She liked the smell, and the taste. She liked the way they filled her palm, the way they looked hanging from a tree or sitting on a teacher’s desk. The way they were a symbol of temptation.

She ate them sometimes when the mood struck her. She just didn’t take them from witches.

She wanted this one.

The red glaze shined like a new pair of patent leather shoes. She bit the wedge in half, and felt the candy cling to her teeth. The cool flesh of the apple slid across her tongue. It tasted so sweet it brought tears to her eyes. And it brought back a memory—a time she and Regina had gone to an orchard. Viv must have been about six. They had matching baskets and went down the rows of trees, picking the biggest, brightest apples to take home.

Afterward, they’d sat in the grass outside the gift shop and eaten apples until their stomachs soured, giggling like they were doing something forbidden. When they were finished
Regina used her sleeve to wipe the juice from their faces, then kissed the rest of it off Viv’s chin.

“We can make a pie,” Viv said.

“No.” Regina took both baskets and tipped them over into the grass. “We can’t bring these home. Your dad wouldn’t like it. We shouldn’t tell him about coming here, either.”

“It will be our secret. We can have all kinds of secrets from him!”

Regina had laughed at that. She had been so beautiful, and Viv had beamed with pleasure, certain that nothing could spoil this, nothing could ever go wrong between them.

The apple in Viv’s mouth tasted exactly like that memory: pain and happiness with an aftertaste of lost innocence. She made a sobbing noise, gasped, and the piece of apple slid down her throat and stuck there.

She was conscious long enough to notice the blood-tinged tartness of the poison, the blur of the crowd, the way the world shrank to nothing as her eyes closed, and then the floor hit her so hard she stopped feeling it.

CHAPTER FORTY

VIV WOKE UP SPRAWLED on the ground outside the palace, coughing up poison, bright red flecks spattering the stones like blood. She could feel the poisoned wedge scraping down her throat and into her stomach, hard as a gem. A circle of legs surrounded her. Jasper and his entourage.

“Did it come up?”

“No, she swallowed it.”

Her bones ached from crashing onto the rocky ground. There was a stretcher behind her; she must have fallen off when they dropped her. That was the way it was supposed to happen, but the servants all looked like they were sorry about it.

Jasper knelt and gathered her in his arms, wiped the syrup from her face with a handkerchief. The poison burned her stomach and she shuddered.

“We have to get the apple out,” he said. “You’ll feel better after that.”

“I want to go back to the club. I have to—” She couldn’t finish. She couldn’t tell him about Henley.

“We can go back tomorrow,” he said gently.

Jasper’s entourage accompanied them all the way to Viv’s room. Jasper laid her down on the bed, then sent servants to fetch hot water, towels, salt. He sent guards to round up the bartenders for questioning, and to remind the other guards to be extra vigilant at the checkpoint.

“The bartender I saw talking to you—he’s the one who served you the drink?”

“Yes. But I doubt he works for you. It was probably my stepmother in disguise.”

Jasper leaned over her and brushed her hair back from her face. “Impossible. The doors are blocked to her. She must have hired him. Don’t worry, we’ll find him. He won’t get away with doing this to you.”

He stayed near her, his hand warming her cold fingers. “Go and break some diamond leaves off the tree in my father’s study,” he told a maid, “and pay a horseman to bring a doctor from the surface.”

“A doctor?” Viv said.

“Just in case.”

The first group of servants returned with a solution of warm salt water. They poured it down her throat until she vomited into a bowl: the cursed apple chunk floating in a foamy swirl of liquor, brine, and blood. They whisked away the poison apple, combed her hair and washed her face, removed her pearls and her dress, and by then she was tired of the hands tugging at her and she ordered them away. Everyone except Jasper.

He covered her with three layers of blankets. Tucked her
in. She took a sip of water from the glass beside her bed and felt the cold liquid coil inside her stomach.

“Do you feel better?” Jasper asked.

“I think so.”

She’d missed her chance to meet Henley. They were supposed to have two more nights together, and now half that time was gone. The twelve princesses hadn’t left the underworld and she’d already lost tonight.

“I tried shaking you at the club. Turning you over, pounding your back. It didn’t help. It wasn’t until I started to bring you home, and one of the servants tripped, that …”

She looked toward the window. She wished she knew if Henley was all right. If he was out there, waiting. Or if the guards had found him. She wondered if Jasper would tell her if they had.

“Do you think it’s over? The curse? Now that you’ve eaten the poison apple?”

“Maybe. There’s usually another attempt, but the apple is kind of the coup de grâce.”

Jasper sat down next to her, his hand resting on the blanket over her arm. “Let’s hope that’s the end of it. I’d be wrecked if I lost you. I don’t want us to fight over stupid things. At the club, when I said—”

A knock at the door sent Jasper sliding off the bed to answer it. It was the doctor they’d summoned—accompanied by the troll, who wore a bright gold smoking jacket over a pea-green suit.

“Get him out of here,” Viv said.

The troll smiled. “Vivian, is that any way to speak to your future father-in-law? A little respect, please. I’m here to make sure you’re all right.”

“I don’t want him here,” Viv told Jasper, hoping that now, of all times, he’d stick up for her.

“Just let the doctor examine you,” Jasper said.

“Yes. Let the doctor do his job,” the troll said. His presence made her feel worse than the poison had.

Viv allowed the doctor to look down her throat, listen to her heart, et cetera, just to get rid of him, and finally he made her drink something that was supposedly an antidote—although Viv doubted there was a ready-made antidote to Regina’s poison.

When the doctor left, the troll took his place at Viv’s bedside. His scent was overpowering. He smelled like he bathed in Earl Grey tea, and also like there was garbage inside his clothes.

“Now that the prince has saved his princess from the poison apple, it’s time to move forward with the wedding preparations,” the troll said.

Viv started to protest and the troll muzzled her with a hand that reeked of rotting vegetables.

“Vivian, ever the firecracker. I’m sure you were about to give me a reason why we ought to delay the wedding. Maybe you’d rather find my name before you and my son exchange vows. That would be nice for you—a wedding and a coronation on the same day! But that’s not going to happen. You will marry my son, bear his children, and rest assured, I will outlive you both.”

He smiled again and held it as if the expression were carved onto his face.

“Now, I don’t want you to worry that your dream wedding will be a rushed affair. We’ll make it a night you’ll always
remember. No one in the world throws a better party than I do. I’ll leave it up to you to make it a night your husband always remembers.

“Good night,” the troll said as he left. “And congratulations.”

Jasper seemed stunned, but not unhappy. Maybe he was feigning shock so she wouldn’t be pissed at him.

“So, how can I make it a night you’ll always remember?” she asked tartly.

“Viv …”

“No, I’m serious. You might as well tell me your preferences since you always get what you want, anyway.”

Now he gaped at her. “You think I had something to do with this?”

“I know you didn’t do anything to stop him. And his disgusting hand wasn’t covering
your
mouth. Which, by the way—”

She grabbed the glass of water by her bed, swished some water around in her mouth, and spit it on the floor.

“I can’t believe you think I’m in league with my father.”

“When you just go along with whatever he wants, it’s the same thing!”

“Why don’t
you
want it? Why are you so against being married to me? This is our destiny. We’re meant to be together.
We
are. Not you and your Huntsman—he’s dead!”

“Do you
listen to yourself
?”

“Do
you
? You haven’t thanked me once. I saved your life. I’ve done so much for you. And you don’t even appreciate it. You just expect it.”

“Of course I expect it,” she said coldly. “I’m the princess.”

“I’m leaving,” he muttered.

“
Thank you!
” she screamed as he slammed the door behind him.

Her whole body felt wrenched between sped-up and slowed-down. Racing heart, sluggish limbs. She was tired and cold from being poisoned, and full of terror for Henley. They had one more night to figure out how to break the Twelve Dancing Princesses curse—if Henley was still alive—and she doubted he was any closer to the answer than he’d been before. If Henley had been at the club, and he’d seen her collapse, then he was probably worrying about her right now, instead of thinking about how he could save himself.

I won’t let you die
, she thought.
I’ll protect you. I’ll be the one who saves you this time
.

Earlier, when Jasper had given orders to summon the doctor, he’d told a maid to take some diamond leaves from a tree in the troll’s study.

Viv had already seen trees made of silver, and of gold … and she’d associated the silver with the underworld and, eventually, the gold with Rumpelstiltskin. But the mention of a diamond tree got her thinking about the Twelve Dancing Princesses, and the way the soldier in the fairy tale had won their father’s challenge.

Once he reached the underworld, the soldier followed the princesses through three different forests: one with silver trees, one with gold trees, and one with diamond trees. He broke a twig off each type of tree as evidence, and on the morning after the third night, when he was supposed to solve the mystery or be executed, he presented the three twigs to the king, and the
twelve princesses confessed to everything and never returned to the underworld.

The actual curse couldn’t be broken that easily. But if there really were silver, gold, and diamond trees in the underworld, maybe they were part of the solution. It was worth a try. She didn’t have anything else to go on.

Gold and silver twigs would be easy enough to get. But if the diamond tree was in the troll’s study, Viv would have to sneak in there without getting caught.

And she’d have to do it tonight. Tomorrow was Henley’s last night in the underworld.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE