Tear You Apart (38 page)

“Snow White princesses have thrilled to it for centuries. But you’re impossible to please, aren’t you, Vivian? Well. You’ll have plenty of time to hone your misery here.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

“THEY MADE THE BED with white sheets,” Jasper said as he pulled the covers back. “They’ll check for blood. As proof that we …”

Viv cut him off. “There won’t be any blood. So slice your hand or something. I’m getting out of this dress.”

She locked herself into the bathroom to change. Once her wedding gown was off—in a pile on the floor, so enormous you could have hidden seven dwarves under it—she slid down against the door and covered her eyes.
Lips as red as blood
—she couldn’t stop seeing it.

Regina.

The corpse hadn’t even looked like her.

The bitch, the sexpot, the wicked queen was gone. Only the broken heart had remained.

Black as burnt flesh. White as bone
.

She’d said that love was worthless, that power was everything. Love required an ally. Power you could claim on your own.

As long as Viv was breathing, as long as she had a voice to speak the troll’s true name, she had a chance to take control of this hell she’d walked into.

She slipped on the nightgown the maids had left for her and heard a gasp from the other room. A grunt. Then nothing.

“Jasper?” Maybe he’d taken her advice and cut his hand. “Are you okay?”

When he didn’t respond, she opened the door.

And met Jasper’s bulging eyes, hands scrabbling at the rope wrapped around his throat.

Henley stood behind him, pulling the rope taut. Still in that same tux, grubby as a miner, black stone dust griming his collar.

Henley gave her a grim smile. “You want a divorce, or do you want to be a widow?”

“Jesus. Just … tie him up or something!”

Henley loosed the rope from around Jasper’s neck and Jasper stumbled forward, gasping and clutching at his throat. He backed into a corner, as far from them as he could get.

“Get over here,” Henley said. He opened his arms and she ran to him, leaping so he had to catch her.

“What are you doing here? How did you—?”

“You’re happy to see me?” he asked.

“I’m happy to see you.” She kissed his dirty face, his neck. His skin had taken on the wet stone smell of the underworld. His invisibility cloak lay in a pool at his feet. Whole, not slashed up like the one Jasper had showed her.

“I don’t want to let you go,” Henley said, “but we need to get out of here while the king’s distracted. I don’t know how
long this party’s going to last. And we still have to deal with your ex-husband.”

“No, you’re right.…” She parted from Henley reluctantly.

He picked up the rope. “On your knees,” he told Jasper. “Hands behind your back.”

Jasper didn’t struggle as Henley bound his wrists and ankles, but he couldn’t resist adding, “You’re both insane. You know that, don’t you? You’ll be lucky to survive the night.”

“Who told you to talk?” Henley stuffed the royal silver sash into Jasper’s mouth.

“Wait.” Viv pulled the sash back out so Jasper could speak. “Jasper, if you know
anything
about your father’s name, you have to tell me.”

“Do you have amnesia? Did you not see what happened in the ballroom? If you cross my father—”

Henley crammed the sash back into Jasper’s mouth. “All right. Thanks for your advice.”

Viv sighed. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, a bride in her frilly white nightgown. There was no way she could sneak out wearing that.

“Just give me a minute to change and we can go.”

“Sure. I’ll keep an eye on your ex-husband.”

“Stop saying that,” she warned him.

“What?
Husband?
” Henley put his shoe on Jasper’s shoulder and shoved him over.

Viv dug through the wardrobe until she found the black-and-white cocktail dress Jewel had bought her. It looked like something a wedding guest would wear. She hurried into the bathroom, threw on the dress, and dashed back out.

“Ready,” she said, stepping into a pair of black satin slippers.

“One more thing.” Henley took hold of Viv’s left hand, his fingers settling on her gold wedding band. He worked it over her knuckle and then pinged it at the wall.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

The corridor outside Viv’s room was empty, but it wouldn’t stay that way. Jasper’s brothers might return to their rooms, or the troll might drop by to make sure Viv was fulfilling her end of the marital contract. Viv urged Henley to put on his cloak, then led him through the first open doorway they passed. The room was dark, and when she pulled Henley close, her ears filled with the sound of his breathing. She kept her hands on his wrists so she wouldn’t lose him and kept her eyes on the doorway. Any minute now they could be found.

It was dangerous for Henley to be here at all, but especially tonight when the troll had an audience and his son’s pride was at stake. She wondered what he was doing here. Saving her—that was obvious—but why? If the key had worked the way it was supposed to, and broken the curse, Henley should have been on the surface, engaged to one of the twelve princesses, not in the underworld, risking his life.

If the key had failed, then … he’d been condemned to death, and dodged it somehow. But once they returned to the surface, he’d be a marked man.

“Did the key not work?” she asked, afraid of the answer.

“It worked. The door closed up like it never existed, and the key broke right after that. The princesses haven’t come back. The curse is broken.”

“But … you’re still here.”

“I didn’t know if I’d be able to get back here once the door
was sealed. So I locked the door from the underworld side. I’ve been hiding. Waiting for my opportunity to save you. I couldn’t walk away from you. I just … I couldn’t do it.”

“Then how are you supposed to leave? The one door you could get through is gone. Are you stuck here?”

She felt the muscles in his arms tense. “Don’t worry about that.”

“Don’t
worry
about it?” she hissed. “Are you serious?”

“Look, we don’t have another choice right now. If I’m stuck here, I’m stuck. But you can still get out. You’ll take my cloak, sneak past the guards, and climb through the door to Beau Rivage. Or hell, any of them. The first door you find.”

“Unless the magic keeps me from leaving,” Viv said as it dawned on her. “Everyone I invited was blocked from entering. The troll already told me I can’t leave. Why wouldn’t he have a little magical insurance?”

Henley swore under his breath. His hands curled into fists, like he wanted to break something, but that would make noise, and they were trying not to get caught. Viv pried his fists open and wove her fingers between his; making him hold her hands instead, trying to reassure him with her touch.

“What do we do?” he said finally.

“We try, anyway. And if we fail, we fail together. I’m not leaving you again.”

“No. If you have a chance—”

“Henley.” She pulled his face down to hers. Kissed him once, hard. “I am never leaving you again.”

The blood-and-cake reception had given way to a debauched after-party. Nothing made Cursed want to live it up like death.
The red-hot iron shoes, the twisted end—it was a reminder that their own ends could come unexpectedly.

The chairs that had turned the main hall into a chapel had been cleared away, and now it looked more like an out-of-control house party. Half-naked fairies intertwined on the staircase. Couples danced to the music spilling from the ballroom, and drank champagne out of glass slippers or straight from the bottle.

A young girl ran barefoot through a stream of liquor, kicking at clumps of white rice and rose petals.

A group of Royals had cornered a fragile-looking teenage girl and harassed her to the point of tears. They watched in delight as pearls squeezed from the corners of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

Viv quick-stepped through the chaos, her hand tight around Henley’s invisible one, and prayed she’d go unnoticed.

The seven ravens on the chandelier started cawing when she passed beneath it, but only got a bottle hurled at them for their troubles. No one grabbed Viv’s arm and asked,
Princess, where are you going?
A few guests bumped into Henley, but must have been too drunk to care. No one called for the guards; Viv and Henley made it through the palace unscathed.

They made it all the way to the surface doors.

And that was where their luck ran out.

The doors would not open for them.

They tried all of them: the doors that looked out through mirrors, through fireplaces and wardrobes and hollow trees. Viv could see the alley in Beau Rivage, a moonlit garden, a fancy parlor, but couldn’t reach through to touch any of those
places. She was stopped by a barrier every time. She and Henley tried forcing their way through—throwing their bodies against the doors—but it was no use. The magic held.

“There might be another way,” Viv said.

“Another door?” Henley had shed his invisibility cloak, as if he wanted to be ready to throw it across her shoulders, and she could see him: his forehead damp, the nervous way he kept biting his lip.

Viv started toward the lake, trusting him to follow.

“When I first came to the underworld, a horseman brought me through the well in my backyard. I ended up here.” She pointed to the lake.

“It’s underwater?”

“I don’t know exactly where the door is. I thought I was drowning at the time. But I think it was somewhere around here. By the shore.”

“So … what, we swim down? Look for a hole and hope we come out on the other side?”

“We can’t get through the other doors, Henley.”

“Yeah, but this—”

She knew why he didn’t want to do it. They’d probably drown before they found a way out. But what choice did they have?

Viv waded knee-deep into the water. “I’m not scared of dying. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Don’t say shit like that.
I’ll
look for it. You go hide.”

“Those lights …” She squinted. There were lights dancing in the forest. No, not dancing: swaying in time with the steps of the men who held them. It was a search party. Light swept the forest and soon enough it would reach the lakeshore.

“We have to find the door. We have to find it now!”

Viv plunged into the lake, bitter cold up to her chest. She heard Henley splash in after her and she felt around for a hole, a depression, anything that might be the door. She found silt and gritty pebbles, tattered cloth that clung to her like algae. A shard of bone cut her foot and filled the water with a tuft of warm blood.

Henley grabbed her arm. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

She tried to stay calm when the shouts started but the chill of the water and fear of capture made her shake. As the lanterns drew closer her foot found a dent, like a place an eel might live, and she dove down to pry at the sand, as if there might be a door or she might be able to make one. Fingers slipped and scraped at nothing. She dug until she had no breath. Under again. Under. And then she was swimming farther out, driven by shouts, the pounding of boots on the shore, the splashes that followed, until she was yanked up by her hair, gasping and choking.

The guards already had Henley. There was blood on his face and hands. One of the guards was cutting up his cloak with a pair of scissors.

The troll stood at the head of the search party, Jasper by his side.

“Hog-tying my son and running away,” the troll mused. “This was not what I meant when I told you to give him a night he’d always remember.”

“Let Henley go,” Viv said. “I’ll stay. I won’t try to leave again. Just let him go.”

“No, I don’t think I will. In fact, considering how he’s
shamed my son, I think a public beheading would make an excellent wedding gift. Well—for one of you. Would you like that?” he asked Jasper.

Jasper didn’t answer. She was sure he was tempted to say
yes
, and the only thing that stopped him was knowing she would never forgive him if he did.

“What will it take to save him?” Viv shouted. “Tell me! Let’s make a deal. What do you want? Henley lives, in exchange for—”

“Your firstborn child? That will be mine, anyway. No, it will have to be something better.” The troll stroked his chin, as if he was thinking it over, but Viv had a feeling he knew exactly what he wanted.

“Your tongue,” he finally said.

“My—what?”

“I will cut your tongue from your mouth. That is my price for your Huntsman’s life. He will be free to go—though
not
to return—and you, my dear, will be blessedly silent. No more smart remarks. No more adulterous kissing. And no more guessing.” He smiled. “It’s not the same if you just write the name down. If that were enough, this little book”—he produced her notebook of names, and made sure she recognized it before he threw it into the lake—“might have some power. Alas.”

She watched it sink. “I get a chance to guess your name first. If I guess your name, I get everything.”

“Yes. Yes, you do. Bravo. An informed customer! However … three days is a bit much. I don’t want your Huntsman in my underworld that long. I’ll give you three hours to guess my name.”