Tear You Apart (8 page)

“I don’t know.” Henley’s low voice dropped lower. “I think it was, for a little while.”

The smell of earth and wood seeped from every corner. Murky decay: something old dying so something new could live.

“The future was so open then. I never thought …” She twisted the hem of her dress to squeeze the water out, then kept twisting, nervousness taking hold. “I never thought you’d do things for her. Help her.”

“Viv—I’m polite to her, that’s it.”

“You shouldn’t even be that. She should be your enemy. You should pick a side, and it should be mine.”

“Did you pick my side?”

“What?” Her hands went still in her lap.

“When you think about your future, am I in it? Or am I just a roadblock you have to get through?”

“Henley …”

“You think you’re going to end up with a prince—and I’m the Huntsman. That’s all I am to you.” His voice was rough. Not the low rumble she was used to—jagged, hurt. “So you don’t have room for me in your life. Right?”

“Please don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it?”

Tears slid down her cheeks. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

He was quiet then. Maybe he’d expected to feel better. Or maybe he’d expected her to be a better liar.

The hum of insects merged with the throb of blood in her head. It was a mistake to talk about it. They should have learned that by now.

It was too dark to see his expression, so she went over to him and put her hands on his face instead. His skin was hot, damp with sweat but not tears, and she stroked her hands over his cheeks and up into his hair, tenderly. Sometimes she wanted to hurt him but right now it was too much.

“What do you want from me?” she whispered. And then
she pressed her hand to his lips before he could answer. The sounds slipped out between her fingers:
Everything
.

She bent her head to his and kissed him, harder when he tried to ask why, until he didn’t have the breath for questions. Explanations were painful. Promises were lies. She didn’t want any of that. She wanted his mouth, which was soft and familiar—and hard when she wanted it to be. He always knew. Their hearts were a mystery but they knew each other like this.

His hands found her like he was reliving a memory, and she wrapped her arms around him and gave in to the past.

He couldn’t promise he wouldn’t kill her. She couldn’t promise she would stay with him. They shouldn’t be together; she knew that. But she didn’t care. Tomorrow she would care, in an hour she might care. But not now.

CHAPTER TEN

THE DAYS MELTED TOGETHER. The nights seethed with sticky heat, and Viv struggled to sleep a whole night through without nightmares. She kept her bedroom door locked, but left the balcony doors open for the animals, and half expected to find the old Huntsman standing there whenever she opened her eyes.

Tonight, she woke not to nightmares, but to a loud animal snort. And the jingling of reins.

A horse?

Viv pushed the satin sleep mask off her eyes to find a brown mouse watching her. She raised a sleepy hand and lightly stroked its back.

“Who’s out there?” she whispered. The mouse closed its eyes and gave a little wriggle of pleasure, but didn’t answer. They never did.

Moving the mouse onto her pillow, and shooing away the other animals who’d been sleeping around her, Viv went to the
balcony, squinting into the dark in search of a horse. None of her friends rode horses. Even the most delusional hero-types had cars.

At first, all she saw was the garden, the fruit trees ringing the well. But then the darkness shifted. Moonlight slid along the glossy black body of a horse, traced the shape of a man holding the reins. Both horse and master were as black as the night they moved through.

Viv shivered with excitement. She knew who the man was—she could recognize a horseman. She just didn’t know why he was here.

Horsemen were magical beings, like fairies—except fairies were always female and horsemen were always male. And while fairies attended christenings, and bestowed curses, and otherwise played a role in cursed lives, horsemen were more standoffish. In Russian fairy tales, they served Baba Yaga. There were horsemen representing the red sun, the white day, the black night. This one was clearly Night.

He’d spotted her on the balcony and was watching her, waiting.

He didn’t call her name. He didn’t have to. It was rare to see a horseman, and there was no way she was letting him leave without finding out why he was here.

Viv hurried downstairs. When she got to the yard Night was standing near the well. The horse was chewing huge mouthfuls of the garden. Flowers disappeared between its teeth and naked patches of earth showed where grass used to grow.

Then Night was in front of her, holding out a black card printed with silver script. The words gleamed with light, so she could read them even in the dark.

A twist of silver branches crawled up either side of the card.

Silver branches meant the underworld. There was a nightclub there where the Twelve Dancing Princesses went to dance, night after night, until someone broke their curse. It was more exclusive than any club she knew. There was no velvet rope, no doorman to persuade—you couldn’t even find the underworld unless someone wanted you there.

And now someone wanted her there.

No one she knew had ever been invited.

The underworld wasn’t a land of the dead, like in Greek mythology. It was simply a hidden place, a kingdom the fairies had carved out of stone and darkness so long ago that no one remembered who had done it. There, fairies and other inhuman beings could show themselves freely because there was no chance that a normal human would be present. The way there was a secret but most Cursed knew the underworld existed.

More silver words appeared on the card as Viv watched.

She glanced up at Night. His eyes were solid-black pools.

“How do I get there?”

“I’ll take you.” The horseman’s voice was deep, and once he’d spoken it seemed to drift away, like she’d imagined the sound.

Viv ran a hand through her messy hair, conscious of her skimpy pajamas and the sweat that coated her skin. “Do I have time to change?”

“We go now, or not at all.”

Light glimmered across the words:
Yes or No?

“Yes,” she decided.

At that the message faded. The invitation turned to dust and the branches that had adorned the card appeared on her arms: silver filigree stretching from elbows to wrists. The silver markings gleamed like the words had and were cool to the touch.

“What are these marks?” she asked, holding out her arms so Night could see them.

“This is your way in,” he said, taking her right arm. He grasped her left arm. “And this is your way out.”

Night stood there a moment, holding her arms at the wrists, his face betraying nothing. And yet, it was clear from the way he hesitated that something was wrong.

“So … is there a door?” Viv asked, starting to get nervous.

“There are many doors. This one is … inconvenient.”

“How inconvenient?”

“Hold your breath,” he said.

And then he picked her up and threw her in the well.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

VIV DID NOT HOLD HER BREATH.

She screamed. Her fingers clawed at the slick stone walls, but she couldn’t grab on to anything. Night slid in after her and sank like a stone. Disappeared into the dark water, so she couldn’t feel him at all.

Until his hand closed around her ankle and he pulled her under.

Her last scream was swallowed by the water that flooded her mouth. She was choking, her head full of darkness. And all she could think was:

This was a plan of Regina’s
.

A trick
.

Regina knew witches—she could commission a magic invitation.

And maybe—

Hire a horseman.

She should have
known
.

This was—

The stupidest—

Way to die.

Viv felt herself being tugged down, down, down—and then someone was dragging her out of the water, across a bed of wet pebbles. Not out of a well. Out of … a lake.

She coughed, hacking up water. It all blurred at first—like lights seen through a raindrop-speckled window. Then the underworld came into focus. The silver trees with their knife-gleam branches. The faint, haunting music, like distant bells and snapping icicles. A sky that wasn’t sky but a dense mass of shadows.

Night laid her down on the lakeshore. His jet-black face was smooth and expressionless. Not cold, but inhumanly composed.

A man in a silver guard’s uniform came rushing over. His tinsel-colored jacket was like something a toy soldier would wear, but the sword he carried was real.

“She has to go through the checkpoint,” the guard insisted, sounding nervous—like he was uneasy talking to a horseman.

Viv turned onto her side to hack up more water and Night grabbed her right arm and showed it to the guard. “Check her here. I’m in a hurry.”

The guard muttered another protest, but did as he was told. He ran his eyes over Viv’s right arm, then touched his ring to the silver swirls on her skin—and the mark disappeared.

“All right,” the guard said. “But next time—”

Night vanished before the guard could finish—just kind of disappeared like Batman—which Viv found almost as annoying as the fact that he’d dragged her down a well. He didn’t
think he had to explain himself? Horsemen were as bad as fairies.

“There won’t be a next time,” Viv said. Going to a nightclub was not worth almost drowning. She hugged herself and shivered. Her pajamas were sopping wet and it was cool in the underworld. Like an early spring night when the earth was just crawling out of winter.

Silver branches stretched above them, all around the lake, glinting in the lantern light. There was no breeze, but the leaves made a tinkling sound like wind chimes. It was beautiful, still—and a little eerie. Like walking through a dream.

There was a path that looped through the forest behind them where a line of guests in silver party garb waited to show their marked arms to the guards at the checkpoint. They shimmered between the trees like figures made of mercury.