Tear You Apart

by Sarah Cross

  “I didn’t say you were—I never said that.”

  “No, you just made it very clear that it was wrong of me to have a boyfriend before you.”

  “That’s not—” He sighed and came over. “What are you looking at?”

  “The Rumpelstiltskin Diaries. Your father keeps track of the people he’s scammed. I thought his name might be in here somewhere. So far, I haven’t found anything.”

  “You won’t. Do you think you’re the first who’s tried?”

  “Do you know something? Names that have already been guessed? Has he ever told you? Do you know his name?”

  Jasper laughed bitterly. “Why would he tell me? Don’t I have plenty of motivation to use it against him?”

  “I don’t know. You guys seem pretty tight, despite the sadistic shit he’s put you through. He threatened me on your behalf tonight. That must have made you feel loved.”

  “I didn’t ask him to do that. I don’t want him to threaten you.”

  “And yet, he seemed to know the crux of our problems.”

  “I didn’t go to him. I would never do that. But he knows everything that happens here. The servants are his eyes and ears—the ones who want his favor, anyway. Anyone could have heard us arguing, or noticed that we weren’t together. Anyone could have told him about your past. It’s hardly a secret.”

  “Hmm,” Viv said disinterestedly.

  “Would you put that book down for a minute and listen to me?”

  “Fine, but help me fix this bed while you talk.”

  Viv set down journal number three. Together they wrestled the mattress back into place.

  “I want to apologize,” Jasper said. “I would have done it sooner but I didn’t think you wanted to speak to me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I never should have hit you. I’m not trying to excuse what I did, but I was jealous. Hideously jealous from the moment I found out about your relationship with your Huntsman. I hated thinking that you might still be in love with him. That you might want him more than you wanted me. I was—I was happy when you told me he was dead. I’m sorry, but I was. It meant I didn’t have to compete with him anymore. And then, when you said he was better than me, because he’d protected you—I snapped. I’m sorry. I promise you, if you give me another chance, I’ll never lay a finger on you without your permission.”

  The worst thing that’s ever happened to me makes you happy.

  It hurt Viv worse than the slap. If you cared about someone, weren’t you supposed to hurt when they hurt? If Jasper loved her at all, it was a selfish love, more about himself and what he wanted than it was about her.

  Was that the way she’d loved Henley? She bit her lip, sorry all over again for everything she could never take back.

  “So, next time, you’ll ask first before you slap me in the face?”

  “If you like.”

  She glanced up at him, alarmed.

  “I’m joking! Sorry. It’s just—it’s so tense with you. I thought a joke would help.”

  “Your sister’s not the only one whose jokes are bad. Maybe you should stop trying.”

  “Maybe. Will you forgive me?”

  “What choice do I have? I need your help. You know I do. And I don’t want your father locking me in a cell when I forget to bat my eyelashes at you.”

  They took a moment to fight with the sheets. Neither one of them was skilled at making a bed. “I’ll call one of the maids,” Jasper said.

  “No. I don’t want them to know we were in here.”

  It took them twenty minutes to get the bed looking good enough to pass the troll’s inspection. Viv took stock of the room. There was still the closet, the bathroom, the gallery to go through. More journals. And that was just the bedroom suite.

  “Do you think I have time to check the bathroom?” Viv asked. “I want to fog up the mirrors and see if he ever wrote his name there.”

  “If you insist on doing that, better to do it right after he’s left. The last thing we want is him coming in and wondering why his bathroom is steamed up. Plus, we wouldn’t hear him come in.”

  “We? So you’ll help me find his name?”

  “I’d rather you gave up on this idea. My father’s not stupid enough to have written his name on a wall or a mirror. If he were, someone would have found it a long time ago. My mother spent years searching before she changed.”

  “How did your mother end up here, anyway? What was your father talking about, about her firstborn being covered in blood?”

  Jasper sighed. “Malcolm. He’s … the child she was supposed to give up when she couldn’t guess my father’s name. But she couldn’t part with him. So she offered to stay in the underworld—she thought she could keep Malcolm, in a sense. It didn’t work out as she’d intended. My father decided to marry her, so she assumed Malcolm would be raised as a prince. He was locked up like an animal. And then my father trained him to be the executioner. The only time my mother gets to see him now is when someone’s sentenced to be killed.”

  “God … your father’s such a monster. We have to stop him.”

  “We can’t. Think of how many names there are in the world. How many possibilities.”

  “But … people with Rumpelstiltskin curses reveal their names. That’s how the curse gets broken.”

  “Some of them do. In the past, supposedly, there were trolls who’d get drunk at the club, start dancing, and shout out their names. They couldn’t help themselves. But my father doesn’t lose control. Everything he does is calculated. He’s very fond of himself and his continued existence.”

  “I still have to keep looking. There’s no other option, Jasper. There’s no other way to be free of him. You let me believe that it wouldn’t be like this.”

  “I—hoped,” he said, bowing his head. “I may have been a little too optimistic. I still think he’d ease off if you acted happier to be here. Right now he doesn’t trust you. He wants you here, and he knows I want you here, and he thinks you want to leave. Maybe if he thought you were more amenable to staying …”

  “He doesn’t trust anyone. You told me that from the start. That I should have paid more attention to. He won’t let any of you leave the underworld because he’s afraid you won’t come back. It’s not just me he doesn’t trust. If his own family hasn’t been able to win him over, how am I supposed to?”

  “I understand you want to do this. You think it’s worth it. But I want to keep you safe. And antagonizing my father by searching for his name … that goes against what I’m trying to do to protect you.”

  “I let fear dictate everything I did before, and it didn’t make me safe. It just led to another trap. And this one’s harder to get out of.”

  “Life with me is a trap?”

  “Jasper … your life is a trap. Me being here doesn’t negate that. It just means we’re in the trap together. If you want to look at me instead of the cage, and convince yourself you’re happy, that’s your business. But I can’t do it. I won’t do it. Not anymore.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  NAMES BECAME HER ESCAPE. Viv found herself longing for the troll’s absence like it was a favorite holiday. But since he only left to do deals, getting her wish came with a catch. For her, it was an opportunity to search the troll’s chambers. For others, it was one step closer to losing something they could never get back.

  When she couldn’t search the troll’s rooms, she flipped through books and copied names into a notebook. She didn’t read for content, but stayed alert for capital letters: people, places. And the more she searched, the more hopeless she felt. In the beginning the hunt had given her a sense of purpose, a way to gain power over her situation. But as the scope of the project began to reveal itself, it started to seem as impossible as finding one specific grain of sand on a beach that stretched for miles. She could dig and dig, but the truth would likely stay buried.

  If you go mad, it will be for other reasons.

  Had that hastened the queen’
s split with reality? The search she realized was futile, the trap she realized was permanent? Was it a blessing to be broken inside, divorced from what went on around you? Was that the only escape Viv would ever have?

  The troll could be called Tom or Horace or Yoda or Gravyface. Maybe he was Rumpelstiltskin2x16. Maybe his name was a song or a dirty limerick. She wouldn’t know until she guessed something and he told her whether or not she was wrong.

  Maybe life would be easier if she could just accept her fate, learn to ignore the troll’s taunts, and take comfort in Jasper’s arms. But she couldn’t. She felt like she was giving in to his dreams, not her own. And though the heat of Recognition still burned on her skin when he held her, it was an empty warmth.

  She thought of Henley when Jasper lay in bed beside her. She thought of all the times she’d refused to believe they could have anything more than what their curse dictated because she was afraid to hope. She’d been like Jasper then, unwilling to try. What was the point? She’d thought she could never, ever have what she wanted. Never be happy. All she’d hoped for, in the end, was to be safe.

  She’d let herself be carried along, swept from one danger to the next, as helpless as a princess who was already dead.

  It was unfair of her to resent Jasper for doing the same thing, but she couldn’t help it. She barely felt capable of accomplishing this task, and knowing she had to do it alone made it that much harder.

  A week had passed since Jasper’s apology in the troll’s bedroom. In that time, she’d managed to sneak into the troll’s library once, when he was off collecting a second token and performing a second favor for the girl with the jade bracelet. Viv had pulled old books down from the shelves, checked for bookplates signed in the troll’s spidery handwriting, or for words that had been underlined, even faintly. The desire to reveal his name, his illicit secret, had to be so great … surely he would have written his name somewhere, or drawn a thin pencil line around it when he saw it in a book. Wouldn’t he feel safe doing that? Underlining his true name in one book out of hundreds was the Rumpelstiltskin equivalent of hiding a needle in a haystack. Wouldn’t he feel safe enough to take that small risk?

  Viv intended to go through every book in the library, tracing her fingertip over the lines as she read so her attention wouldn’t drift.

  When the task seemed impossible, she told herself that he would do the work for her. She had to believe that, because the other option was to give up and drown herself in the silver lake.

  She didn’t talk to Jasper about her efforts. Not anymore. He knew she was still searching, but talking about it made him anxious. They’d argue and he’d try to convince her how stupid she was being. Sometimes, though, those arguments were preferable to his attempts to reconcile.

  Tonight he lay next to her while she stretched out on her stomach and copied names from a volume of Shakespeare. Shakespeare, at least, was easy: the characters’ names were listed at the beginning of each play.

  “You might enjoy that more if you read it,” Jasper said, running his fingers along the arch of her back.

  “I have read some of them.”

  “Did you like them?”

  “Not any more than I do now.”

  His hand came to rest on her märchen mark. She felt the warmth of his palm against that symbol of their destiny, and then the heat of Recognition slipped down along her legs, and up her chest.

  “Viv,” he said. “Why don’t you take a break for a while? You’re going to burn out if that’s all you ever do.”

  “Think how much faster this would be if two people were working on it.”

  “We should both waste our time?”

  She sighed and put down her pen. “You’re welcome to go back to your room.”

  “I don’t want to go to my room. I want to spend some time with my princess. Appreciate her a little.”

  “Feel her up a little.”

  “Do you have to be so crude?”

  “If I let you, would it matter how crude I was being?”

  “I just want to know how long things are going to stay like this. We were close when you first came here.”

  Viv didn’t say anything. Jasper was insecure, and vain in some ways, and the last thing she needed to tell him was: That was only real for you.

  Their uneasy alliance was still vulnerable. He was a lousy ally, but having him on her side was better than having no one at all.

  “I miss my friends,” she said. “It’s lonely down here.”

  “I miss you,” he said, scooting closer. He laid his head down on her book. It reminded her of the times the animals in her room would sit smack in the middle of her textbook until she paid attention to them. It annoyed her and made her sad all at once.

  “Jasper, I’m trying to work.”

  “How do you expect to enjoy yourself down here if you never try? You make it out to be this endless suffering, and it doesn’t have to be. We have each other. And you liked being with me at first.”

  She pressed her lips together. How long could she keep this up?

  He took her silence as indecision. “We don’t have to talk about the past. But I know this isn’t new for you. Why can’t you give me a chance?”

  “I hope you’re not talking about what I think you’re talking about.”

  “I’m just saying, what is there to be afraid of? What are you waiting for? I could understand if you hadn’t before, and you were scared, but …”

  “Shouldn’t you be scared, then?” They’d never talked about his personal life. She’d gotten the impression he’d never had a girlfriend, but that didn’t mean nothing had ever happened.

  “I don’t think either of us should be scared. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not … some ruffian, who—”

  “Don’t,” she said.

  He sat up. “Unless that’s what you like. Someone who’s fated to cut your heart from your chest. Is it a bad-boy thing? Is that what you find attractive?”

  “Open this door or don’t, Jasper. If you want to know, fine. If you don’t, then shut up.”

  He was quiet, his nail scratching against his signet ring. Brooding. She tensed, waiting for his decision. She knew that no matter what he chose, once she told him, he would change his mind, and she would be the one to pay for it. He claimed he didn’t go running to his father, but she wasn’t sure she believed him.

  “I want to see my friends,” she said again. “It’s been two weeks since I came here. I promised we’d send invitations. They’re going to think I forgot about them—or they’re going to think you hate them.”

  “Tell me where they can be reached. I’ll send them invitations.”

  “You’ll do it tonight?”

  “Tomorrow. It’s already late.”

  He lay down next to her again, and pulled her to him, away from her book. Her elbow bent against his side and she laid her head on his shoulder. Otherwise he would kiss her. He’d made an effort to mend things between them, and now she was supposed to do the same. With a kiss, a worthless kiss that meant nothing. But it was a nothingness that would go on, and on.

  Viv felt like she’d run out of smiles, and she didn’t have enough breath in her chest to fake all the lovely sighs that would keep him from turning on her. The paranoia she’d lived with in Beau Rivage had never left her. She wasn’t safe in the underworld; she wasn’t even safe from that.

  Jasper turned off the light, and once it was dark, he whispered, “Give me a chance to be what he wasn’t.”

  “You already are.”

  Alive, she thought, as he held her tighter, as if she’d finally told him what he needed to hear. She let him believe what he wanted.

  “We’ll see your friends tomorrow night. We’ll dance. It will be like it was in the beginning. I can hire a fairy to make you a dress. Something no one’s ever seen before. Would you like that?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  In the darkness, as he held her, all she could think about was her dead boyfriend.


  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  INVITATIONS WERE SENT to Jewel, Luxe, Freddie, Layla, Mira, Blue, and even Jack Tran.

  Jasper hired a fairy to create Viv’s dress—a living embodiment of spring, fragrant with blooming flowers and pink clouds of cherry blossom. And though he said they should wait for her friends at the club, Viv insisted on waiting at the checkpoint.

  They went down early, at the same time that Jasper’s brothers went to meet the twelve princesses—an hour before the rest of the underworld doors opened.

  Viv knew the brothers’ names now—she’d made it her business to learn everyone’s name—but their personalities were less distinct. It was that way with most multi-sibling curses. There might be one sibling who was better known, and who functioned like the front man of a band—but the rest got grouped together.

  She watched as the first door opened—the one that joined the underworld with the Twelve Dancing Princesses’ bedroom. A rectangle of light formed in the darkness, and then the first sister appeared in silhouette. One by one the princesses descended the staircase—gracefully, taking beauty pageant steps—and then they hurried to the shore to greet their princes. Lindy and Jet embraced. Calder grabbed Musette and spun her around, her satin slippers lifting off the ground, her laugh all sweetness and light. Calypso, the youngest sister, had brought a present for her prince: a book they proceeded to look through together. Sard and Charleston didn’t even say hello; they went straight to making out.

  They all lit up like a holiday. There were no tears, no arguments. Even Minuet looked happy to be in the underworld, smiling in wonder at the sparkle of the trees. It was an enchanting place, all lit up by lanterns, with the forest whispering music and the promise of good things in the air. They all looked so sure that nothing could go wrong. Nothing could change the way they felt right now.

  Viv watched them board the boats and begin the journey across, fragments of talk and laughter carrying over to where she waited with Jasper. Soon the rest of the doors would open and more Cursed would enter the underworld, bringing the mood up just as the princesses started on their downward spirals.