Kill Me Softly (21 page)

“You don't know anything about the people who care about me,” she said, feeling surly, defensive. He was insulting someone she loved, and it brought out the worst in her. “You only know how
you
care about me. And you don't even know me; you'd feel this way about any princess who shared your curse. So don't lecture me like your love is so much truer than anyone else's.”

Struck dumb, Freddie just stared at her. His usual expres-sion—earnest, hopeful, kind—crumbled, and he looked like he was trying not to cry.

Mira felt awful. She hadn't meant to lash out at him. She'd just wanted him—wanted everyone—to stop attacking her, stop slandering Felix, and making her feel stupid.

“Get off my bed,” he said. Wordlessly, she did. He scraped toward it like a sleepwalker, collapsed onto the mattress, with his face mashed into the pillow so he didn't have to look at her.

“Freddie, I—”

“I don't feel well. Please go away.” His voice was muffled, but the meaning was clear. He wanted her to leave before anything else could change. Before he broke down, or said something nasty, if he was even capable of that. Before she could be meaner to him.

Mira tiptoed to the door, utterly disgusted with herself. Before she left, she stopped in the doorway to get a few words out. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to snap at you. I really do appreciate the things you said. It's just … this is hard for me. Please believe me.”

She waited a few heartbeats for his answer, some indication that he could forgive her. But none came.

Mira needed Freddie. She didn't want to need him, but she did; and she knew that was where a lot of her frustration originated. It chafed at her that their fates were intertwined.

When she trudged into the basement, Wills was at the bar, shaking a cocktail shaker. Viv was perched on a barstool, rimming a glass with sugar. She wore a floppy, feathered hat and knee-high cavalier boots, like a stripper musketeer. Her tiny apple mark—not bloodred but cherry-blossom pink—showed above the waistband of her bikini bottoms.

Blue, Caspian, and Henley were gathered around a low table, in the shadow of a taxidermied grizzly bear. Blue was dealing hands for a game of poker.

“Suit up and I'll deal you in,” Blue said, nodding toward an old steamer trunk full of silk scarves, velvet jackets, strange hats—like the stuff Viv was wearing.

“Suit up?” she said.

“We're playing strip poker.” Caspian went on to explain, and Mira realized it was the tamest version of strip poker imaginable. It involved piling on clothes from the costume trunk, so there was very little danger of getting naked unless you wanted to. Mira set to work creating a winning ensemble, hoping she could bury her guilt in ridiculous clothes and stop thinking about what a jerk she'd been to Freddie.

Blue was sticking a villainous fake mustache to his lip—skinny, twisty, and black—when Viv joined them, narrow hips swaying, pink cocktail in hand. “That does not count as a clothing item,” she said.

“It does if you can take it off,” Blue told her.

“Then my earrings count,” Viv argued.

Wills came down from the bar and sat between them. “By the time you get to your earrings, you'll be so drunk you'll just throw your top off.”

Viv punched Wills in the ribs, and he grabbed her fist and started wrestling with her. Viv was shrieking, laughing, swatting ineffectively at her tormentor. The tendons were standing out in Henley's neck. He was mangling his cards like he wanted to mangle Wills.

Blue pointed to the mark on Wills's lower back: a bloodred high-heeled shoe. “Not her prince, Silva. Relax.”

“Cheaters,” Viv accused, once she'd caught her breath. Her cheeks were flushed the same pomegranate color as her lips, and she was tucking her hair behind her ears repeatedly, like she was suddenly shy. Wills pulled Viv into his lap, and she settled there without complaint.

But not everyone was so content.

“This game is going to be boring,” Henley said. “All guys and one girl.”

“Two girls,” Caspian corrected, pointing them out. “See?”

Henley peeled his cards off the table—an attempt at nonchalance. “Yeah, but I've already seen Viv naked. So like I said: boring.”

Viv's cheeks flushed pinker—two fevered flares. Her hand flinched in front of her glass, like she wanted to break it, or throw it at him.

“You should learn to close your drapes, Viv,” Wills said coolly. He eyed Henley as he bit the tip of Viv's ear. “You can't trust the garden boy not to spy on you.”

“So …
poker time
?” Mira said—a little too loudly. She slapped her palms down on the table, gave the boys her best can-we-end-this-pissing-contest? glare, and Caspian flashed her a grateful smile—so maybe it worked.

In any case, they shut up and played.

An hour later, Viv and the Knight brothers stumbled upstairs to raid the kitchen, and Henley slipped out the back, lighting a cigarette and muttering shit about Wills—leaving Mira and Blue alone in the basement, surrounded by oil paintings of hunting parties, the glassy-eyed heads of long-dead animals, and furniture that reeked of cigars.

Blue was still wearing—and villainously twirling—the skinny fake mustache. He wore baggy pajama pants that were half soaked from the wet bathing suit underneath, topped off by a jester's cap, and reindeer slippers that fit only halfway on his feet. A black silk necktie hung from his neck. He'd ditched his shirt a long time ago.

“I can't believe they left you alone with this sexy miscreant,” he said.

She touched her hand to her heart in mock distress. “Neither can I. Your curse is that girls fall for you … right before you tie them to train tracks, right?”

“Muahaha … exactly.” Blue twirled his fake mustache—until it fell off.

Above them, someone stomped or fell hard against the floor. Drunken laughter broke out, and it was probably only a matter of minutes before Mrs. Knight arrived to scold the revelers.

Mira thought of Freddie upstairs in his room, probably wincing at the noise, hyperaware that they were bothering his mother … all the while languishing alone with his broken heart. And she thought of Henley outside, doing God knows what—hopefully getting out his aggression on a mailbox, instead of on Wills or Viv.

She hated that it was so easy for all of them to hurt each other—and that it was Henley's
role
as Huntsman to hurt someone he cared about, someone who also seemed to hurt him on a regular basis. How tempting would it be when Regina gave the order? Could love really drive you to murder?

“Their relationship is so messed up,” she murmured.

“Blue and Mira's? I think they just need to make out.”

She threw her costume-trunk fedora at him. “I'm serious. I'm talking about Viv and Henley. It freaks me out that they're sort of involved, and yet, one day, Viv's stepmom is going to order Henley to kill Viv.”

“Tell me about it.” Blue switched to an exaggerated shrewish voice. “
By the way, garden boy, when you're done trimming the hedges, could you cut out my daughter's heart and bring it to me so I can eat it?
That's a lot to ask of someone you're paying minimum wage.”

“It's even worse that they know about it—that they're cursed and they expect it.” Mira hugged her knees to her chest.

“I don't know how you guys can live like this.”

“We just do,” Blue said. “We have to.”

Mira closed her eyes, arms locked around her knees, as if she could shut out the world, but dark images filled her mind. She used to imagine her parents and happy endings she would never have. Now she envisioned torments that were all too real.

She pictured one of Cinderella's stepsisters planting her foot on a cutting board—and biting down hard as the cleaver chopped through the bone of her big toe.

She imagined a princess used to safety, luxury, throwing the rank hide of a donkey over her shoulders, its boneless face drooping past her forehead like a hideous veil.

And she imagined her future self, flat on her back in bed, limbs as heavy as if they'd been chained down. Mice scurried across her body, leaving footprints on her dress. Spiders spun an entire trousseau's worth of silk and draped her in it, so it appeared she wore a gown of the finest lace, adorned with rose petals and ensnared butterflies. Beetles nestled between her fingers like jeweled rings—lovely from a distance, horrific up close.

No one would come for her; no one would wake her. She'd be repulsive, not enticing, and she'd pushed away the one person who might have saved her. …

When she opened her eyes, Blue was staring at her, his eyes traveling her face. Maybe troubled by what he saw and didn't fully understand.

“I feel sick,” she said, her fingers absentmindedly twisting a lock of wet hair. “Let's talk about something else.”

“Like what? Felix? That makes
me
feel sick.”

She wasn't in the mood to be teased. “Very funny. Why do you care so much?”

“Why do I care? I'm pretty sure I told you.” He crawled toward her, shedding the jester cap and reindeer slippers as he went, until he was so close she could see that his eyelashes were blue, too. “Because I like you. Because I don't want him to hurt you.”

“He doesn't want to hurt me either.”

“You think his intentions matter if he ends up killing you? I don't.”

“I know you didn't mean to—” Flustered, she ducked her head. “What happened to that girl. I know you didn't mean to. It
does
make a difference.”

Blue paused, like his breath was frozen in his chest. Every mention of the girl he'd loved seemed to reopen the wound. It was a moment before he spoke.

“Not to her,” he said. “Not to anyone who cared about her. She's gone.”

“It was an accident. You can't keep blaming yourself.”

“Who should I blame, Mira? The evil fairy who cursed me? Jane, for lo—” Blue stumbled on the word. “For … loving … me?”

“Her name was Jane?” she asked softly.

Blue nodded. “She was great. Really funny, really smart … her only flaw was that she couldn't see through my bullshit.
I
couldn't see through my own bullshit then. I still thought that love conquered all. But all it conquered, all it crushed was the girl I cared about.”

Mira bowed her head. She thought of all the time she'd spent grieving, blaming herself for her parents' deaths and wishing she'd never been born—so that
they
could have lived. She'd believed her willingness to suffer would somehow make things better. She couldn't let Blue give in to that fallacy, too.

“Punishing yourself won't bring her back,” she said.

“No. But it's a debt I have to pay. For what I took from her.” Blue's mouth was a sharp, unforgiving line. His gaze was turned inward, into the past, and his eyes were as glassy as the stags' on the wall. “I have to lose something, too.”

“But …” Mira took his hand and held on tight. “Don't you see that you have? That you did lose something?”

“It doesn't compare, Mira. It's not even close to being the same. Look at my life: I
stole
hers, but I still have everything. Why do I deserve that?”

She wanted to comfort him, to find the perfect words to convince him that he deserved forgiveness. That he could still be a good person. Could be redeemed, because he had a good heart—why would he torture himself if he
didn't
have a good heart? But her mind kept drifting to Felix. Felix was older, more sophisticated,
experienced
. Which begged the question …

Had Felix ever killed a girl? Stolen everything from her?

He'd said that love destroyed him. But he'd never told her what that meant.

Was he carrying around a wound like this, too? A secret despair?

Or …

The alternative—that Felix was a predator, smoothly seducing and then robbing girls of their lives—was too terrible to consider.

It was one thing to love and leave someone. To kiss and tell. There were all sorts of risks when you gave your heart away. Everyone had secrets.

But the truth was that Felix had saved her. He'd kissed her, and kissed her, and when she'd grown too weak, he'd pulled back. He'd taken her somewhere safe.

Whatever he'd done in the past … he was making up for it now. She couldn't blame him for a curse he had no control over. She
wouldn't
. Just like she wouldn't blame Blue.

“Are you thinking about him?” Blue asked.

Mira nodded, embarrassed. He probably thought she was obsessed. And maybe she was. But this was what she did when she fell in love. She'd fixated on her parents, on their imaginary lives, for years. Nothing in her real life had been able to tear her away from that. Nothing until Felix. Until she'd fallen in love with something real.

“This is so hopeless,” Blue muttered.

“Can't you just be happy for me?”

She felt stupid as soon as she'd said it.

Blue barked out a laugh. “
No.
No, you idiot. I couldn't be more
un
happy. You know, I don't usually know the girls he likes. Not like this. I look the other way most of the time. But I met you first. I knew you first.

“I wanted you first,” he said.

“You have … a funny way of showing it,” she said, awkwardness making it hard to speak.

“I know. I know, and I'm still …” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I don't know why I'm telling you this. Because I don't want you to like me—I would hate it if you did. And yet I hate it that you don't.”

She stayed silent. She wasn't so sure he was right about that anymore—about her not liking him. The more he opened up, his armor peeling off to reveal who he really was, the more she felt connected to him.