Sneaky Snow White (Dark Fairy Tale Queen Series Book 2) (9 page)

I stare at it, awestruck. It’s too pink to be natural. Which means it’s enchanted. And I know of only one spell that makes an apple turn pink.

“Is that-?”

“Yep. A Love Apple.”

I draw my breath. A Love Apple! I had all but forgotten. This will solve everything between me and Hunter, make him stay with me forever. I reach for the apple with trembling fingers. I knew the old lady had magic, I knew it!

She pulls back. “First you must promise not to harm my Cindy. Give me the dagger to prove it. And everlasting love will be yours! Isn’t that what you want?”

I bite my lip. Yes, that’s what I want. More than anything. Hunter loving me forever, even if it’s enchanted. I would rather have artificial love than an all-natural heartbreak.

“Sure, yes, fine,” I say, anything to get that apple. The old lady smiles and drops it into my hand. “All yours, tootsie. Take it to your honey. But remember! The lady has to bite first.”

I nod quickly though I don’t remember that part. But I did read the spell only once. “Thank you.” I hold out the dagger, blade downward. The old lady takes it and smirks. “Sweet dreams, angel-face.” She pokes the pipe in her mouth and walks away from me, chuckling to herself.

I hurry up the path to the cottage door, grinning like a fool. This is so perfect! First, Hunter and I will bite the apple. Then I’ll take his hunting knife and kill Cinderella. He can’t hate me for it once he’s under the love spell. The Mirror and I will both get what we want. As for the old lady, I’m sure The Mirror can tell me how to handle her. The Mirror can do anything.

I’m lifting my hand to knock on the door when suddenly it swings open. And there’s Cinderella, standing right in front of me.

“Snow White?”

“Hi.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I… came to see Hunter.”

“Oh. He’s not here.” Cinderella doesn’t budge from the doorway. She’s carrying a fat basket that appears to be full of laundry.

I drop my hand to my side, under the shawl, and hope she won’t notice the apple. “Do you know when he’s coming back?”

“Soon, I think.” She just stands there, staring at me, not inviting me in. It’s so rude.

I clear my throat. “So… how are the babies?”

“Good. I was coming out to hang their clothes before they wake up.”

I smirk. “I don’t remember you doing stuff like that.”

“I did before… before I became the queen.” Cinderella sighs. “Come with me.” She leads me around the house to a little yard in the back. It’s mostly dirt, with weeds and wild flowers growing at the edges. There’s a clothesline strung from the house to a wooden pole, and a table with benches for eating outside.

She plops the basket beneath the clothesline and lifts out a tiny white gown. “What have you been doing?”

I shrug. “Stuff.”

“At the palace?”

“Yeah.”

“And talking to The Mirror?”

I hesitate. Cinderella narrows her eyes at me. “Yes, I can see you have. I suppose you want to be queen now, don’t you?”

“Maybe.”

Cinderella pins the little gown on the line. Her face looks peaceful. “You can have it if you want. I’m not going back there.” She closes her eyes momentarily. “You know, once, I wanted to be the queen. And I got what I wanted. But it wasn’t what I wanted.” She looks at me and almost smiles. “I don’t hate you anymore, Snowy.”

“You don’t want to be the Evil Queen?”

“Not anymore. I think I’d rather be queen of somebody’s heart than queen of a kingdom.”

I don’t like the sound of that. Cinderella bends down to fetch another garment. As she stands up, the wind catches the folds of my shawl and exposes my hand for a moment. “What’s that?” Cinderella asks.

Rats! She saw the apple. “Oh… it’s nothing.” I show it to her, hoping that will seem natural. “Just an apple.”

“It’s pink.” Cinderella’s eyes widen. “Is that the Love Apple?”

I cover it with my other hand. “No.”

“It is. I can tell.”

“It’s for me and Hunter,” I mumble, stroking the glossy pink skin. “Did you know that my mother was killed by my father?”

Cinderella blinks. “I – yes.”

“You never told me.”

“Would you have wanted to know?”

I look down without answering. I guess she’s right. Who wants to know something like that?

“Where’d Hunter go?” I ask softly. “Maybe I can find him.”

Cinderella bends down, picks up another little dress, and pins it on the line before speaking. “You’re going to ask him to bite the apple, aren’t you?”

“That was the general idea.”

Cinderella looks at me and there’s turbulence in her eyes. She’s struggling with something.

“He’s a good man, Snowy. Kind and gentle and thoughtful. I like him very much.”

“Thanks, I like him too.” But I don’t like this conversation. Something bad is brewing, I know it.

Cinderella blows the air from her cheeks and slouches a little. Then she straightens up and faces me. “I want you to let me have him.”

“Um, what?”

“He’s the first man in so long who treats me well. I’m not willing to give that up. You’re young and pretty, you can find someone else.” She holds out her hand, the fingers curled upward. “So please, give me the apple. I get Hunter and you get to be queen. Do we have a deal?”

I glare at her. “NOT… a chance.”

Cinderella’s lips press together. Her blue eyes harden. “I would like the apple, Snow White.”

“You can’t
have
it, Cinderella.”

She hesitates for half a second. Then her hands shoot out and seize the apple. I gasp and jump back but her hands are over mine. She yanks my arms straight.

“NO!” I jerk the apple back to my chest but Cinderella comes with it. She tries to dig her nails under my fingers and peel them off. Her teeth are bared.

“Let it GO, Stepchild!” she growls.

“You can’t…have…EVERYTHING!” I shriek. I try shaking the apple out of her grasp. “He’s MY Hunter!”

“You don’t need him!” Cinderella shouts. We stagger across the yard, wrestling around the apple which is almost entirely concealed by our hands. I kick Cinderella’s shins. She curses and swings me around her, trying to snap me off with a whiplash motion.

“I should’ve killed you when you were a child!” Cinderella shouts.

“I should’ve killed
you
the day you became queen!” I shout back.

We grapple around the apple, our elbows high. I push against Cinderella, forcing her across the yard until her back hits the wall of the cottage. We’re both breathless, shiny with sweat. But I think Cinderella is tiring. She just had two babies, after all. Her face looks more distressed than angry.

She shifts, lifting her knee, and I feel a tiny foot against my stomach. Then she kicks out, hard, and I’m thrown back, flat on the dirt. I lie there, stunned, my arms spread out like wings. She did it. She beat me. Cinderella gets everything she wants with her freaking feet!

I try to sit up but my stomach cramps with pain. Cinderella lifts the apple and bites a chunk out of it. She smiles at me as she chews. “You lose, Stepchild. You will always lose to me.”

I call her something I can’t repeat.

Cinderella frowns. At first I think it’s because of my insult, but then she lifts a hand to her throat. She blinks several times and turns the apple to look at the bite mark. The flesh inside is a deep purple color.

I manage to stand, my mouth hanging open. “Is – is that…?”

Cinderella drops, smooth and soft as a flower wilting. The apple rolls out of her hand.

I back away from her, covering my mouth. The apple! It was
poisoned!
The old lady – she meant it for me. To stop me from harming her precious Cindy. It would have worked, too, if Cinderella had been less selfish. A shiver crawls up my spine as I realize how close I came.

“Snowy?”

I spin around. Hunter emerges from the forest, holding an armload of firewood. His eyes shift from me to Cinderella on the ground. He gasps. “Snowy! What did you do?”

“She did it herself!” I cry. “She bit the apple, I didn’t know it was poisoned!” My eyes sting with tears. He doesn’t even look happy to see me. And it’s been almost a month!

Hunter drops the firewood and runs past me. He crouches by Cinderella. She’s lying on her side, the arm that held the apple stretched out before her. He holds his fingers underneath her nose and then touches her cheek. “She’s breathing,” he says. “But she’s cold.”

I nod, clutching my hands together. They’re chilled and throbbing, the fingernails blue. I don’t know why my hands do this when I’m upset.

“What do we do?” Hunter looks at me with worried eyebrows.

“We can’t do anything,” I say. “She’s under a spell. She’s not dead but she’s… never going to wake up.”

Hunter’s mouth falls open. “Snowy! How could you do this?”

“I didn’t!”

“Then how’d it happen? Why are you here?”

“I came to see YOU!” I shout.

“Not exactly, dumpling. She came to kill Cindy and
then
see you,” says a voice that’s not mine or Hunter’s. There’s a burst of color and the weird old lady is standing in the yard with us. Only now she looks very different. She’s wearing a fancy green dress, like a ball gown, though it’s kind of tattered and wrinkly. Her gray hair is caught up like a bush on top of her head. And she’s got two, thin silvery wings that fan out from her back.

The old lady is a fairy.

She looks once at Cinderella and the face she turns on me is sheer hatred. “Little beast!” She thrusts out her hand, pointing the tip of her pipe right at me. A gust of sparkles shoots out, hits my chest, and I’m thrown topsy-turvy across the yard. I land hard, skidding across the dirt with my feet in the air.

The old lady marches toward me. “Why didn’t you just bite it, you wretch!”

“I was! I was!” I skitter back on the ground, lifting an arm to block myself. “She fought me for it, didn’t you see?”

“Hey!” I hear Hunter’s voice from behind her. “Leave Snowy alone! Just who are you supposed to be?”

“I’m Cinderella’s fairy godmother!” The old lady watches me with blazing eyes. “Call me ‘Godnutter’ if you want – that’s what she did. Didn’t she ever speak of me?”

“Well – yes, a little.” My voice is high. “But you – you made me think that was a Love Apple! You tricked me!”

“‘Course I did. Just like I tricked your miserable father. All I needed was a pretty face and he followed me right up to that nasty little tower.”

I gasp. “You were the beautiful lady?”

“I was. I asked your father a simple question. He gave the wrong answer, and I punished him. I left one of my pipes behind in the tower so Cindy would know I had been there.”

“So you killed him.” It really doesn’t matter to me now.

“Oh, he’s alive, dearie. But don’t go looking for him, you won’t find him.”

“He’s alive?” I stand up.

“Not important now!” Godnutter snaps. She points at Cinderella. “Do me a favor and get her off the ground. I’m going to see if I can fix this.”

And she vanishes.

Hunter and I stare at each other, speechless.

“Let’s uh, put her on the table,” Hunter says. “In case that lady wants to… I don’t know, work on her.”

I nod. We drag the long wooden table out to the middle of the yard. Looks like it was once red but most of the paint has chipped off. Then we carry Cinderella and drape her over the top. I tug down and straighten her pale blue dress. She looks pretty, sleeping there. Like a doll made of sugar.

Hunter runs his fingers through his hair and glances back at the cottage. “I should check on the babies.”

“I’ll do it,” I say, because I don’t want to keep standing there. I walk round to the front of the house and let myself in the little door. The cottage looks familiar, thanks to my Mirror spying. It doesn’t take me long to find the room Cinderella used. There’s the bed with the patchwork quilt. Near the corner of the bed, close to the wall, two infants are sleeping, curled into each other. So impossibly small it almost hurts me to look at them. Such a frightening, fragile way to enter this brutal world.

I return to the yard. “They’re fine,” I tell Hunter. He stands a few feet back from the table, watching Cinderella. I creep over to stand at his side. I wonder if this would be a bad time to try and kiss him. He looks so tempting, his brown hair ruffled from running his fingers through it, his sleeves pushed up to the elbows, baring his smooth arms. I ache to have him all around me.

I start to reach for his hand. Then Godnutter pops back in sight, on the other side of the table. She stares at Cinderella, smoking and scowling.

“Well?” Hunter asks.

Godnutter shakes her head. “Not good. She needs a kiss to wake her up. The poisoned apple was made with true hate-” she glares at me “-so only true love can cure it. She needs to be kissed by someone that loves her.”

I can’t help it. I giggle.

“What’s so funny?” Godnutter asks sharply.

“What’s funny is that she will never wake up!” I say, laughing. “Because absolutely nobody loves Cinderella!”

Hunter bows his head and closes his eyes. He folds his arms tightly and heaves a long sigh.

“I do.”

I turn and look at him. He looks back at me, soft and sad. “I’m sorry, Snowy. I really am. But I can’t help it.”

“What are you saying?” I ask.

Hunter’s eyes drift away from me and settle on Cinderella. “I love her,” he whispers.

Tears wash over me instantly. “Hunter… that’s impossible. You love
me
and no one else. You told me that!”

“I know.” Hunter’s face looks anguished. “But… now I love her. I didn’t try, it just happened. I think – I think I can wake her up.”

I draw my breath. “You’re going to kiss her?”

Hunter looks at her. And nods.

I clench my fists, my chest heaving. I won’t allow this! Hunter has kissed no other girl but me!

“She’s not
good
for you, Hunter!” I shout. “She’s a bad person! Selfish and nasty and mean!”

Godnutter cracks a laugh. “She is, you know.”

“She was improving,” Hunter says. “She needed someone to be kind to her, that’s all. She needed to be loved.”