CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“HE’S NOT ON THE COUCH.”
“I told you he followed us.”
“Someone figure out where he is before we start taking our clothes off.”
“He’ll be dead in two more days. I don’t care if he sees me naked. He can take it to his grave.”
“Noooo! I like this one!”
“You like everyone.”
“Not true …”
“My feet hurt.”
“My feet hurt more.”
“Okay—shoe pile.” The girls flung their tattered dancing shoes onto the floor, as if they were about to be burned. All twelve girls slept in the same cavernous bedroom, the beds lined up six on each side. “We live like the girls in Madeline,” Rumba had told him when he’d first arrived and been given the tour.
Most of the sisters shuffled into the dorm-sized bathroom. Others crawled into bed, eyes still crusted with glitter and mascara. The sounds of water splashing into sinks and tired bodies hitting mattresses followed Henley to the couch he was meant to keep watch from.
The princesses’ father knew his daughters went to the underworld to dance—everyone knew that—but the couch was tradition, as was the goblet of drugged wine the sisters had given him before they left. It was tradition to pretend to drink it and feign sleep, but Henley had just poured it into a vase of dying flowers—a gift from the last guy who’d tried to break the curse. Brittle, crumbling roses that had outlasted the suitor who’d brought them.
“He was handsome,” Chacha had told Henley. “And confident. I really thought he’d break the curse.”
“Would you like to see his head?” Salsa had asked. “We have it in a box.”
Henley had declined.
Now he lay down on the couch, one leg stretched out to rest on the floor, the other propped and extending past the armrest. The couch was too small to be comfortable and the tuxedo he wore had about as much give as a straitjacket, but he had three, maybe four hours before the girls’ father would summon him to find out how the night had gone. He’d make do.
Most of the sisters were related only through their father, who’d had twelve daughters with ten different women, so there wasn’t much of a family resemblance. They looked more like sorority sisters than blood sisters. Black hair, brown hair, red hair, blonde hair. Dark skin and light skin. The one thing they had in common was that their legs were really toned and they walked like they had thorns stuck in their feet.
He heard them slamming doors, dropping things, yelling at one another to shut up, they were trying to sleep. Several toilet flushes. Loud talking. Giggling. Muffled sobs. He was in the room just outside their bedroom suite—a kind of antechamber, with just the uncomfortable couch and a few chairs and the flowers. There was another door that led to the rest of the mansion, but it was locked from the outside, and would stay locked until morning.
Henley closed his eyes.
The princesses had gone mostly quiet—just the occasional sound of someone turning over in bed, or a loud sniff—when he felt the brush of a feather across his lips. He opened his eyes and saw Lindy hovering over him, holding the offending feather, brown curls framing her bowed head. She wore a pink nightgown that was tight around her breasts and flowed loose to her hips. She was sixteen but seemed younger.
He kept his voice just above a whisper. “Aren’t you tired?”
“No. Stay up with me?”
He shifted into a sitting position and she tucked her body into the space he’d left behind. “I can’t sleep on this couch, anyway. Lindy, right?”
She nodded, pleased. “And you’re Henley. Henley … what was your last name?”
“Silva.”
“That’s right.” She smiled, then ducked her head and started tracing something on her leg. Loops. Like cursive handwriting. Her smile turned to embarrassment as she traced the last part of whatever it was. “I like it,” she said.
“Do you think you’ll break the curse?”
“I hope so.”
“Well … I think you’ll do it. I just have a good feeling.” She took a deep breath, then burst out, “Do you know which one of us you’ll want to marry, if you do?”
“Uh … I need to figure out how to break the curse before I can think about that.”
“Is that a nice way of saying it’s not me?” She bit her lip.
“Go to bed, Lindy,” a voice called from behind them. Charleston stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over the football jersey she slept in. She was one of the more assertive sisters, the kind who ordered the younger ones around. She stood and stared at Lindy until her sister obeyed the order, then settled in the chair near Henley. Her bare feet were covered in bruises and Disney Princess Band-Aids.
“Don’t get the wrong idea about her. She’s not desperate, just desperate for this to be over.”
“I didn’t get any ideas about your sister. Don’t worry.”
“Hmm, true. You have another agenda.” She leaned her chin on her hand, and watched him like he was a secret to uncover. “I wondered at first why you were doing this. Like, did you want to be a hero, instead of a Huntsman? Oh yeah—I know who you are. But then I saw you in the bathroom with Snow White. I’d forgotten Vivian Deneuve was your princess. Well, your ex. I guess she was never your princess, but you know what I mean.”
Never your princess. It felt weird to have it stated so bluntly by someone who barely knew him.
“Are you going to tell anyone about me?” he asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Anyone.”
He was wary of saying more—if she wanted to screw him over he didn’t want to give her ideas. The other princes, Jasper, her sisters—any of them would have reasons to punish him if they knew he was meeting Viv.
“I’m not going to tell anyone. It’s not like I want to see you die.”
He nodded, relieved. “I don’t suppose you know how to break the curse.”
“No … none of us knows. We only go to the club and back. We spend all night dancing; there’s no time to play detective. Does Viv know?”
“Not yet. She’s going to try to find out.”
“That would be amazing. That would be huge.” Charleston looked at him again, like she’d thought one thing about him and now she was reconsidering. Although her first impression had probably been closer to the truth. “Is that why you volunteered? You figured you could break the curse if you had some inside help?”
He bowed his head, hand reaching for a cigarette, then curling up when he remembered he didn’t have any. Stress was pounding through him like a hammer. “Maybe it’ll help.”
He was lying, but it wouldn’t do him any good to let the twelve princesses know he didn’t care about their curse. They might blow his cover just for fun, then. Royals were messed-up people. They had a taste for torture, and they viewed their own actions through a different moral lens.
A lower-born Cursed like Jack Tran killed a giant, or a girl with a Hansel and Gretel curse flambéed a witch, and that was evidence that they were depraved. A princess told a suitor Solve this riddle or it’s off with your head, and that was okay because she was supposed to be worth it.
When the twelve princesses’ father chopped off his hundredth head, they’d probably serve cake to commemorate the milestone.
“So you do want the fame and the money—and the girl,” Charleston mused. “I thought you were pulling some Romeo and Juliet act, like—I have to see you, I’d rather die than be without you!—but you have a plan. Interesting.”
The way she said it—like only a fool would die for love—irritated him. Especially because risking his life for a chance to get rich and marry one of the twelve princesses, that made sense to her.
Royals.
He let her mockery slide in one ear and out the other. He’d gotten worse from his friends. Jack had helped him arrange this, had even helped him find an invisibility cloak, but Elliot had tried to talk him out of it. The underworld did you a favor. Move on. Don’t trade your life for a girl who doesn’t give a shit about you.
Jack had tried to be positive. Henley’s going to break the curse. That witch I got the cloak from—she’s got money riding on this. My ass is frogged if he dies, so I know he’s coming back.
He shook his head now, remembering. He had no doubt that Jack would weasel out of whatever trouble he got into. There were always people (or giants) gunning for him, but he went through life as if his biggest problem was what to eat for breakfast.
Charleston’s eyes were faraway, daydreaming. “It would be amazing to be able to sleep at night. See some different people. Travel. I need a vacation so bad.”
“Where would you go?” Henley asked. Not that he cared.
“Hmm, maybe London? Why, do you want to come?” She winked. “I don’t know if I could marry a guy who’s in love with another girl. But I’d consider it if he broke my curse. Uhhh, it’s late.”
She got up, making a face like her heels were grinding out hot cigarettes. “The pain’s kicking in. Post-underworld soreness. You’ll feel it, too, soon enough. Try to get some sleep. I want you to be alert tomorrow so you can break my curse.” She smiled and he did his best to smile back, like her faith in him was warranted.
“Yeah, good night,” he said.
“Good night.”
He lay back down, his hand covering his face to block out the light that was always on. His skin smelled like the stone in the underworld. He could feel it closing in on him already.
He couldn’t break the curse. He’d gone into this knowing that. Jack had given him a fifty-fifty chance, but Jack had pulled that number out of the air, trying to be encouraging so Henley would actually try instead of just wrapping Viv in his cloak, hustling her out of the underworld, and then—well, either the underworld guards would kill him or the princesses’ father would.
He was afraid of dying, of not having a future, but he could go to his grave with no regrets if Viv was safe.
Why?
Because he was crazy? No.
Because of hours and days and months and years that all added up to Viv.
Because of baseball games he’d skipped, friends he’d ditched, chores he’d abandoned to hang out with this princess who, when they’d first met, had acted like Henley was an animal she didn’t know what to do with; but who’d gradually opened up to him, and taken root in him.
Because of lazy summer afternoons in the cottage, when she’d asked questions like, What do you think you’ll be in the future? And he’d said, I’ll be your bodyguard, when what he’d meant was I’ll be your boyfriend.
Because of seventh grade: that time he’d drifted closer and closer to her mouth, both of them awkward, pretending they didn’t know what was going on, until her breath slid across his lips, and then—
That first kiss like an electric shock.
The smell of her hair—like shampoo and fox fur.
That first heartfelt I love you more than my whole family when they were ten.
The first I love you when she’d really meant it. And actually, it had been I love you, too. He’d said it first, his heart speeding toward a collision.
The first time.
Because of all of that.
Because that was still who she was—who they were. No matter what had happened. He knew because he felt it. Because that I love you was still there, still strong—if anything, stronger—and that girl he’d wanted to protect, whose boyfriend/bodyguard he would have died to be … she was still there, too.