Sneaky Snow White (Dark Fairy Tale Queen Series Book 2) by Anita Valle Page B

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.

~*~ 31 ~*~
     
    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