CHAPTER 33 GRAYSON
GRAYSON
G rayson returned to southeastern side of the island to find Lyra exactly where he’d left her: on top of the boathouse, standing Hawthorne-close to the edge. Even from a distance, Grayson clocked Lyra’s posture, the width of her stance, the tilt of her head.
Grayson would have known it was her even if the only thing he’d been able to see was the outline of her body. Picking up his pace, he made quick work of the distance separating him from the boathouse and scaled the ladder to join Lyra on the roof.
Grayson greeted his partner in crime with a question. “What did you see?”
Lyra kept her back to him and her gaze locked on the island. “One more flash after you left. No lemniscates. No discernable pattern.”
Grayson walked to join her, right at the edge. “Are you going to ask me what I found?”
“If you’d found something,” Lyra replied, “I would know.”
Grayson was not a total stranger to being known . His brothers knew him. Avery did. But Grayson had never been an easy person for others to pin down. “So,” Grayson said, joining Lyra in staring out into the night, “where does that leave us?”
“I don’t know.” The later it got, the lower Lyra’s voice went, and in that deeper register, there were more layers to her tone than Grayson could count.
“You never told me what you thought about the possibility that the calla lily in the music box was an echo,” Lyra said finally.
“Not a coincidence but not necessarily intentional, either.”
Lyra was coming far too close to the truth for Grayson’s comfort. An echo—but not from one of the old man’s games. From something else. What, Grayson did not know.
“I recall no such clue in any game I ever played,” Grayson said—a truth, and one he could give her. Something in him compelled him to give her more. “You have my word,” he said slowly, “that if midnight brings us face-to-face with the game makers, I will ask my brothers and Avery about the calla.”
Clearly, Lyra wasn’t letting this go, and promising to ask was not the same thing as promising to tell her the answer.
“But if you want to win the game,” Grayson continued, pitching his voice to cut through the night, “we can’t keep circling the same drains.”
Lyra turned slowly to look at him. “We can’t keep circling each other, either.”
Grayson really should have been expecting that. He’d told her that he was falling for her. Knowing that she might run, he had told her anyway. And now…
Now, Lyra Kane was reaching to grab the front of his shirt. She was pulling him toward her. “What happened while I was gone?” Grayson murmured.
Lyra’s eyes glittered in the moonlight. “Maybe I just feel like doing a little more damage.” She surged upward, and Grayson caught her face in his hands as her lips crashed into his.
A moment later, his hands were buried in her hair.
Grayson had known from their first kiss that there would be a second, but he hadn’t been expecting this from her. Here. Now. Grayson pulled back just far enough to breathe out four words. “Away from the ledge.” He moved, and she moved with him.
“I don’t like being told what to do,” Lyra said, her lips brushing his with every word.
“I am aware,” Grayson replied. They kissed again, and Grayson let it all come. The chill of the night air. The feel of her skin. The right kind of disaster just waiting to happen.
The last thing that Grayson wanted was to stop kissing, to put any space whatsoever between them, but his sense of honor sent up a reminder about why he was here.
He’d committed to seeing phase two through for her , and as often as he’d redirected Lyra’s attention to the game for his own purposes, Grayson owed her the decency of focusing on the puzzle himself.
Midnight was rapidly approaching. The clock was ticking.
Parting, even a fraction of an inch, was sweet and torturous sorrow. “If we want to win,” Grayson murmured— we , not just her. “For your family. For Mile’s End. We need to play. Everything else can wait.”
Even this.
Lyra looked at him for the longest time, just looked at him, like she was on the verge of saying something. And then, she looked back out at the island. “Then let’s play.”