CHAPTER 70 GRAYSON
GRAYSON
G rayson twisted his wrist, angling the face of his watch out of Lyra’s view. He had no idea what the message he’d just received said, but the last messages he’d sent had indicated that Toby knew —and not just about Eve.
About Alice. Alice, whom if Lyra was to be believed—and he did believe Lyra Kane, body and soul—might have been there the night that Lyra’s father had died.
Grayson’s mind went to Jameson saying that he’d been drugged, saying that his memory of what had happened to him in Prague was minimal, fractured—all feelings, few specifics.
Grayson remembered thinking that Jameson knew more than he consciously remembered—the calla lily, for one—but Grayson hadn’t made the connection between Jameson’s splintered memory and Lyra’s.
What if she didn’t repress that night because of the trauma? What if someone repressed it for her?
Across from him, Lyra Catalina Kane was looking down, but she still couldn’t quite see the face of his watch—not yet. Grayson let loose of her arm and twisted his wrist as far as he could without fully breaking her hold.
“It’s funny,” Lyra said, bringing her amber eyes back up to his face. “Playing the Grandest Game, you start to get a sense for when you’re missing something.” She swallowed.
Grayson went to pull his arm back, and Lyra’s grip tightened.
“Don’t you dare,” she said.
“Lyra.” Grayson couldn’t bring himself to say more than that. No more lies. No more half-truths.
“Show me what your watch says.” Lyra’s voice shook. “ Show me , Grayson.”
Words threatened to lodge themselves in his throat, but he forced them out. “I cannot do that, Lyra.”
She dropped Grayson’s wrist. “You know something. Your brothers and Avery know something, don’t they? About Alice. Back on the yacht, after you talked to them about the calla—I believed you when you said that it was nothing, that they knew nothing. I trusted you.”
“I know.” Grayson wanted nothing more than to touch her now. “If you will just—”
“Don’t,” she bit out. “Show me your watch, Grayson.”
He’d asked her not to look. She had, but he’d twisted his arm before she could read the message. And now, she was the one asking, telling him what she needed.
Slowly, Grayson turned his wrist back over. A message stared up at them both: O.M. LOCATED.
Alisa had found Odette. The message itself was less damning than Grayson had feared it would be, but Lyra scrolled back.
“ Toby knows something ,” Lyra read. “Not about Eve, apparently. So what exactly does your uncle Toby know, Grayson? Something about his mother? About Alice ?”
I was trying to protect my family, and I was trying to protect you. Grayson knew that Lyra Kane would not thank him for that.
“And Odette has been located ? Was she missing?” Lyra fired questions off, one after another. “I don’t understand. Make me understand, Grayson.” Lyra gave him a second—just one—to reply. “Why does your family consider me a liability? A threat.”
“They do not think you are a threat.” Grayson’s voice stayed even, no matter the sensation in his chest: a tightening of muscles, a ripping of something at his core.
“If I’m not the threat…” The expression in Lyra’s golden brown eyes shifted as she realized the full implication of that. “ Alice. She’s the threat. And I’m a liability because I know she’s alive. I guess that makes Odette a liability, too, since she’s the one who told us. And you—”
Grayson cut her off. “I,” he told Lyra, his voice breaking, “am forever pulling people back from cliffs.”
Lyra just looked at him. “I don’t want your protection.”
Grayson knew that. She wanted him . And though he knew exactly how this was going to play out, he could not stop his reply. “You have it nonetheless.”
For the longest time, Lyra just stared at him, and then she left the bed and stood, her feet shoulder width apart, beside it. “I have a game to play.”
For years, Grayson had not been capable of running to anything or anyone. The risks of losing someone else were too great. But this time, he was out of the bed in a heartbeat.
He went to Lyra. He ran to her . “ We have a game to play,” Grayson said.
For four or five excruciating seconds, Lyra stood there, saying absolutely nothing, and then she raised her eyes and looked at him the way she had the first time he’d ever touched her—in the ruins, his hand on her arm.
It was a warning look, electric and raw. “I’m not going to stop,” Lyra said intently. “You know that, right?”
She wasn’t going to stop looking for answers. She wasn’t going to stop pushing.
“ I am not going to stop ,” Lyra repeated, her intensity a match for any Hawthorne. “And when it comes down to it, if the Hawthorne family is on one side of this, and I’m on the other…” She pushed past him and out of the ballroom. “We both know that you won’t choose me.”