Chapter 54. Grayson
Grayson
“Ready?” Eloise asks.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I reply.
“You give your uncle the Key,” she says, and I can’t help but tense. “At which point it’ll probably disappear.”
“Has to disappear,” I say—because it’s the only thing giving me peace of mind right now.
“Right, and then you bring him back to the Archive, using me as bait,” she says, and I lift an eyebrow. “What? It’s the truth. Then we film his confession without him knowing, and voila. We broadcast it for everyone to see.”
“How do you do that?” I ask. “How do you take a nearly impossible situation and make it sound optimistic?”
She tucks her hair behind her ear with a little shrug, a simple motion that I find entirely captivating. “My entire life has been an impossible situation.”
I tilt her chin up, before I can stop myself, and rub my thumb across her cheekbone. “A heart of courage,” I say, and her blush follows the trail of my touch.
She smiles up at me. “We can do this, Gray.”
“We will do this, Claws,” I tell her.
Which is when the impossible happens—she kisses me.
She stands up on her tippy toes, her hands sliding into my hair, and she presses her soft lips to mine.
To say I become a fucking puddle on the floor is an understatement.
It’s a quick kiss, but one imbued with hope and the belief that things can be better.
“You trying to take me out before I start, Claws?” I ask her.
“I’m trying to ensure that you come back to me,” she says.
Puddle. Floor.
Suddenly I’m grinning. I’m about to do something god-awful and I’m grinning at this girl. “You’re damn right I am,” I say as I backstep toward the door. “I have to top that kiss.”
“Oh really?” she says with a smile. “You think you can?”
“I know I can,” I say, and she snorts.
“Go,” she says. “And don’t you dare get hurt.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. I need to preserve all this,” I say, gesturing to my face. “So you still think I’m pretty.”
I grab the door handle and the last sound I hear is her laugh.
But the mood shifts as I open the door and step into the hall. Akari’s there waiting for me. Only she’s not surrounded by a slew of Guardians like I expect.
Her hands are loose, poised around her belt, which holds her weapons and potions. But even without backup I’m not stupid enough to attack her. Whatever bravado I normally employ, I know for a fact I can’t take Akari.
“You’re alone?” she asks, staring at me with discerning eyes.
“It would seem so,” I say, and when she doesn’t immediately reply I add, “I need to see my uncle.”
Her eyes narrow, and I can scent her apprehension, but she doesn’t ask questions or try to restrain me. Maybe because I asked to go to the one place she was planning on bringing me anyway.
Akari gestures for me to walk in front of her and I don’t hesitate. We move silently to my uncle’s wing and down the hall to his office. When we get to the door, Damien is gone—raiding the Lawless—and there is another Guardian in his place.
“You’re excused,” Akari tells him.
“But the Chancellor said—”
“And I’m saying, you’re excused. Go help on the wall. Now,” she says, and the younger Guardian grumbles and walks off.
She swings the door open for me and takes up the younger Guardian’s post. Which is bad news all around. I could take down an average Guardian or two if need be, but if Akari follows us into that Archive Room, we’re screwed.
“Grayson,” my uncle says, leaning back in his desk chair, and the door clicks shut behind me.
I can already scent his anger.
“I came as soon as I could,” I tell him. It means nothing, but it’s true.
“As soon as you could?” he scoffs. “Miss Belrose was stolen from the dining hall and yet you came as soon as you could. How generous.”
Odd. I figured his first move would be to demand to know where Eloise is, especially given that Akari saw us both enter the Archive Room.
“I was searching for her,” I say simply, again waiting for him to start screaming about Eloise.
His anger spikes and he flicks his wrist in my direction, his spell gripping my chest like a giant fist. I suck in breath. But despite the increasing pressure, I know better than to try to counter it.
My uncle pushes back his chair and stands, straightening his suit jacket. “You know how much I hate to repeat myself. I very clearly remember telling you not to leave that girl alone. Ever.”
Here it comes.
“Would you like to explain then why you weren’t there when she was being taken by the goddamn Lawless?
” he asks, and now I’m doubly confused why we’re still talking about Eloise’s capture.
Even if Akari didn’t realize the training room door led to the Archive Room, which I find unlikely, is there a world in which Akari wouldn’t tell him that Eloise and I were there?
Because it’s starting to sound like he doesn’t know and that makes no sense.
The pressure increases around my ribs and I wince, trying to pull air into an increasingly tight space. “I wasn’t there because I got hung up on the way to the dining room,” I say, buying myself time to recalibrate.
His spell cinches tighter and I feel my ribs bending, on the verge of snapping. I buckle over as he comes around his desk. “I also hear you were spotted bringing Maggie O’Donnell to the healers’ hut? Care to explain that?”
My control over my emotions slips. This bastard better not have hurt Maggie.
He moves closer to inspect me, a small smile on his lips. “Angry with me, Grayson? Whyever would that be?” he asks, far too pleased with himself. “What does some low-level Illusionist matter to you?”
I grit my teeth. “Maybe I’m angry because you’re trying to break my ribs,” I grind out.
“Maybe,” he says like it’s an interesting word. “Or maybe we should summon the Illusionist and play a little game.”
Despite my best efforts, my emotions slip again.
“Concern now, Grayson?” my uncle chuckles. “Well, I dare say this is getting interesting.”
Which is when I decide to call it quits on his interrogation. “I have…,” I say in a wheeze.
“You have what, Grayson? What is it that you are so desperately trying to bargain with? Hmmm?” he says, leaning over me as I fight for breath.
“The … Key,” I say in barely a whisper and it does the trick.
He releases me from his spell’s grip and I gulp down air.
My uncle watches me carefully as I straighten, my torso probably bruised to hell. And for the first time in many years, I scent shock on him.
“Give it to me,” he commands.
I hesitate, warring with myself. How can I give this monster more power, how can I even risk it?
“Reluctance? Anger? Come now, Grayson. You’re better at guarding your feelings than that. If you keep going down this path I might think you’re not happy to follow my orders.”
Bastard.
“Careful now,” he warns, and I can scent his enjoyment. “Or maybe I’ll even think you meant to betray me.”
I stare at him, trapped. And even though it nearly kills me, I reach into my pocket and hand it to him.
The moment it touches his palm, his eyebrows shoot up and I scent his possessiveness. But a full minute goes by and the Key remains in his hand, its flowered vines moving. The hell?
“Remarkable,” he says, not taking his eyes off it. “How did you manage to call it without Miss Belrose?”
“I didn’t,” I say, and for the first time during this twisted conversation I enjoy what I’m about to say next. Because now I’m certain—he has no idea where Eloise is. “She’s in the Archive Room.”
His anger comes full force, strong and sticky like tar. “That nothing girl is in a room that could literally make or break our world and you are just telling me now? Are you daft?”
Bingo. “I figured you knew, since Akari clearly did,” I say, pushing his buttons very much on purpose.
His gaze darkens and his casting hand flexes. “Move!” he says with enough force that my feet slide toward the door without my permission. My back hits the wall with a thud and pushes uncomfortably against my sore ribs.
“If I find one single thing disturbed in that Archive, she’ll die a gruesome death, Grayson—one that I’ll make you watch on repeat for the next twenty years.”
We’ll see about that.
He tucks the Key into his breast pocket, striding for the door and releasing me from the wall. The damn thing still hasn’t disappeared.
When he finds Akari in the hall, I scent his annoyance.
“You’re not needed, Akari,” he says sharply, and I smile. Mission accomplished.
“But, Sir. Given the raid—” she says, and now her frustration matches his.
“I said you are not needed. Don’t make me repeat myself,” he replies.
As I pass Akari, her frustration flares. But I don’t wink at her, which I think is rather big of me.
My uncle walks quickly through the halls, and stops in front of the Archive Door. It doesn’t escape my notice, however, that he knows exactly where it is.
My uncle holds the Key in his hand and turns the handle. It doesn’t move. He casts an unlocking spell—still nothing. His uncertainty wafts toward me.
I wait.
He tries another spell and then another. None of them work.
“What is it you know that I don’t?” he says with a dangerous glint in his eye.
Which is when I say the one thing that will hopefully stop him from trying to kill Eloise. “It takes both me and Eloise to open the door.”
“And yet you left her inside the room?” he snaps, his magic buzzing around him like hornets.
“Yes,” I say with emphasis, “because if the Key disappeared while I was bringing it to you, we’d have to start over. And we’ve only ever successfully called it once. So, as a safeguard, Eloise stayed to periodically—”
Click.
The door opens a sliver and Eloise peers out. When she spots me with the Chancellor, her eyes widen and she fully opens the Archive Door.
“Do exactly that,” I finish, stepping closer in anticipation of the moment I follow him through the door.
My uncle’s expression once again calms and he takes a deep breath. Only he pauses before he crosses the threshold to straighten his suit jacket.
One more step and his magic is voided. One more damn step.
Then faster than I can blink he casts two spells at once, with so little effort that I don’t have a chance of putting up a shield.
In a fraction of a second, Eloise flies across the Archive Room slamming into one of the columns and I find myself wrapped in a cocoon of vines, with no access to my hands in order to cast.
“Betrayal always puts me in such a bad mood,” he says. “But I suppose this is fitting in a way. You steal plants from me, and I trap you in them. There’s a balance to it all, don’t you think?” He stares at me, trying to read my emotions, but I can also scent his and he isn’t sure. He’s testing me.
I smile. He lifts an eyebrow. And then he enters the Archive Room.