CHAPTER 50 LYRA
LYRA
LYRA, MY LYRA.
In Lyra’s mind, those three words had been playing on repeat for hours as she and Grayson had continued their search for Alice’s box, as they’d gone through years and years of renovation blueprints in an attempt to reverse-engineer Hawthorne House and the surrounding estate as they had existed at the time of Alice’s false death.
The embroidered inscription had plagued Lyra as she and Grayson had hiked out to Wayback Cottage, the very first building that Tobias Hawthorne had erected on the estate, the first home he and Alice had ever shared.
The words had cycled through Lyra’s mind as she and Grayson had searched the cottage and the surrounding area, as they’d spoken to Oren, who told them Zara suggested searching a specific room at Hawthorne House, a specific suite.
By the time Lyra and Grayson made it back to the House, Lyra couldn’t keep the floodgates in place any longer.
LYRA, MY LYRA.
Lie-ra.
Lie-ra.
She will come for you.
Lyra breathed through the onslaught as she and Grayson stepped into a room of shining gold.
“This,” Grayson said, “was my mother’s wing. I never knew it belonged to Alice first.”
The moldings on the walls were gold and so were the walls themselves.
Not merely gold as in the color but what Lyra deeply suspected was actual gold leaf.
An exquisite crystal chandelier marked the ceiling, sized more for a great hall.
The room looked like something out of Versailles, and the attached closet was far larger than Toby’s home.
The bathroom was almost as big. A massive claw-footed tub sat elevated on a marble dais.
“Do you think your mother redecorated?” Lyra asked. “Or—”
“It took her a week.”
Lyra turned. She hadn’t heard anyone approach, but there Grayson’s aunt Zara was, standing in the main room, a single key of Tobias Hawthorne’s in her hand. Even from a distance, Lyra could make out the jewel at the center of that key: a ruby.
It was only when Lyra and Grayson got closer to Zara that Lyra realized the ruby was shaped like an apple.
“Skye claimed this suite as her own less than an hour after our mother’s funeral,” Zara said calmly.
“Had I realized that funeral was a farce, I might not have taken such exception to my sister’s behavior—not that it mattered one way or another what I thought.
Skye always did have a way of taking what she wanted. ”
“She certainly does,” Grayson replied.
“This room was a sitting room once,” Zara told him. “Every grand ball my mother ever planned, she planned here. That closet was full of gowns, each more beautiful than the last.”
Lyra tried to wrap her mind around that. She didn’t exactly associate A Hawthorne with parties.
“You’ve made progress on the keys.” Grayson nodded to the key in his aunt’s hand.
“Some,” Zara said. “This one tells the story of the day Mother and Father met. There was an apple tree involved. A rejection on her part, persistence on his… one bite of the apple at a time.”
“There was also a wager,” Grayson said quietly. “And an arrow, if I’m remembering the story correctly. It was one of the only ones the old man ever told us about Alice.”
Zara raised her chin slightly. “My mother was an impeccable shot.”
An impeccable shot. With a bow and arrow. Lyra’s mind went to a photograph she’d seen during the Grandest Game. “Calla Thorp was an archer,” she noted.
Grayson considered that, then shot an assessing look at his aunt. “You didn’t track us down to talk to us about the way Alice and the old man met.”
“I came to find you,” Zara told Grayson, “to kindly advise you to find your brother, the one a certain lawyer has a habit of going to first when there is news.”
News. Lyra thought about the sketch she’d given to Alisa—and the fact that they were still waiting for someone to track down Odette.
“And where will I find Nash?” Grayson queried.
“Up in the North Tower,” Zara replied. “He’s been assisting Oren and me with the keys.”
“I’ll be back,” Grayson told Lyra. She pushed down the impulse to go with him and stayed exactly where she was in the golden, sparkling suite that had once belonged to Grayson’s mother and, before that, to Alice.
“News?” Lyra asked Zara.
Grayson’s aunt studied Lyra for a moment, twisting the stem of the ruby key, which she held the way one might hold a rose.
“Did you hear any of what Alisa told Nash?” Lyra tried again. “Or anything she told Oren?”
“Alisa Ortega was named after my mother, you know. Alisa—for Alice.” Zara side-stepped the question.
“Alisa’s own mother died quite young. The girl subsequently spent a great deal of time at Hawthorne House growing up.
There was a period when it looked like she and Nash might marry, but that is neither here nor there. ”
Zara Hawthorne was elegant and self-contained, the kind of person who probably twisted her hair into a French knot the moment she woke up, and Lyra was absolutely certain that Grayson’s aunt had come here—in person, instead of just calling Grayson—for a reason.
A reason she’d sent Grayson away and gotten Lyra alone.
Based on the rundown Lyra had just been given about Alisa’s history with Nash, Lyra had a suspicion about what that reason might be.
“Is this the part where you ask me what my intentions are toward your nephew?” Lyra said.
“My favorite nephew, as it happens,” Zara replied. “And no. This is the part where I break it to you that the press has learned your name.” Zara held out her phone then, the screen angled so that Lyra could see not just the photograph of herself and Grayson but also the headline.
MYSTERY GIRL—SOLVED! Meet Lyra Kane.
Zara gave Lyra a moment to absorb that, then spoke again.
“The tabloids and gossip sites are running with the theory that Avery is jealous of you, that the Hawthorne heiress is off licking her wounds somewhere at the idea of sharing Grayson. It just goes to show, if the press can pit two women against each other, they will, every time.”
“Sharing Grayson?” Lyra managed not to sputter. “Avery’s with Jameson. Everyone knows that.”
“And now everyone knows your name,” Zara replied.
Lyra couldn’t bring herself to care too much about that. “Good,” she said abruptly. “That was the plan. Controlling the story. That headline should buy us some time.” Buy Avery some time.
“It was not your plan,” Zara pointed out.
“I would have said yes, if Alisa had asked.”
“I tend to believe you.” Zara offered Lyra the slightest of smiles. “And now, I am going to ask: What are your intentions toward my nephew?”
Lyra wondered if this was how Grayson had felt at Mile’s End, when her dad had escorted him to the spare room, no doubt chatting a bit along the way. “Right now,” Lyra said, “I intend to help Grayson search this room.”
“He is who he is, Ms. Kane. There will be no escaping that—for either of you. My father raised those boys to be extraordinary, and he made them a thing of legend the moment he disinherited them. The world’s fascination for extreme wealth is one thing; its fascination for scandal and tragic young men is quite another.
First, there was Toby and the fire. And then, the four of them—brothers, each more handsome and charismatic than the last, all cast aside in favor of a stranger.
It is not the money for which this family is now best known, Lyra, and it has not been for some time. ”
“What about you?” Lyra asked. Zara was Tobias Hawthorne’s eldest child. She’d been disinherited, the same as the boys.
Zara looked at Lyra for a moment. “That is not a question I am accustomed to anyone asking.”
Lyra considered that. “You said your sister redecorated this room all of a week after your mother died.” Without asking. Without a thought to your feelings. The same way your father wrote his will. “I take it the gold was Skye’s doing?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m wondering what we might find beneath the gold,” Lyra replied. “And I’m thinking that you might be the perfect person to help me answer that question.”
If there was one thing Lyra knew, it was what it was like to be fine when you weren’t.
“Want to do some damage?” Lyra asked Grayson’s aunt.
Zara raised an elegant brow, then held up the ruby key. “One might be able to do a great deal of damage,” she told Lyra, “with this.”