Glorious Rivals(81)

Black cloak.

Black hood.

Black veil.

Black boots, coming up the stairs.

Black gloves gently touching her face. “You are a quiet one.”

She can’t scream. Her body is shaking and shaking and—

“You should not be here, little one.”

Blood on her feet. The man doesn’t have a face. And she shouldn’t be here. She trembles harder.

“You should not be here.” A gloved finger brushes tears from her face. “But who is to say that you were?”

A rustling of fabric.

Something is pressed to her lips. Drinking. She’s drinking something.

And then—bare feet on pavement. She’s outside. She’s running. And she is alone.

Lyra woke frozen in her own body, like her bones and the blood in her veins and the breath in her lungs had all turned to razor-sharp ice. There was someone else there. Lyra tried to call to mind an image of the woman in black—tried and couldn’t, because her brain just didn’t work like that.

But she could hear the woman’s voice: You should not be here. But who is to say that you were?

Lyra might not have been able to see a damn thing in her mind, but she could remember: a cloak, a hood, boots. All black. Breathing hurt. Somehow, Lyra managed to roll onto her side.

Grayson was there, inches from her, and he was beautiful—far more beautiful in sleep than any man had a right to be. Long lashes. Sharp cheekbones. Full lips. There was hair in his face—not just one strand or two but enough for her to run her hands through.

She did, her touch light. He didn’t stir. Lyra almost hated to wake him, but she had to.

You poor thing. Lyra could hear the voice so vividly now. “Grayson.” Her voice came out quieter than she meant for it to. “Grayson, wake up.”

He slept like the dead.

“I need you.”

And just like that, Grayson’s eyes were open and locked on to her face. “The dream?” He understood that much immediately. He sat up, pulling her toward him. Lyra wanted nothing more in the world than to lay her head on his shoulder and breathe in the smell of him. Cedar and falling leaves. But she didn’t.

She couldn’t.

“Not just the dream.” The words felt like barbed wire in her throat. “It went further this time.” Saying that out loud set her heart to pounding like a hammer driving in nails—or railroad spikes. “I saw more.” She closed her eyes, knowing it was useless. “I saw it, and I can’t see anything anymore, but I remember her voice.” Lyra’s throat hurt. “I remember what she said.”

“What who said?”

Lyra opened her eyes to stare straight into Grayson Hawthorne’s. “I never knew how they found me—the police or my parents or whoever it was that took me out of that house.” She’d never been able to ask, not without admitting to her family what she had remembered. “I was alone with my father’s body. I had blood on my feet—blood on my feet, and I was alone.” Lyra sucked in a breath. “And then I wasn’t.”

Grayson’s hands made their way to the sides of Lyra’s face. He cupped her jaw, cradling her head, his fingers gently massaging the back of her neck. Small movements, steady. He was there, and he wasn’t asking a damn thing from her.

That, more than anything else, let Lyra continue. “She wore a black cloak, the hood pulled up.” Lyra pressed her lips together. “Her face was veiled. She said I shouldn’t be there. And then—it was like she was covering for me, for the fact that I was there. She fed me some kind of liquid, poured it down my throat.”

“I’ve got you.” He was still only touching her face and neck, but Lyra could feel Grayson’s presence in every inch of her body, anchoring her like silver and steel. “I am here, and I have got you, Lyra Kane.”

“Alice.” Lyra said the name out loud. It was the only thing that made sense. A Hawthorne did this—and then, the woman in black was there.

“Breathe,” Grayson murmured. He breathed, and so did she, and it was like running beside him all over again, a duet of sorts.

I am not alone. Lyra leaned in to one of Grayson hands, feeling the warmth of his skin on her cheek, and then there was a buzz at his wrist. His watch.

Grayson pulled back. He didn’t blink, and from his eyes alone, she wouldn’t have even thought he felt it—but he pulled back.

Grayson Hawthorne didn’t pull back. Not when she needed him. Not like this. Lyra’s fingers locked around his wrist, her hand too small to make it more than halfway around the circumference. But she was strong enough to hold his arm in place, if only because he let her.

“That was your watch,” Lyra said.

Grayson stroked the thumb of his free hand over her cheek. “My watch doesn’t matter right now.”

Lyra wanted to believe that. But… “My body knows yours.” Better than it should. Better than it has any right to. She swallowed. “You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, Grayson. There’s tension in your muscles all the time, but there’s a difference between tension and tensing.” The tension that lived in Grayson’s body was the tension of a bow with an arrow notched and at the ready. He was always ready. “You only tense for a reason.”

Slowly, Lyra turned his arm over. She pressed her thumb to the inside of his wrist, knowing her technique was lacking but not willing to risk loosening her grip.