Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (81)

They needed sleep. Lyra knew that. Her body decidedly did not. “How do you normally put yourself to sleep?” she asked Grayson, staring into his eyes, thinking about arctic ice and the silver of swords. “When you can, when you succeed—how do you turn it off?”

“The world?” Grayson said.

“Being Grayson Hawthorne,” Lyra replied.

His chest rose and fell, and her fingers ached to touch it in a way that might have proven impossible to deny if he hadn’t answered her question.

“I imagine myself floating on my back in a pool.”

Lyra flipped from her side to her back. There was maybe an inch between her shoulder and his. She closed her eyes. “Floating in a pool.” She could just almost feel it. “At night.”

“A moonless sky up above,” Grayson replied. She could tell just by the sound of his voice: His eyes were closed, too.

He breathed.

She breathed.

“Nothing but black,” Grayson continued.

“Deep breaths, lungs filling to keep you afloat.” Lyra could feel it now, her body and his, floating side by side. Silence.

And then, there really was nothing but black.





The calla lily.

The candy necklace.

“A Hawthorne did this.”

He has a gun. Lyra couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t wake up. She sank deeper into the dream, deeper and deeper and deeper until there was no shred of awareness that it was a dream left in her.

“What begins a bet? Not that.” She can hear the man, but she can’t see him. There’s silence, and then—a bang.

She presses her hands to her ears. She’s a big girl. Not gonna cry. She’s not.

Another bang.

Silence. She drops her hands from her ears. The flower falls to the floor. She twists and twists the elastic of the candy necklace around her fingers so tight it hurts, and then she hears something like the creaking of a door.

Suddenly, her feet are walking toward the stairs. Quiet, she thinks. She has to be quiet. She slips off her shoes.

Up the stairs. One step. Then another. Her foot sinks into something sticky and warm and red. It’s red, and it’s on her, and it’s dripping down the stairs.

The walls are red, too. You’re not supposed to draw on the walls.

A mewling sound. It’s her. She’s the one making the sound as she sees something at the top of the stairs.

Not something.

His face—he has no face. She can’t scream. Can’t move. Everything is red. Everything.

And then there is a voice behind her, a woman’s voice. “You poor thing.”

Lyra turns. At the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her, is a figure dressed entirely in black.

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.”