The Brothers Hawthorne (The Inheritance Games, #4)(105)

Jameson climbed higher, faster, and when Branford took out his flashlight, Jameson realized that he’d been wrong. What he’d seen, it wasn’t the key. It was a key, one of dozens suspending midair, hanging from long and nearly invisible strings. There were at least sixty or seventy keys total, scattered all around the bell, none of them touching, only a handful of them positioned so that Jameson could reach them from the stairs.

He knew that none of those keys was the one he was looking for. Rohan wouldn’t make it that easy. Jameson gauged the distance between the edge of the stone steps and the bell. Three and a half feet.

Branford placed a hand on Jameson’s shoulder, the way he had in the midst of Katharine’s taunting manipulation. But this time, the man’s hand wasn’t meant to be comforting.

It was meant to hold him back.

“Don’t,” his uncle warned, in a tone that reminded Jameson of Grayson—and also Nash, when Nash thought one of them was on the verge of doing something unwise.

Jameson turned his head and met the man’s eyes. “I appreciate the advice.”

“That wasn’t advice,” Branford told him.

The sound of creaking wood was the only warning the two of them got before a trap door swung down from the ceiling above the bell. There was a flash of blue, and an instant later, Zella landed on top of the bell.

Jameson eyed the space between the staircase and the bell again. I can make it. The seventy-foot drop barely registered, but even he wasn’t reckless enough to attempt the jump holding a solid silver chest.

“Jameson.” Branford practically growled his name. In response, Jameson took a calculated risk.

“Hold this for me.” He thrust the chest at Branford, and the second the man had a hold on it, Jameson leapt.





CHAPTER 84





JAMESON


He hit the bell and held on with his entire body as it swung.

“Thanks for that,” Zella called down.

As the bell steadied, Jameson edged around its side. Then he began scanning the closest keys. He knew what he was looking for. A key made of shining gold. A head like a maze.

“You asked me earlier if I read your secret,” Zella said, her tone conversational, as she made her own search above. “Why don’t you ask me again?”

She was trying to distract him, trying to get to him. Jameson didn’t let himself think about his secret—or anything else. He stayed focused on his task, but that didn’t keep him from turning the tables on his opponent.

“I’d rather ask about you,” he said, moving farther around the bell, checking another key and another. Two up there. One up farther. One hanging down low. “And Rohan.” Jameson didn’t hesitate, didn’t question whether he’d chosen the correct method of getting under the duchess’s skin. “There’s history there. You learned not to expect anything from him at some point. But what kind of history, I wonder? You’re, what, seven or eight years older? And married…”

Jameson was guessing the history between them wasn’t that kind of history. But he was also pretty sure the duchess didn’t want anyone to realize there was history there at all.

That’s seven more keys—and none of them the key.

Up above, Zella shifted, and the movement sent the bell swaying again.

“Appreciate that,” Jameson told her.

“You so desperately wanted to prove yourself.” There was nothing cruel in Zella’s tone, but clearly, the gloves were off. “To Ian. To the old man.”

The old man. That was the way Jameson and his brothers had always referred to their grandfather. How had she known that? Had he used the phrase around her?

He wasn’t certain he had.

Zella slid down the side of the bell. She moved with incredible, gravity-defying grace, like there wasn’t a single muscle in her body over which she had anything less than perfect control.

“I told you before,” she murmured. “The benefit to choosing one’s competition is knowing one’s competition.”

Jameson forced himself to move faster. He’d ruled out maybe twenty keys, twenty-five at most. There were another two dozen up where Zella had been before. That left, what? Around twenty keys that neither of them had inspected yet?

“You’re playing to win, Duchess.” Jameson kept the conversation going because he’d scored at least one point off her already. Because he would find a way to score more.

“The world is kinder to winners.” Zella brought the bottoms of her feet up to rest on the bell. Jameson wasn’t sure why, until she pushed off, somehow managing to hold on, even as she sent the bell swinging.

Every muscle in Jameson’s body went tight. But he didn’t stop looking. He couldn’t.

Do great things.

What are you without the Hawthorne name?

“The world is kindest, of course,” Zella continued, her voice steely now, “to rich white boys, regardless of whether or not they deserve to win.”

Jameson shouldn’t have been able to hear her over the ringing of the bell, but he did—and that wasn’t the only thing he heard. The jarring, rumbling clang of the bell that threatened to shake off his grip—that wasn’t the only sound the bell was making.

There was also a lighter, softer, unmistakable ting.