Page 64 of The Grandest Game
It’s so red. It doesn’t smell right.
“Come back to me.Now. Look at me, Lyra.”
She’s at the top of the stairs, and—the red liquid isn’t coming from something.It’s someone. Her father-not-father. It’s him. She thinks it’s him—except he’s not moving, and he doesn’t have a face.
He blew off his own face.
She can’t scream. Can’t move. He doesn’t have a face. And his stomach…
Everything is red—
Fingers worked their way through Lyra’s thick hair, to her neck—skin against her skin, warmth. “You will come back to me, or I willmake youcome back to me.”
Lyra gasped. The real world came into focus, starting with Grayson Hawthorne. All Lyra could see was his steady eyes, the lines of his face, sharp cheekbones, stone-cut jaw.
All she could feel was his hand on her neck.
The rest of her body was numb. She shook, her arms and torso vibrating. Grayson’s hands moved down to her shoulders, his touch warm against the skin bared by her ball gown—so warm and steady and gentle and solid andthere.
“I’ve got you, Lyra.” There was no arguing with Grayson Hawthorne.
She let herself stare at him, breathed in andsmelledhim.Like cedar and fallen leaves and something fainter, something sharp.“The dream always stopped at the gunshot,” she said, her voice barely even a whisper. “But just now, I flashed back and—”
“Hush now, child.” That was Odette.
“I saw his body.” Lyra had never realized that. Even with the dreams, her brain had still been protecting her, all this time. “I stepped in hisblood. His face wasgone.”
She’dseenit in the flashback, the way she only ever saw things in her dreams.
Grayson’s right hand cupped her chin.
“I’m fine,” Lyra choked out.
“You don’t have to be fine right now.” Grayson’s thumb lightly stroked her cheek. “I have spent my entire life beingfinewhen I wasn’t. I know the price. I know what it’s like to bear that price with every cell in your body. It isn’t worth it, Lyra.”
He said her nameexactly right, and Lyra’s heart twisted. She wasn’t supposed to understand Grayson Hawthorne, and he certainly wasn’t supposed to understand her. She’d triedso hard—for years, she hadbeentrying. To be fine. To be normal. To convince herself that it was ridiculous that one dream, one memory, could change her in such a bone-deep, life-shattering way.
You don’t have to be fine right now.
“There were two gunshots.” Lyra wasn’t fine, but at least her voice sounded a little steadier. “He shot himself in the stomach first. He drew something on the wall with his own blood.”
“Your father.” Odette did not phrase that as a question. “The one who had dealings with Tobias Hawthorne.”
At the nameHawthorne, Lyra pulled back—from Grayson’s grasp on her shoulders, from his touch on her face. Odette’s words were a reminder of who Grayson Hawthorne was and every reason she hadnotto touch him.
If she’d been able to run until her body gave out, she would have, but locked in this room, all Lyra could do was make her way back to the projector.Just focus on the game.
“What are you doing?” Grayson said, his voice softer than it had any right to be.
“I missed the end of the movie. I’m starting it over.” Lyra wasn’t sure how to rewind, but she saw two buttons. One had theplaysymbol painted underneath it, a recent addition to a vintage machine. The other small button wasn’t labeled.
Lyra hit the unlabeled button. The wall to her left began to part, the two halves moving in opposite directions, slowly receding until they were gone. Lyra took in the sight beyond and realized that the theater room was much, much bigger than they’d realized—and the newly revealed space was nowhere near empty.
Chapter 49
GIGI
If there’s someone other than the players and the game makers on this island…Gigi’s mind went back to the contents of the bag she’d found. “The knife,” she said urgently.
