She shook her head. “Maybe we’re all part of a compass, destined to be together and at odds.”
Maybe.
I think there was something between all four of us. Wrong and twisted, our pain had grown together where love should have been.
“Lottie!” Aundi called her friend, and with a small smile, Lottie left me.
With Lottie gone, the room shrunk. On one side, Lynette laughed with reporters. I spun to another side and found Arthur, the man who hadn’t stopped looking at me like I was his property since I’d arrived back at Crowne Hall.
I spun again and again and again.
The room was a blur of vicious motive.
The only person I hadn’t seen was Beryl, and that just made me more nervous, like I’d wander off alone and stumble into him.
Hello, Story.
They all know my secrets.
I couldn’t breathe.
An arm intertwined with mine just as I felt like I was going to faint.
“Walk,” West commanded.
“I can’t breathe.”
Ignoring me, West led me out of the ballroom and into the sunroom. Grayson was waiting like a knight. Stoic and stalwart, concern etched in his brow. When I saw him, I unhinged from West.
“What’s wrong?” His voice was hard, accusatory—of West.
“What am I supposed to do with this fear?” I demand. “They’re all around me and I can’t do anything. I can’t accuse anyone. I can’t—” I broke off on a breath, falling to the chaise.
Tansy’s chaise.
No one ever sat on Tansy’s chaise and another rack of fear hits me.
“What do I do with this living, breathing fear inside of me?”
Grayson was the picture of calm. He lowered himself to one knee easily in front of me, so we were eye to eye, and pulled my hands into his.
“You have me watching your back. Always. Every second. You’re not alone. And.” He swallowed, muscle in his jaw feathering. “When I’m not there, West is watching too.”
Grayson gritted those final words like they burned coming out.
“But how do I smile at Lynette?” I plead. “How do I hold my drink without shaking when your grandfather is around?”
Grayson pushed the hair out of my eyes, his own softening.
“Stop looking at their shadows,” West said.
I looked outside of Grayson, to West. He stood above us, arms folded. For a rare moment, there was no mocking glint in his warm brown eyes. He was serious, concerned.
It was a little off-putting.
I blinked at him. “What?”
“My mother is just a person. She has fears and hopes, and she acts according to them. My father…” West exhaled, working his jaw to the side. “Is disgustingly simple.” West bent on the soles of his feet, meeting my eyes. “They aren’t all powerful dragons; they are weak and scared because you are a threat.”
Surprisingly, West’s advice helped. It was like these four, all-powerful beings suddenly shrunk down to normal size.
And I could breathe.
“You won’t have to worry about your drink shaking for some time,” Grayson said after a moment. “My grandfather is gone.”
“Gone?”
“In Switzerland. He always leaves after the Holidays…” Grayson trailed off.
I knew that.
Everyone knew that.
Beryl Crowne was only in Crowne Point for the Holidays, the Swan Swell, and major events such as weddings and funerals. Any other time you saw him here…Pray.
Yet.
It didn’t seem right. Too easy.
I remembered the conversation I saw Gray have with his mother, the worried look in his eyes.
“So is this good news?” I asked.
Grayson smiled tightly. “Yeah. Good news.”
Twenty-Eight
STORY
Is a secret the same thing as a lie? With Grayson and West working together, I don’t have to hide the phone Grayson gave me, and I can text Grayson freely.
And I do.
But I still haven’t told him about my letters. Why don’t I tell him about the letters? What is wrong with me? It was on the tip of my tongue, to tell him yesterday, but I just stopped. I imagined him reading what I wrote and I got scared.
Stupid, and foolish, and scared.
The sound of porcelain shattering drew me from my thoughts. At first I thought I’d imagined it, then another crash sounded, followed by a plaintive, “Please, sir.”
I bolted up. It sounded like it was just outside my room. I pulled open my double doors, again met with the wall of guards.
“Please!”
Through the sliver of their muscled bodies, I saw Arthur du Lac on top of a Crowne servant. I looked at the guards, their stone faces staring at me.
They weren’t going to do anything?
But then of course not, the kinds of guards hired to keep girls locked inside towers weren’t exactly chivalrous knights.
I worked my jaw, pretending as if I was going to shut the doors…then bolted. I lifted my heavy, velvet train and rushed through the little sliver, aiming for Arthur. The guards yelled. They tugged on the fur hem. I heard a rip, the plush fur barely slipping through one of their meaty hands.
Their heavy footfalls slammed at my back. I only had seconds.
I shoved Arthur and he fell, hitting his head on the white marble fireplace. I got too much satisfaction from that.
Then Dumb and Dumber snatched me.
The moments that followed were like stiff ice cracking along a frozen lake. The servant frozen where Arthur had left her, Arthur on the ground, and me, imprisoned between two oafs.
“Go!” I yelled at her.
She quickly scrambled up and ran, pausing once in the doorway to stare at me with wide eyes, before disappearing out of the room.
It was useless, but I wrestled in my hold as Mr. du Lac got to his feet, coming to me. A trickle of blood fell from his dark hairline. There was no room in my chest for fear, it was filled with too much vicious hate.
How many women had Arthur du Lac assaulted?
Arthur reached for me—
“Dad?”
He stopped at his son’s voice.
Behind him, West had come into the room. He looked between me and his father, gaze traveling to the hold the guards had on me, the blood trickling from his father’s forehead. I waited for West to dole out some kind of sick punishment.
West’s eyes lingered on me, before landing on his father. “Mom needs you downstairs.”
“Of course,” he replied, still staring at me.
Arthur eyed me up and down, the same look in his eyes as the night he’d assaulted me in Asheville, but there was something else in there now too.
Darker.
Like he’d won.
Then, with a pat on his son’s shoulder, he left.
West gave the two brutes behind me a look, and they dropped me. I fell forward as one of them said behind me, “She bolted, sir.”
I could feel their annoyance.
West was unamused. “Is the small woman too much for both of you to handle? Do you need a third, or maybe a forth? Why not ten?”
“You’ll need at least two, but I want you to have ten.”
“Ten,” I gasped. “I’m not some princess.”
“That was my low number.”