CHAPTER 31 LYRA

Chapter 31

LYRA

L yra's heart turned to stone in her chest. Lift me up? She knew already how Grayson's touch could linger, how its ghost refused to be exorcised. This could not happen.

There had to be another way.

Lyra looked up at the chandelier, which was still a good twelve feet out of reach. "The furniture—" she started to say.

"The furniture is fixed to the floor." Odette seemed to be enjoying this. "And I am neither as light nor as agile as I once was, so I am afraid this is up to the two of you."

There had to be three hundred crystals on the chandelier. Any one of them could hold a clue.

"It could be nothing," Lyra said, her voice tight. "A distraction."

"It is not," Grayson told her, "a distraction. There are patterns to this kind of game if you play enough of them. My grandfather's last game—the one he set to begin upon his death—started with adages and a girl."

The way he said a girl made Lyra remember an interview she'd seen, years earlier. Grayson Hawthorne and Avery Grambs. At sixteen, Lyra had watched and rewatched that interview more times than she wanted to admit. That kiss. In truth, the interview had been the reason that Grayson was the Hawthorne that Lyra had decided to approach, the reason she'd spent more than a year trying to track down his number.

Part of Lyra had hated Grayson and his entire overprivileged family, and part of her had thought—on some level—that anyone who could kiss a girl like that couldn't be all bad.

"That same game," Grayson continued evenly, "ended nearly a year later with a crystal chandelier. And now, in this game, which was designed by the very people who played my grandfather's last one, there is again an adage and a crystal chandelier."

"And there is, again," Odette added, "a girl."

Me. Lyra's mouth was dry. Screw this. Grayson Hawthorne didn't get to make her feel like this. He didn't get to make her feel a damn thing. "Go ahead," she told him curtly. "Lift me up. Let's get this over with."

"Over with?" Grayson repeated.

Lyra didn't feel a need to clarify herself.

"Your hands," Odette told Grayson imperiously, "her hips."

Bracing herself, Lyra walked to stand directly beneath the chandelier. She felt Grayson follow.

"I won't do anything unless you tell me to, Lyra." He said her name right this time— exactly right.

Lyra swallowed. "Go ahead."

Grayson's touch was gentle, but it wasn't light. His thumbs came to rest just above the place on her waist where her hips met her lower back. His fingers wrapped around the front of her body, spanning her hipbones, reaching inward.

The layers of fabric in her gown suddenly felt far too thin.

"On three." Grayson didn't phrase that as a question.

Lyra ripped the bandage off and beat him to counting. "Three."

Grayson lifted her up and over his head. Lyra stretched her arms, her eyes on the prize, feeling like an electric pulse had torn through her body. The tips of her fingers brushed the bottom of the chandelier, but it wasn't enough.

Grayson's hand moved upward to her back, which arched in response. A reflex , Lyra told herself. That was all.

With one hand on the small of her back, Grayson slid the other one down, gripping her thigh through the gown, the tulle compressing under his grip. Lyra's body responded, her other leg extending backward and her hand up as Grayson lifted her completely overhead.

The position should have felt precarious. It shouldn't have felt like a pas de deux. Swan Lake. She shouldn't have felt Grayson Hawthorne's touch like an invitation, a beckoning.

To him, it doubtlessly felt like nothing.

Her resolve hardening, Lyra stretched. Her hand soared into the bottom row of crystals.

"Feel for one that's loose." He just couldn't stop ordering her around.

Lyra forced herself to breathe and focused on her hand, on the cool crystals beneath her fingers. Not on him. The gown, his hand, my thigh—

She touched first one crystal, then another, and beneath her, Grayson began to rotate. Slowly. Delicately.

Crystal after crystal after crystal.

Lyra breathed, and she felt him with every damn breath. And then she felt it —a loose crystal. "I've got something." She tried grasping it between her finger and her thumb, and when that didn't work, between two fingers. "I can't—"

The next thing she knew, both of Grayson's hands were on her thighs. Lyra's legs split in a V, her back straightening as he lifted her straight overhead. Her hand closed over the crystal.

"Got it." The words came out guttural.

Grayson dropped her. Lyra snapped her legs together as her body fell. Grayson caught her around the waist an instant before she would have landed. Just like that, Lyra was standing on her own two feet.

Just like that, his touch was gone.

Lyra's body ached like she'd run a marathon. A tremor threatened to go through her. Gritting her teeth, she looked down at the crystal in her hand. Etched into its surface was an image.

"A sword." Lyra's voice came out low in volume, low in tone, a honey-whiskey whisper that sounded raw, even to her own ears.

"You, Ms. Kane," Odette said, coming to stand in front of Lyra, "are a dancer." The old woman turned her attention to Grayson. "And you are very much a Hawthorne."

Very much a Hawthorne. It was clear Odette meant that as a compliment, but Lyra took the words as a reminder of who and what she was dealing with.

Grayson didn't rise to the old woman's bait. He also didn't say a single word to Lyra as he turned and stalked away.

"A sword," Lyra said again. She lied and told herself that her voice sounded more normal this time. "We need to—"

"I need a moment." The muscles across Grayson's shoulder blades pulled visibly at the fabric of his tuxedo jacket. Tense. Just like his voice.

Lyra refused to read a thing— a single damn thing —into that. Instead, she walked to the screen and hit the blinking cursor with her right index finger.

"What are you doing?" Grayson's moment must have ended—either that, or he could multitask.

"I'm trying the word sword ." Lyra did her best to project a calm she did not in any way feel.

"It won't be that simple." Grayson's voice was rough.

Lyra hit the letters harder than necessary. S-W-O-R-D. She pressed Enter, and the word flashed green. A familiar chiming sound filled the air. An image appeared on the screen.

A scoreboard.

At the top, there were three shapes: a heart, a diamond, and a club. Beneath the heart, a score appeared. 1.

"You were saying?" Lyra resisted the urge to turn around. She wasn't gloating. Much.

"Simply that sword is not merely an answer." Grayson didn't even miss a beat. "It is, almost certainly, also our next clue."