“Were you pretending that I was her?” Emily asked. “Your precious Lyra?”
“Did I kiss you like Imeant it?” Grayson replied.
“Yes.”
“Then it stands to reason,” Grayson said, “that I was pretending that you were her. Now pay up.”
The look in Emily’s eyes wasmurderous, but before she could do a damn thing, a portion of the wall swung open, fate making good on Emily’s promise before she had a chance to renege on it.
A woman clothed in a white cloak stepped into the room.
“You’re needed elsewhere, Watcher.”Alice.Memories hit Jameson from all sides the moment he heard his grandmother’s voice. “The final trial is about to begin.”
“The end nears.” Emily looked Alice up and down. “Your end.”
Alice must have had some power still, because when she lowered the white hood on her cloak, Emily flinched slightly. “Go,” Alice said.
One word. Just one. And Emilywent. One word, and Jameson and Grayson were alone with the Woman in White, the old man’s Alice,hisLyra, his one and only love. One second there was nothing in her hand, and the next, she was plunging a needle into the side of Jameson’s neck.
Grayson surged forward, pinning their grandmother against the wall.
“Gray.” It took Jameson a split second to register that he’d actuallymanaged to speak. The feeling was returning to his body. “It was an antidote.”
Alice arched a brow at Grayson, who showed no signs of letting her go.
“You had a plan.” Grayson jerked his head toward Jameson on the ground, his tone harsh. “Was this part of it?”
Their grandmother ignored the criticism implied by that question. “Yes.”
Yes.Jameson climbed slowly to his feet.This was all part of the plan.“You meant for us to end up here.”
“A nudge here,” Alice replied. “A nudge there.”
Jameson stared her, his brain firing a thousand miles an hour. “The old man’s game, his love letters for you. You knew I’d find it, find them, didn’t you? YouletAvery draw a lemniscate on that note. You knew what was hidden in the Royal Suite. You knew where it would take me. You knew I’d end up at the Mercy eventually.”
And then you sent me home.
“Dear boy,” Alice said, “who do you think arranged for you to become acquainted with the Devil’s Mercy in the first place?”
Jameson had become acquainted with the Devil’s Mercy more than a year earlier.A nudge here. A nudge there.“How much of it was you?” Jameson couldn’t keep himself from asking. “Avery inheriting? The way things went down with Vincent Blake? Eve inheritinghisfortune?”
And now, AveryandEve were here, the daughter of Toby’s heart and the daughter of his blood, and that most certainly did not strike Jameson as a coincidence.
“It was always you.” Grayson dropped his hold on Alice as he echoed the old man’s words from that final message. “Always and ever you.”
Why?Jameson didn’t speak the word aloud, but Alice reacted like he had.
“Love,” she said quietly, “is a powerful thing.”
“Where’s Avery?” Jameson demanded.
“Avery Kylie Grambs is exactly where she needs to be.”
Avery Kylie Grambs. A Very Risky Gamble.Alice’s use of Avery’s fullname did not strike Jameson as coincidental. What the hell was Alice playing at here?
Growing up, the old man had told Jameson that his mind was ordinary, that if he wanted to compensate for that, he had to learn to be unencumbered by the fear of pain or failure, by concepts likecan’tandshould, so that he might transcend his limitations and learn to perceive the world as a web of possibilities, free from constraints. Jameson channeled that part of himself now, and what hesawtook his breath away.
So many possibilities.
