Three clubs—more or less.There are always three.
Three spades.
Three hearts.
Nothing happened.Echoes, Lyra thought. Across games and generations. And then she looked to Grayson’s hand—to Alice’s goldenarrow. Lyra thought about the piano in the greenhouse, about the secret garden and the plaque on the courtyard wall.Our love was never black-and-white…
“Red,” Lyra said. Her voice came out almost as rough as Jameson’s, and when he didn’t seem to hear her, she reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder, even though she’d pulled Grayson back from doing the same, even though she knew that Jameson blamed her—for Avery.
Wild eyes met hers, and Lyra held Jameson Hawthorne’s gaze. “Red,” she said again. “The letters.R-E-D.”
Jameson tried it—two versions of it, three, four, and the fourth did it. A portion of the chamber floor popped up—no bigger than twelve inches by twelve inches.
A hidden compartment, Lyra registered.Plenty big to hide a box.
Jameson crouched and removed the floor panel. Beneath it, there was another, nearly solid panel with a small, oddly shaped opening, barely more than a slit. “A key,” Jameson gritted out. “I need—not akey.”
Lyra’s mind was already on Tobias Hawthorne’s keys when Jameson said the wordnot, and before she’d had a chance to even consider the shape of that slot, Grayson was already handing Jameson the golden arrow.
She thought back to Hawthorne Island, to a sword that had been the key to a hidden compartment. Jameson inserted the arrow.
Echoes. Layers. Clue to clue to clue.The next thing Lyra knew, Jameson had a wooden box in his hands. Hand-carved, from the looks of it. Lyra expected another lock on the box, but there wasn’t one.
Without so much as a glance at either Lyra or Grayson, Jameson gingerly opened the lid.
Inside the box, there was a single piece of paper with writing on it, front and back.
Alice’s secrets.Lyra’s heart pounded in her throat as Jameson took the paper in his hand and began to read. Eventually he flipped the paper from front to back and read some more. When he was done, Jameson folded the page in half and went to stick it in his pocket.
Grayson grabbed Jameson’s wrist halfway there.
“Try me, Jamie.” Grayson might have been willing to be blamed, to be hated—but he clearly wasn’t willing to let Jameson do this alone. “We’ve been looking for that box.”
Jameson slowly angled his eyes—borderlineanimaleyes—up at Grayson.
Very ugly, Lyra thought.Very fast.But this time, she knew better than to pull Grayson back. “Take a swing at him, and you’ll be fighting me, too,” Lyra informed Jameson instead. “I sure hope you don’t have any problems hitting girls.”
Jameson blinked.
Grayson’s free hand went for that page of Alice’s.“Try. Me. Jamie.”
After a long, tense moment, Jameson let loose of it. The second Grayson had the sheet, he angled it so that Lyra could read it, too. It took her a moment to realize that the page didn’t contain a list of secrets. It bore a poem, a handwritten poem.
Once Lyra started reading, she could barely even breathe. Alice’s words banished every other thought in her mind.
My story is that of a mother and a wife.
What more could any woman want from life?
What power could possibly hold a candle to
that of me and them and you?
What wars won, what plans on high
could hold a candle to my prize?
I am adored.
