I don’t understand.” Lyra’s throat threatened to close in around that statement as she stared, dry-eyed, at Odette’s drawing. The lily. The dream always started with the flower.
“I know you don’t,” Odette said softly. She held Lyra’s gaze and then nodded her head toward Grayson. “You draw him, Lyra. It’s time the three of us put this game to rest.”
“You said you didn’t know anything about my father.”
“I don’t.” Odette was implacable. “Now draw your Hawthorne, the way I once drew mine.”
The way I once drew mine. That was a confession and a proclamation and a bomb, detonated just so, and Lyra couldn’t muster the ability to tell Odette that Grayson wasn’t and could never be her Hawthorne.
Swallowing back the litany of questions she wanted to scream, Lyra did as Odette had instructed and began to draw. Grayson’s jaw first, then brow, then cheekbones. It didn’t feel anything like she’d thought drawing him would, because all she could think was I was four years old.
All she could think was I was holding a calla lily and a candy necklace.
All she could think was There was blood and A Hawthorne did this and
Omega.
Lyra finished the drawing and scanned it, feeling like she was sleepwalking through the motion. When their challenge was deemed a success and they got their hint, Lyra barely even heard it.
“Shatter.” Odette repeated the hint, but all Lyra could hear was the old woman saying other words.
Neither one of you knows what you think you know. The right kind of disaster just waiting to happen.
A Hawthorne and a girl who has every reason to stay away from Hawthornes.
“Lyra.” Grayson said her name, and when that didn’t work, he said it again a second time—wrong. “Lyra.”
Lie-ra.
“That’s not my name,” Lyra bit out.
“I know.” Grayson brought his hands to her face, his palms on her cheeks as his fingertips cradled her jaw. “Shatter,” he reiterated. “That’s our hint. Shatter.”
He was always so damn impossible to ignore.
Lyra fought through the fog in her brain. “The lollipop,” she whispered.
Any of their objects could be broken, but the lollipop was the only one of the four that would shatter. She tore off the plastic covering and slammed the lollipop to the ground as hard as she could, angry and desperate and needing to be right.
The lollipop shattered.
Lyra dropped the stick and fell to her knees, looking for something— anything—in the shards.
Grayson picked up the stick. “There’s a cork on the end.” The stick was thick—and, they soon discovered, hollow. Inside the stick, there was liquid. Odette got to the paintbrush before Lyra could, but after a long moment,
she handed the object in question to Lyra, who dipped the brush into the liquid inside the lollipop stick. Grayson held out the sticky notes. As Lyra painted the liquid onto the paper, an image was revealed—or part of an image, anyway.
Grayson tore off the first note, and Lyra started painting another one. And on and on it went. Grayson and Odette began fitting the images together like a puzzle. The end result was a spiral, and Lyra thought about the fact that every swirl and spiral in the ballroom mosaic was unique.
“Find it.” Grayson Hawthorne and his orders.
They scoured the walls, the floor—and finally, they found the pattern that matched. Grayson laid his palms flat against the center of the spiral and
pressed. Hard. Something clicked, and without warning, every tile in the spiral fell off the wall. They hit the ground like raindrops.
Like shrapnel.
In the center of the space where the tiles had been, Lyra could make out the ends of electrical wires.
“The light switch.” Grayson moved quickly, and the next thing Lyra knew, he was pinching together this wire and that and screwing the light switch in with his bare hands. “Done.”
Grayson looked up. Lyra flipped the switch, and just like that, a section of wall became a door.
They were out.
