I forgot to breathe.
You don’t assault a Crowne, you don’t hold a Crowne to his knees, and you especially don’t do this inside of Crowne Hall.
Yet everyone just watched…and Grayson, he didn’t seem surprised at all.
Prisoner.
My eyes darted from one person to the next.
“Did you see what they were up to?” Arthur asked, eagerness positively dripping from his tongue.
West stared at us. “They were just talking.”
“Talking,” Arthur repeated, beady eyes narrowing on my torn dress, on my neck. I felt the bite mark Grayson left burn hot.
I stared at Tansy, waiting for her to say something—do something. Her favorite son, the heir to the Crowne empire, was on his fucking knees in her own house, and she wasn’t going to do anything?
What rabbit hole had I fallen down? What Twilight Zone episode was I in?
West gripped my bottom lip, dragging my attention to his.
“That kiss looked pretty fucking passionate,” he spoke low enough, only I heard. “Did I miss any others?”
I tried to move but he tightened his grip, and I knew if I moved it would tear the skin bloody. I slightly shook my head.
“I told you I didn’t share, Angel.” Using my lip, he jerked my head to the side, and bit my neck.
In front of everyone.
I cried out, my eyes slanting to the side, finding Grayson’s, as West sunk his teeth into my neck. The look in his eyes would haunt me, almost as much as what followed next.
The change.
He went from calm to animalistic in the blink of an eye. Grayson lunged for me, but a guard wrapped his arm around his neck, pulling him back to the floor.
West released my neck, and said low enough only I could hear. “Remember this moment the next time you think to find Grayson, Angel.” Then he stood up, addressing the room. “One to match the other I gave earlier. I think we’re all tired. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow,” Arthur said, eyes still narrowed.
“Merry Christmas Eve,” Tansy said.
My jaw hit the ground. I always knew Tansy was horrible to servants, but I thought she had a small space in her wretched, rotten heart left for her children.
I couldn’t stay quiet. I knew the consequences if I spoke, but—
“You—” West slapped his hand over my mouth, muffling the word bitch.
Then West dragged me out of the room.
I struggled.
Grayson urged me with his eyes to stop fighting, but I couldn’t leave him—not like this.
I didn’t care about consequences, punishments, whatever the hell was going to happen to me.
So West wrapped his arms around my ribcage and lifted me off the floor, dragging me out of the room. My arms held uselessly and hopelessly out to Grayson.
Grayson’s eyes followed me as I left the room.
Strung between two guards, his arms pulled to their length, muscles, veins, viscera in stark relief. He looked like a king.
A fallen one.
And that’s the last I saw of him before I was dragged around the corner.
Fifteen
GRAY
I’m keeping a secret from my little wife.
What happened? What changed?
Questions burned in Story’s eyes, questions I wanted to answer. I didn’t know where to begin. The guards let me go with a shove, and my mother came to me, a tight smile on her face.
“Your wife is waiting for you by the Christmas tree.”
It wasn’t talked about that my guards were now used to keep me locked up, not safe. Because with a Crowne cold war, the battles were always hidden under layers of taffeta and silk, so you couldn’t see blood or motive.
I worked out my shoulder, stiff from being held to the floor. “You mean Lottie?”
Her brows drew. “Do you have another wife?”
Even if it was only in secret, even if only fate watched, Snitch was forever and always my real and true wife.
And now she was somewhere in this dark castle with a monster.
“Of course not,” I gritted.
She lingered, feathering the bruise purpling beneath my collar from the last time I ditched my guards and disregarded their silent threat.
“We don’t get to choose our roles, Grayson. We don’t get to audition; we’re cast in them from birth, and we play them until we die. This is the life you were given in exchange for the privilege you have.” She slowly lifted her eyes to mine. “So remember your role.”
“Or what?”
Still holding the fabric at my neck, my mother’s eyes shifted over my shoulder, the slightest crease in her brow. “What happens to the play when the main character decides not to show up?”
I followed her eyes, looking over my shoulder to see what had her brow furrowed. My grandfather, the puppet master himself, was waiting in the hall.
“Everyone else on the stage suffers,” she finished.
Her eyes lingered a moment on my grandfather. A hero for my sisters. A good man. A good father. Everything I hoped to become, every reason that Snitch sacrificed for me, ran through my mind like a freight as I saw something in my mother’s face I’d never seen before: humanity.
Fear.
It vanished as quickly as it came, and she stepped back, putting on her mask and going to him. The guards that had thrust me to the ground followed her. Her hand lightly brushed my grandfather’s shoulder as she walked by him, something whispered between them I couldn’t catch.
Then his eyes landed on mine.
“You didn’t bring your friends this time.” I noted the absence of his guards, the ones he used to teach me respect the first two weeks Story was gone.
“I’m here to talk.”
Sure.
He dragged his pointer finger along the underside of his jaw. “You’ve made another scene, two times tonight. For another man’s mistress, no less.”
I palmed my forehead, curled my fist, tried to think past the bright and blinding pain in the center of my forehead anytime that word was uttered.
His mistress.
His fucking mistress.
“Do you know the history of the Crowne-du Lac rivalry?” he asked lightly.
The rivalry between the Crownes and the du Lacs is so old it predates my grandfather and even his grandfather. I don’t know how it happened, or when it started.
“Just that it’s old,” I said.
“It began with a girl and a gold coin. The wrong girl.” He circled our room, fingering gilded antiques and cloth-covered oil paintings.
He turned to me. “I’m sure you know about the coins.”
I schooled my features. “As much as anyone in this world knows.”
He nodded to himself, turning back to the antiques. “Over a century ago, a Crowne was set to marry a du Lac. The night before, the groom was found kissing some whore. Which would have been fine, but…” He eyed me. “Some men just cannot let things go. The du Lac man stole a coin from the Crownes and used it to try to get out of the marriage. Of course it didn’t work, both sides challenged. It was bloody and pointless, and now, centuries later…”
He continued to circle the room, and my muscles grew tight. For as long as I’d lived here, this place had been a lost room. It was where my mother shoved the antiques from our ancestry she couldn’t display or sell.
This room was like us; these artifacts were priceless but had no place in the world.
Now, my mother, Arthur, my grandfather, fucking Westley, everyone had been here—stamping their touch on everything.
“I spent my life finding them only to lose them at the last moment. They were stolen from me.” His voice grew cold at the word stolen.
I kept my face schooled, giving nothing away.
The day of my father’s funeral, three coins were placed into my pocket. At the time, I didn’t know what they were or what purpose they served. I never saw who put them there, and I still don’t know who plac
ed them.
I never gave it much thought, because for years these were always just a dream. A fairy tale. Now it’s a bloody reality.
Somebody stole these coins from my grandfather.
Someone knew I had them.
I was suddenly feeling like a fucking puppet again.
But now I had a lot more to lose than just myself if my strings were cut
“But, you know, Grayson,” he said. “I think I’m finally close to finding them.”
There it was, the secret I’m keeping from my wife. It wasn’t something easy to tell her—it was a feeling, and every day it grew. My grandfather, the du Lacs, fucking everyone knew more than us and was determined to not only keep us apart—but worse.
Bloody and pointless.
I told Snitch I wouldn’t put my faith in fairy tales, because in fairy tales, monsters always know more than the hero.
And we weren’t just surrounded by them, we were sleeping in their fucking cave.
My grandfather ended his tour in front of me, and placed his hand on my shoulder. He steered me out of the room, and into the ballroom, my view on Lottie. “Your wife is waiting.”
Lottie was reclining on a gold silk chaise, surrounded by a cluster of sycophants and family like something out of the Victorian era. Her pregnancy was global news now, so she was wearing a green gown that showed her bump—our baby.
It didn’t feel like ours, like how I felt with Snitch. Insane every minute she was away. Like I couldn’t breathe or think. When I looked at Lottie, I felt nothing. I felt…a vague sense of duty, but nothing.
And every moment I was reminded of that, I felt like shit.
It made it nearly impossible to look at her.
“They won’t let me stand,” Lottie said when I arrived, misery etching her features.
“And rightfully,” her grandmother—who flew in from France, my mother needed me to know—replied. “You’re a du Lac, it’s a right for a du Lac woman to have their feet up during a pregnancy.”
They would never say the truth out loud. Every moment Lottie stood, she put the baby at risk.
I eyed the black suits standing sentry on either side of the arched entry. Snitch was back. She was fucking home. All I wanted to do was go to her, and I think my mother knows, because she hadn’t let go of me, her nails digging into my bicep.
“With you already being four months. That gives us, what, a few months to plan?” My mother sighed about something, I assumed the baby shower.
Everything was always about the baby.
Lynette agreed. “Not enough time.”
“Why?” Lottie interrupted. “Why must so many come to the shower?”
My mother and hers laughed like she was too funny.
“You’re having the next Crowne heir, Charlotte,” Lynette said. “Your pregnancy will be the most watched birth since the royal baby.”
“More watched,” my mother concluded easily.
A new Crowne heir to complement the Couple of the Century.
Inside, Lottie and I knew the truth. I’d asked her for a divorce multiple times.
There was no love between us.
We’re only still married because if I divorced her, I’d put my real soulmate’s life in danger. The one whose dress hid the truth.
The color drained from Lottie’s face. “That seems… What if we just didn’t tell anyone?”
My mom tilted her head, eyeing her like she was a cute curiosity.
Lynette’s eyes flashed with something dark, but only for a moment. “Hundreds of years we’ve been at odds, and now we have you. Your child is quite special.”
My mother clasped her hands together. “We haven’t even talked about Crowne christening jewels. We haven’t had a chance to break them out in decades.”
Lottie placed her forehead into her palm. “I don’t think I need that… I’m sure someone else could use it…”
This time, my mother looked like she’d been shot. Her mouth parted and she stared at the floor, clearly at a loss for words.
“Lottie could use a rest.” Mrs. du Lac reached for Lottie, shepherding her off the chaise. “We can always talk about this another day.”
“That sounds…” Lottie stared at me, eyes wide with words I couldn’t read. She sighed, leaning into her mother. “That sounds lovely.”
“Oh, it will be so magical,” my mother called after them, clasping her hands together.
“Magical like ten minutes ago?” I asked.
My mother’s smile wavered, Lynette froze. It was a brief record skip, before everyone smiled and continued.
Classic Crowne: ignore the elephant in the room, even as it stomps on your fucking face. The day after the Nutcracker Masquerade, Lottie was the one who found me and unlocked me from the bed. She never asked why, and I never told her. Within minutes, her mother and mine were in the room. As far as they knew, I’d left Lottie on the floor during the blizzard and declared it wasn’t my baby. Yet they acted as if nothing was wrong, smiling as if the sun had always been shining, discussing plans for the shower.
The only indication that the night even happened was puffy skin beneath my mother’s eyes, which I’m sure she spent hours trying to reduce.
Were they wrong? Did anything change?
Bloody and pointless.
“Perhaps you should get some sleep as well, dear,” my mother said. “The party is dwindling, anyway.”
I didn’t have to be told twice. Eyes followed me as I exited. Tomorrow, none of these people would be allowed into Crowne Hall. No one save family was allowed for Christmas.
“Hello again…assholes,” I said under breath, waving at my guards as they parted for me.
The guards shared a look as I passed between them, lifting off the marble pillars. They didn’t follow me, but I had approximately fifteen minutes to get to my wing before I saw those fuckers again.
To everyone else, nothing was amiss. I was just Grayson Crowne, with a fleet of guards keeping him safe.
I had the illusion of freedom.
Josephine leaned against the wall, staring at me. Almost as if she wanted me to talk to her. In all the years I’d known her, I’d never spoken with her, not even when my father died.
I walked past her without a word.
Maybe it made me an asshole, whatever, I was used to it. I had no desire to have a relationship with Josephine St. Germaine, the woman responsible for my mother’s shriveled heart, my family’s broken pieces.
As I walked down the hallway to my wing, my image reflected back at me, warped in the black glass. Golden dots floated alongside me from the chandelier like fireflies. It was probably snowing lightly outside, but too dark to see. The moon was hidden behind dark clouds, the sky entirely black.
I’m looking out at the moon and I want to pretend you’re here with me.
I stopped short a few feet from the entrance to my wing as Story’s letter came rushing back.
I guess I have another secret from my little wife.
I tried to write you.
I should have assuaged her guilt immediately—I’m a bad fucking person, because in that moment, all I wanted was her lips. I didn’t give a shit about anything else.
I leaned against the cold glass, pulling up my phone.
Every night, I’d replay the last minutes before Snitch left over and over again on a loop, reading all of Story’s letters until I felt I’d memorized every secret path in her soul. At first, the sheets smelled like her, like warmth, like marshmallows. But trying to hold on to her scent was like trying to hold on to a memory.
It slipped through my fingers like fog.
You are Grayson Crowne, after all. You have tens of thousands of people sliding into your DMs. Why would you notice me?
How naive is she? It’s as adorable as it is maddening because it gets her into so much trouble. I would notice Snitch if she were one flickering star among the billion brighter. I could pick out her scent if she were one flower in a wildflower patch. I’d know
her voice if she were a wisp in a windstorm.
I couldn’t not notice her. My only regret was I didn’t see the letters sooner. Almost two weeks had passed before I saw Dear Atlas in my inbox. By then, she’d stopped sending me letters.
I did write her back.
Secretly.
Because I was watched now. My Instagram. My everything. She was the only thing that got me through these two weeks locked in this fucking house, playing the perfect prince. She hadn’t read my letters yet. Maybe for the same reason I hadn’t read hers at first. It was hidden away from an account I didn’t know.
I should have told her tonight.
Even this small secret weighed.
I typed another letter to her.
Dear little wife, every secret I keep from you builds a new thorn around my heart—
“Merry almost Christmas.”
I stopped short at West’s voice, slowly turning around. Blood roared in my ears and my muscles stiffened as the world around me vanished into a pinprick.
I never thought about killing anyone. That line was so far away I couldn’t even see it, let alone cross it. Then Story kissed me, she slid into my sheets and into my veins. I would do anything for her, anything to protect her, and that line became visible on the horizon.
When she got pregnant, suddenly that line wasn’t close—I was about to fucking trip over it.
I don’t like him beneath the sheets.
He’s hurting her.
The only thing stopping me from crossing that line was Story. She saw a future for us, one that wasn’t bloody or pointless.
West’s lips were moving, and I focused past the roaring in my ears.
“…You’re gonna realize you need me, Crowne.”
I dragged my hand across my jaw. “Right. Like I need a fucking STD.”
The muscles beneath my ear were in pain from grinding my teeth and I was on the verge of tackling West to the ground.
So I turned, for the future Story saw.
West yelled to my back. “I’m the only one trying to keep our girl alive!”
Sixteen
GRAY
OUR GIRL.
Destroyed Destiny (Crowne Point Book 4) Page 8