Page 97 of Glorious Rivals

His face—he has no face.She can’t scream.Can’t move.Everything is red.Everything.

And then there is a voice behind her, a woman’s voice.“You poor thing.”

Lyra turns.At the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her, is a figure dressed entirely in black.

Black cloak.

Black hood.

Black veil.

Black boots, coming up the stairs.

Black gloves gently touching her face.“You are a quiet one.”

She can’t scream.Her body is shaking and shaking and—

“You should not be here, little one.”

Blood on her feet.The man doesn’t have a face.And she shouldn’t be here.She trembles harder.

“You should not be here.”A gloved finger brushes tears from her face.“But who is to say that you were?”

A rustling of fabric.

Something is pressed to her lips.Drinking.She’s drinking something.

And then—bare feet on pavement.She’s outside.She’s running.And she is alone.

Lyra woke frozen in her own body, like her bones and the blood in her veins and the breath in her lungs had all turned to razor-sharp ice.There was someone else there.Lyra tried to call to mind an image of the woman in black—tried andcouldn’t, because her brain just didn’t work like that.

But shecouldhear the woman’s voice:You should not be here.But who is to say that you were?

Lyra might not have been able to see a damn thing in her mind,but she could remember: a cloak, a hood, boots.All black.Breathing hurt.Somehow, Lyra managed to roll onto her side.

Grayson was there, inches from her, and he was beautiful—far more beautiful in sleep than any man had a right to be.Long lashes.Sharp cheekbones.Full lips.There was hair in his face—not just one strand or two but enough for her to run her hands through.

She did, her touch light.He didn’t stir.Lyra almost hated to wake him, but she had to.

You poor thing.Lyra could hear the voice so vividly now.“Grayson.”Her voice came out quieter than she meant for it to.“Grayson, wake up.”

He slept like the dead.

“I need you.”

And just like that, Grayson’s eyes were open and locked on to her face.“The dream?”He understood that much immediately.He sat up, pulling her toward him.Lyra wanted nothing more in the world than to lay her head on his shoulder and breathe in the smell of him.Cedar and falling leaves.But she didn’t.

She couldn’t.

“Not just the dream.”The words felt like barbed wire in her throat.“It went further this time.”Saying that out loud set her heart to pounding like a hammer driving in nails—or railroad spikes.“I saw more.”She closed her eyes, knowing it was useless.“Isaw it, and I can’t see anything anymore, but I remember her voice.”Lyra’s throat hurt.“I remember what she said.”

“Whatwhosaid?”

Lyra opened her eyes to stare straight into Grayson Hawthorne’s.“I never knew how they found me—the police or myparents or whoever it was that took me out of that house.”She’d never been able to ask, not without admitting to her family what she had remembered.“I was alone with my father’s body.I had blood on my feet—blood on my feet, and I was alone.”Lyra sucked in a breath.“And then I wasn’t.”

Grayson’s hands made their way to the sides of Lyra’s face.He cupped her jaw, cradling her head, his fingers gently massaging the back of her neck.Small movements, steady.He was there, and he wasn’t asking a damn thing from her.

That, more than anything else, let Lyra continue.“She wore a black cloak, the hood pulled up.”Lyra pressed her lips together.“Her face was veiled.She said I shouldn’t be there.And then—it was like she was covering for me, for the fact that Iwasthere.She fed me some kind of liquid, poured it down my throat.”