Story out. I have four coins in my pocket, four coins I could use to just fucking end all of this.
One caveat: I don’t get to go with her.
It was a game of chess…one for her, one for our baby, and two so my grandfather doesn’t challenge. Finding the fifth is that Hail Mary for me, that hope for our happily ever after.
But I could get her out now.
Get them out—
Josephine St. Germaine stepped in my way. She stared at me, eyes a broken emerald shining different colors of green—jade, shamrock, deep pine. It was wrong to see those eyes; Josephine never stepped in my way.
“Christmas always makes me miss home,” she said.
Josephine never spoke to me, even on Christmas. It was enough to make me pause.
“I miss your father the most on this day.”
Then she brought up my father, and anger drenched like hot acid. I worked my jaw, brushing past her.
“Your father already tried it, Grayson. He gave those coins to your grandfather and was dead the next day.”
I stopped. Coins—she said coins, as in, plural. Everyone else has only talked about finding the one. I slowly turned around. Josephine still smiled into her champagne, as if we were discussing the weather.
“I did everything I was supposed to do, but…Story didn’t find it. She didn’t find the coin.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She sucked in air, eyes crossing the room to where one of my cousins had stumbled into the hallway, drunk and singing sexist Christmas songs. “Not here. Tonight, after dinner when everyone is drunk and fighting and distracted.”
“I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I don’t want any part in it.”
Her brow knitted. “Don’t you ever wonder who gave you those coins at the funeral?”
I stared at her, jaw clenched. I didn’t say it aloud. I couldn’t. But the question burned in my mind.
You gave them to me?
It seemed like forever until she spoke again, then slowly her eyes traveled back to mine. “There is no getting out of this world, Grayson. Not alive.”
STORY
I reworked what Josephine said to me over and over, staring at myself in the mirror as my girl undid the braids in my hair.
You should have found it by now.
What did that mean? The unknowns were piling too high inside me. I was suffocating.
“Ow.” I winced.
“Sorry, miss,” my girl said meekly. She fingered the knots at the root of my scalp with conditioner, slowly undoing each intricate braid. I glanced at the clock. Two hours had passed since she began, and we weren’t yet halfway finished, yet there was still hours to go until dinner.
Dinner…maybe I’d get another chance with Grayson then.
This was so much harder than I realized it would be. I was naive. Thinking it would be like before, but now we were both watched, and I had no way of contacting him.
He was keeping secrets again…but I only had minutes to glance into his heart.
After a bath—once again filled with so many oils my skin was like ice—my girl sat me on the vanity and prepped me. My hair was slicked and parted on the side, a slight wave visible at the roots. My natural curls were wild and glossy and free at the nape of my neck.
She placed a hood of gossamer embroidered with jewels and gold thread a few inches from my forehead. I fiddled with the matching thread embroidered on my gown.
I was ready for Christmas dinner.
For a night of whispers even the servants didn’t hear.
This isn’t the holidays, Story. The holidays haven’t even begun—
“You look beautiful, Angel.”
I lifted my head at West’s voice. He had shed his festive suit for something more dapper. A sleek, black tux and bow tie—as dinner was a black tie affair.
“An—”
I cut him off. “I can’t tell you until after dinner. I won’t.”
“I was going to say, I need you to give something to my sister.”
“What? Why?”
The muscle in West’s jaw flexed. He stared at me, and then after a moment, pulled what looked like an EpiPen from his breast pocket. “I can’t have just anyone bring this to her. My mother would be pissed if she knew—”
He broke off, like he was upset for telling me, then handed me the pen. I rolled it over between my fingers, that annoying West feeling clenching my chest. This felt…nice. Sweet, even. I couldn’t help but wonder, if he was asking because he actually trusted me.
Like he knew I was thinking about him, he grabbed my chin. “Servants talk. But