“They know I wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye,” Aria muttered to her as his grandmother passed her on her way to him. Gray heard her.
“You took her from her family,” he accused, tight-lipped.
“I can’t discuss it here,” Tessa told him.
He ground his jaw, wanting to hear what she had to say.
Taking Aria by the hand, he pulled her toward the exit.
“Father,” he heard Cavendish boldly say, “are you going to sit by and let them all walk out of here?”
Grayson, he heard Tabby’s voice in his head,we found the wine in Mr. Cavendish’s chambers. My family found three casks behind a curtain in his bedroom.
Gray smiled slightly and turned to one of the guardsmen. “Go check Cavendish’s chambers for the wine casks. His bedroom to be precise.”
“Yes, my lord,” the guard said, then hurried off, taking three other men with him.
Gray made a promise to himself that he would send fleas to visit Cavendish’s prison bed before the sun rose. For now, though, he thanked Tabby and followed his grandmother to the castle doors, where their wool coats were strewn over a chair.
Gray eyed Harper, who stayed with them, then slid his gaze to Aria. He moved closer to her and gazed into her cloudless blue eyes. “Are you well?”
She nodded but didn’t speak. They both felt the same weighted concern. Now that Tessa Blagden had returned, she could send Aria home. Gray believed her when she used Aria with which to threaten him. She didn’t need a key.
They stepped out of the castle and into the cool night. Gray turned his ear toward the night sound of the forest. His grandmother led them closer to it.
“Why are you leading us into the forest?” he asked the old woman. What if she was bringing them there to send Aria back without anyone witnessing it?
“No one will follow us there,” she answered him.
Of that, she was correct. No one would follow Gray into the woods without a quiver full of arrows, or even a pistol. He looked around. If anyone tried to harm the animals—
Finally, they came to a small clearing. His grandmother turned to him. Gray wanted to look away. She had hurt him so deeply he didn’t think he could look into her eyes without weeping the way he should have when he was ten.
“I know you both want answers,” she began, addressing Aria, as well. “I had no choice but to put you together when I did. Grayson, I’d hoped you would have used the key to leave here, but you chose to die on some useless battlefield instead.”
“How was I supposed to know what that key was for?” he accused.
“I told you it would lead you to your heart’s desire,” she argued while his thoughts drifted to Aria. “You don’t remember?”
“No, not really, but your surprise that I didn’t abandon Dartmouth the way you and my mother abandoned me, disgusts me. And why had you hoped that I would use the key to leave, Grandmother? Did you know what my life would be like? Did you know and you still left?”
“Your mother did not abandon you, Gray.” She shook her head sorrowfully. “Harper doesn’t even know this.” She cast the younger Blagden a guilty glance. “It was thought best that she wasn’t told, saving you and her unhelpful heartache. Emma was fleeing punishment for using time as her vengeful arena. But she didn’t need to be present to receive her punishment. When she brought her fourth victim to the harrowing future, she was sent back here and stripped of her time travel ability. The council of Devon was told of her whereabouts. She was captured and burned as a witch.”
Gray took a step back, shaken to the marrow. His mother was dead. Burned as a witch! He heard a sound and thought it came from his own heart, but it came from Harper’s. Her older sister was dead, and no one had told her.
“Perhaps if I had known my mother didn’t walk away from me…” Now, he set his murderous gaze on his grandmother without the threat of tears. “You pull all the strings, don’t you, Grandmother. If the end you desire is seen to fruition you don’t care about any of us.”
“That’s not true—”
“It is,” Aria interrupted her. “You took me from my family without my consent. That’s kidnapping, and on my brother’s birthday, no less. You took away a big chunk of my mother’s help, both financially and mentally.”
Gray snorted at his grandmother. “But you don’t understand loyalty, do you? Or compassion. Did you think for one moment what this would do to Aria? Worrying night and day about her family? To Harper, who now must live with the knowledge that her sister was burned to death, and she wasn’t told?”
“Emma chose the way she wished to live,” his grandmother told them. “And she chose the way she wished to die.”
Harper turned away, her face a mask of grief.
But Gray had no place for such sentiment. Not yet. First, he would tell his grandmother that he never wanted to look upon her face again. Even though…even though he still loved her. “So, my mother died because she broke some law of time travel, yet you would have me do it. You provided a way for Aria to do it.”