“Lottie said something to me. She said you were giving up everything. I don’t want you to do that. Nothing that makes you you, Grayson. I know how much your family means to you. I know how much you want to be a hero for your sisters. I know how much you want to be a good man.”
He looked away. The flickering chandeliers cast a shadow on his gold mask, put his blue eyes in darkness.
“You said no more broken promises, so promise me, Grayson. I won’t be okay with it. I…” I didn’t know what I would do, but I wouldn’t let him get away with it. “Promise me.” I raised my voice louder than the howling wind.
He lifted his eyes. “I promise.”
Forty-Eight
STORY
* * *
There were only a few things I wanted to bring, and they were all tied to Grayson: the notebook, the pen, and my locket.
“Where are you going, Angel?” West’s voice stopped me just outside the ballroom. With it, guilt grew strangling vines inside my chest.
I turned and faced him.
West has been nothing but kind to me. Am I really about to abandon him without word? He looked at me with the patient quirk of his lips I’d grown accustomed to.
“I…” I broke off.
West held out his hand. “Dance with me?”
“There’s no music.” I stated the obvious, but I took his hand.
He led me into the ballroom, out to the empty dance floor. As the chandelier flickered above us, the howling wind was our only melody.
His hand found my lower waist and pressed me close to him.
I looked around the ballroom, anywhere but West.
What if Grayson is lying?
West doesn’t deserve this.
Or does he?
“What are you thinking, Angel?”
“Um…just that the holidays are a lot nicer than anticipated.” It wasn’t a total lie. Servants had always known the Nutcracker Masquerade—and the holidays in general—to be insane. The Crownes kept multiple doctors on staff for the event to keep quiet and deal with the inevitable drug overdoses.
This was nothing like I’d imagined in the servants’ quarters.
Actually, so far all the parties I’d had to attend hadn’t been that bad. Compared to being gambled, to being abandoned on a boat, they were almost…tame.
“This isn’t the holidays, Story. The holidays haven’t even begun. It would have started tonight, but…” he eyed the blizzard.
What the hell did that mean? The holidays started weeks ago. I opened my mouth to question, when my attention was grabbed elsewhere.
Lottie stumbled near the white-chocolate-and-gold-leaf fountain.
“I think your sister had too much to drink,” I said.
He laughed.
I looked at him. “What?”