tricks of time ― grayson hawthorne [the inheritance games]

EPILOGUE

TWO MONTHS LATER

Oblivion.

That's how the last month has felt. The last month have been nothing short of a dream. All I have wanted for my time here in Hawthorne House has been peace and quiet. I suppose I've finally gotten it.

Well, not really. Weeks have passed by in exhausting charity-galas and prep school exams. Nights talking to Grayson. But that is the closest to oblivion I can get now. And not a single part of me minds a bit.

Sometimes, none of it feels real. What I went from, and what I am now.

Sometimes I have to play everything over and over and over again in my head, like a mixtape. Remembering everything. Sometimes, I forget a part, and then I force myself to start over from the beginning.

Because I don't think any of it is real anymore. I fear going to sleep, because I'm afraid I'll wake up and see that everything was just a figment of my imagination. That he won't be there anymore.

Flying to Texas. Winning the Inheritance. My Father. James. The trial. Kissing Grayson for the first time under the stars.

And then pushing him away.

I don't like to think about that part.

Celeste and Jameson. Secretly flying out to True North with Jameson and Grayson. Finding out the truth.  Who my Mother really was.

I've not made much progress with her. Mallory. My Mother. Because how can you? You can't. But I'll still say that we've warmed up to each other a little bit. We don't talk, but the small smiles at the breakfast and dinner table have to mean something, right?

But I don't think about that today. Because today is my birthday. I am turning eighteen.

Today marks the one-year mark where I get that Inheritance.

Which isn't mine. It's not.

But now? It is.

I fight the urge to stay in bed, and as I get up, I see an unspeakably gorgeous ball gown hanging in my doorway. It was a deep midnight green, floor-length, with a bodice marked by tens of thousands of tiny black jewels in a dark, delicate, mesmerizing pattern.

It was a stop-and-stare dress. A gasp-and-stare-again dress. The kind one would wear to a headline-grabbing, hashtag-exploding black-tie event. Damn it, Alisa. But when I stalked toward the gown, feeling mutinous— then saw the note dangling from the hanger: FOR THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD.

That wasn't Alisa's handwriting.

___

I head over to the Great Room. I light a fire in the massive fireplace. I could have done this in my own room— or in any of the other dozen fireplaces in Hawthorne House— but it felt right to return to the room where the will had been read. I could almost see ghosts here: all of us, in that moment.

Me, thinking how life-changing inheriting a few thousand dollars would be.

The Hawthorne's, learning the old man had left their fortune to me. The flames flickered higher and higher in the fireplace, and I looked down at the papers in my hand: the trust paperwork Alisa had drawn up.

"What are you doing?" Leslie padded toward me, wearing house shoes that padded lightly against the wooden floors. She stifled a yawn. I held up the papers.

"If I sign this, it will tie my assets up in a trust— at least for a little while."

All that money. All that power.