tricks of time ― grayson hawthorne [the inheritance games]

032. POETRY

"Both of you," I say, crawling out of the passageway. "Come in here. Help me."

Jameson wastes no time crawling through the passageway. I follow suit and then Grayson.

As soon as we're in the passageway, I feel Grayson's hot breath near my throat and I stop myself from flinching. I watch them both recite it in their head.

"So?" I ask both of them, eager to get out of this tunnel that feels like it's closing in on me. "What does it mean?"

Jameson, who usually deciphered codes and riddles like these in minutes, stops. "I'm not sure," he finally says. "Why are they talking about Lottie? What does she have to do with any of this?"

Grayson narrows his eyes. "Our Grandfather must have written this," he says, skipping me and shifting his eyes to Jameson's again.

"How can you tell?" He asks.

"Don't you remember," he says, "how the old man would always leave hidden messages in the walls? Or floors?" He pauses for a moment, but I can tell he's not finished. "Don't you remember how much he loved rhymes? He would buy us a booklet of rhymes and riddles every year on our birthdays. Don't you remember any of that?"

Jameson doesn't say anything but continues to stare at the poem. "Whose room is the room next door?" I asked.

"It used to be Zara's," Grayson murmured. "I'm staying there tonight."

I turned to shoot him a meaningful look. "So then why are we still here? Clearly there's something in her room!"

Pushing past him, I almost fall out of the passageway in my haste but make it to Zara's room. I explored Zara's room and found a closet nearly identical to Skye's. The clothes on the racks tended more toward icy-blue tones, but like Skye's closet, this one looked like it had been frozen in time.

Yet despite my eagle's eyes, searching every square foot of floor, I managed to find nothing. We were back at square one.

"Guys," Grayson says.

"I'm listening," I say.

"Help me overturn these floorboards."

He may just be a genius.

Jameson works towards the other side of the room while me and Grayson are huddled up in another corner.

"Leah?" Grayson's voice is quiet and soft, enough so that Jameson can't hear anything.

"Yeah?"

"What did you mean," he takes a sharp intake of a breath, "when you said that I had made you jealous?"

This was the question I was hoping he would never ask. I thought he would have just cherished it and kept it to himself, but I guess not.

"I don't know what I meant," I lie. You very well knew what you meant, Leah.

"You have to know what you meant," Grayson says as he overturns another floorboard.

I'm about to come up with another excuse before Jameson saves me unknowingly.

"I found something." Jameson announced, as he stares down at a floorboard. "And you're welcome."

I backtracked. Grayson followed me. I managed to kneel next to Jameson, who was holding a wooden board in his hands.

One of the floorboards, I realized as she set it aside to reach into thecompartment she'd bared.

"What is it?" I said as he withdrew an object.

"A glass bottle?" Grayson leaned into Jameson to get a better look.

"With message inside," he says. "A message in a  bottle. Now we're cooking."

Grayson arched a brow at Jameson, then stood and sauntered past me, back into Skye's room. He tipped the bottle upside down on a nearby desk, and with some jiggling, a small roll of paper- or papers, fell out. As Grayson attempted to unroll it, I noted that it was yellowed with age.

"I'm guessing that's pretty old," Jameson said.

"Wow, really?" Grayson says sarcastically.

Looking at the paper, it had to be around 15 or 20 years old. Maybe somewhere around my age.

I thought about Tobias Hawthorne's will. "Like, twenty years?" But when Grayson finished unraveling the several papers, the writing I saw on the missive wasn't Tobias Hawthorne's. It was cursive, with the occasional embellishment, neat enough that it could have passed for a font. He looked at the other few that had fallen out and revealed a perfectly printed sheet.

"I don't think this is what we came here to find," I said. Had I really thought it would be that easy?

"No, I think this is it," Grayson says, shifting his vision between the several papers.

"Well what does it even say?" Jameson asks, exasperated.

"It's a..." Grayson seems at a loss for words. He furrows his brows. "A birth certificate."

"A birth certificate?" I say, confused.

"Who's is it?"

He furrows his brows, still shaking his head, almost as if he's refusing to believe it.

"Yours."

authors note

pretty short chapter compared to usual, but anyway, do y'all like my amazing poetry skills?

no. hopefully you don't. if you do, i don't know what to say, because honestly, i suck ass at poetry. i hate it with my whole heart and i usually end up giving up 2 sentences in my poem. it easily took me a half hour to forty-five minutes to come up with that, and you don't know how many times i was ready to just write a shit paragraph instead of that whole verse because i was lazy.

but, in other words.....opinions on leah wearing grayson's shirt!? kinda hottttttt, not even gonna lie 😛 😛 😛

andddd...what do you think is going to happen? why do you think leah's birth certificate is in the bottle that's almost 15-20 years old? i have a plan and a lot of shit and tea is going to be spilled next chapter, so watch out!!!

☕☕☕

word count: 1427 words