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I'm not even sure when that started happening—us sitting as far away from each other as possible in every classroom. If it was something intentional, or if perhaps we work like magnets, with some kind of invisible field automatically pushing us apart wherever we go.

But for the first time, I hate the distance between us. What was he trying to tell me? And why was he late?

"Everything is temporary, Yan Yan. And all the more reason to seize whatever's in front of you while it's still there."

"And sometimes the universe grants us the things we don't know we need, which turn out to be a gift." She spits the toothpick into her palm. "Another author also said that the self and society are like the sea and the sky—a change in one reflects a change in the other."

"One of my favorite authors once said: Sometimes the universe offers us the things we think we want, but which turn out to be a curse," she says, which would probably strike me as a lot more profound if it weren't for the toothpick still sticking out of her mouth. Or the fact that I know her favorite author is a web-novelist who exclusively writes fantasy books about hot demon hunters.

But my class is full of Westernized Malaysians, Singaporeans, ABCs and people like me, who can speak and understand Mandarin just fine but don't know many idioms besides renshan renhai: people mountain people sea.

I’m about to make a comment on it, but then my eyes fell on the laminated photo taped to his desk, and the significance of Henry Li secretly jamming out to Tay Tay pales in comparison.

It's a photo of us.

Things between us were easy, cosy, like I was just a girl talking to the boy I liked and nothing else mattered.

Until the storm entered the cottage.

'We're two lonely people, who else are we going to spend time with?' It wasn't until I said it that I realised how much I wanted it to be true. I needed a seventh heart. I needed to kill the queen. What was I doing here with my head crammed full of this huntsman's cheekbones, soft, full lips, and thick arms that had felt far too good wrapped round me?

The huntsman was abandoned in sleep. His defences down, his arms spread wide as he made himself at home in my bed, a lock of tawny hair fallen across his forehead. Gently, I tucked it back, letting my knuckles graze his face. He really was too handsome for his own good. And mine.

'Sometimes I don't think I have a heart any more,' he whispered.

A lump lodged itself in my throat. 'Me neither.'

'Oh, no,' he tilted my chin up with one finger, searching my eyes intently. 'No, you have a heart. If you didn't, you never would have saved me.'

I sucked in a breath. Gods curse him, this huntsman was making it exquisitely difficult to consider stealing his heart.

Kaz was still holding me tightly. His breath warmed my neck as he bent his head towards me, sending my imagination spinning wild and free. Then his mouth found my ear and my imagination ground to a halt. 'It's coming down the chimney,' he whispered.

Kaz lurched up. Wrapping his arms round me, he lifted me up against his chest as he leaped off the bed, before setting me down on my feet, my thoughts whirling.

Kaz gave a sharp nod, then I felt him move beneath me. Face to face, with one hand on my knife, the other on his mouth, I watched as he slowly slipped a hand under my thighs. My breath caught.

'Elka.'

He murmured my name under his breath. It sounded sweet on his tongue. I gathered myself together with a little joke.

'Swear that you will not lay a hand on me again,' I said.

'I swear it to the gods,' he said simply, sincerely.

'Good.'

'Unless you ask me,' he added.

His chuckle was deep, dark. Delicious. Unbuttoning his shirt with bloody fingers, he revealed his chest; taut with the definition I'd expect from a huntsman with his arrogant attitude, taking no heed of the danger before venturing into Stary Bór. I glanced away, pretending it had no effect on me.

'If I let you go, are you still going to kick me?'

I levelled a glare at him. 'If you don't let me go, you re going to wish I'd only kicked you.'

He gave me a slow smile. 'Maybe I should keep holding on to you, then.'

My stomach tightened, my cheeks warming against my will. 'Try it and suffer.' I had never wanted to kick a man more. If he hadn't been injured... I resisted.

I could always kill him later.

'I'll fight this; I won't let you be the death of me.'

And in that moment, staring at her, imagining this future with her, Jameson knew: He was going to tell her everything. If hed learned one thing from the Game he'd played—and won—it was that he could trust himself to tell her. He was more than hunger, more than want, more than drive, more than what Tobias Hawthorne had raised him to be.

And he wanted to be more with her.

"The Grandest Game, " he murmured. "That's what you should call it."

"What we will call it," Avery replied.

Jameson smiled. "Thinking is a good look for you, Heiress."

Moving with purpose—the way he always did—Grayson took the black opal ring out of the box and turned it over in his hand. He stared at it, at the flecks of color in the jewel, at the diamond leaves that surrounded it, and he swallowed.

"Why not me?"

"I never meant to hurt you," Grayson told her.

"I know," Gigi said simply.

She's not leaving. I haven't lost her. Grayson didn't ignore the emotions twisting in his gut and rising up inside him. For once in his life, he just let them come. "I like my little sister," he told her.

This time, there was nothing pained about Gigi's smile. "I know.

"Why?" his little sister demanded again. "Because it looks an awful lot to me like you care." She stared at him. "You do. I know. you do. So why would you—"

"I had to." Grayson hadn't meant to say that, and he hadn't meant for the words to come out tortured and low. "I had to, Gigi."

Trowbridge was incensed now, bordering on apoplectic. "You arrogant, spoiled, cocksure—"

"Brother," Grayson finished. "The word you're looking for is brother." Now, he looked back. "No one hurts my family."

Whatever Gigi and Savannah thought of him now, he would protect them.

"You aren't a billionaire," Trowbridge spat. "You have nothing."

"A Hawthorne," Grayson replied coolly, "never has nothing."

Jameson smiled. Kent Trowbridge didn't know what he'd gotten himself into. No one stood a chance against any two of the Hawthorne brothers, let alone all four. "What do we have to work with, Gray?"

"He wants to control her?" Nash said. There was nothing that got under Nash's skin like a man mistreating a woman.

Four Hawthornes, four suits. Avery wore black.