“Why is she with you?” Ms. Abigail’s trembling, out-of-control voice cut me off. It sliced through the moment like a guillotine, and I glanced to my left, finding her pointing at me. “She’s my girl.”

Gray curled his fist into the wall above me, jaw clenched tight, eyes burning. Why was Abigail even in Gemma’s wing? They hated each other.

He stared at me a moment longer, then pushed off the wall.

I wasn’t sure if I’d been saved.

“She’s my girl now,” he said, and stepped in front of me.

For a moment I couldn’t hear over the rushing of blood in my ears. It was different than the times before, the thorns lifted, letting me in, cocooning me in his dark, tender possession.

His girl…I really liked the sound of that.

Ms. Abigail reeled. “What? Why?”

“I don’t really think that’s any of your fucking business, Abby.”

Ms. Abigail ignored him, holding her hand out to me. “Do you want to come back?”

Gray’s neck muscles bunched, his upper back tense. This was the moment I could end it all. I’d been waiting for this, right? I could go back to her, back to where I should have been from the very beginning. No need for Scotland. It was a perfect out.

This twisted, savage, ruinous thing between us that never should have been—ended.

I rolled my lips, then shook my head. “No, Ms. Crowne.”

Gray moved to turn back to me, but Ms. Abigail grabbed him, pulling him back. She fell apart, yelling at him, screaming at him, words that clearly weren’t meant for him. It felt like it lasted forever, her cries filling the hallway like an omen.

When it was over, Gray blinked, then shook his head. “Yeah, I don’t think that was meant for me.”

Gray waved a hand over his shoulder, motioning for me to follow.

I gave Abigail one last look. Forgetting for a moment I was a servant and she was a Crowne. She was on the floor. All that had happened in the months I was away utterly ruined her. As my mistress, she’d been entitled and demanding, but no one deserved to have that much despair on their face.

Not being with her love, forced to marry someone else…

I looked at the floor, following Gray.

We’d barely made it out of Gemma’s wing when Gray stopped and gripped my face, dragging me to him. Our location rushed over me. We were in the no-man’s-land between Gemma and Abigail’s wings, a few feet away from the room where all of it began.

Gray gripped my face. “Say it. Say what you were going to say.”

“Why?” I fought to keep my voice even, steady. “It’s not going to change anything.”

His eyes were hard. “Say it, Story. Don’t make me rip it out of those beautiful lips.”