Games Untold: An Inheritance Games Collection

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“You drew Libby,” I said. “You’re the one who took her out.” He was the miracle worker who’d found that photograph. “I can neither confirm nor deny that statement.” Jameson lifted a hand to brush my hair back from my face. “Your mom was beautiful,” he said softly. “She had your smile.” In other words: He was definitely the person who’d found the photograph.

“You’re perfect,” I said, my voice a little rough. “You know that?” “I think you might be confusing me with someone else,” Jameson quipped. I gave him a look. “Never.”

“I keep thinking about last Christmas. You were still recovering from the coma.” Last Christmas, we hadn’t played Secret Santa. Last Christmas, we’d been together, but I hadn’t been his and he hadn’t been mine the way we were now.

“Just for the record…,” Jameson told me, standing and reaching for my hand, pulling me inward, like we’d just been transported to a ballroom and this was our dance. “When I take out enough targets to ...

“Also for the record: If you thought that this room escaped the mistletoe treatment…” He looked point...

On the drone’s video feed, Nash looked up at the broken-down, beat-up, literally-in-pieces motorcycle I’d bought him. “Needs some work,” he murmured, but I knew: For Nash, the work was part of the appeal. “But,” he continued, “she has promise.” He hadn’t deemed it a perfect present yet, but he also hadn’t found the helmet yet.

I saw the exact moment he realized: “The motorcycle’s not for me.” It was for Libby. “I thought you might like restoring it together,” I said over the drone’s audio feed. Nash looked at Libby, looked back at his present overhead, and then raised the helmet toward the drone in salute. “Well played, kid.”

In the aftermath, Nash informed me of my next target, the name that he had drawn. Jameson.

Ahhhhhhh

I had Jameson. Jameson had Grayson. Nash and Libby were out of the game. That meant that either Grayson had me and Xander had drawn his own name—

And taking out Xander before he could find mine. On December sixteenth, scones proved to be the youngest Hawthorne brother’s downfall. I shot him in the forehead mid-midnight snack. That bought me three days, after which, Xander was nowhere to be seen.

LMAO XANDER DUDE

Xander’s sneaking a present onto my base. I bolted, practically flying back toward the vault. When I got there, I found Xander tangled in garland and covered from head to toe in tinsel. “I commend your use of tinsel bombs,” he said solemnly. “I have a friend who’s taught me a lot about explosives.”

“I don’t like your chances of survival, Xan.” Xander cocked his head to the side and then snapped his fingers. “Grayson?” “Grayson,” I confirmed. “There is a reason,” Xander sighed, “that he wins Secret Santa almost every year, and it’s not just that he is very hard to shop for.”

“I should probably go check out my base, but fair warning, Avery of My Platonic Heart, the moment a certain song signals what I am sure is my at-this-point-inevitable demise, Grayson’s target will officially be… you.”

I watched as Jameson opened the envelope containing his gift from me. Inside, there was a flight plan and a travel itinerary. The day after Christmas, he and I were headed to Tahiti.

“Christmas is tomorrow,” I said, ready to pull the trigger at a moment’s notice. “If either one of us shoots, the other loses.” If both of us shot, and both of us hit our targets, we both would. “I like my chances,” Grayson told me. I gave him a look that, by this point, he probably recognized all too well. “No. You don’t.”

“I’ll open yours,” Grayson proposed. “You open mine.” He was every inch the heir apparent, used to striking deals. “Loser drops their gun and submits.” I could only assume that by loser, he meant the person whose present was less perfect. “Deal,” I told Grayson.

“A longsword,” I said, running my fingers along its blade. “I’m told its first bearer was a woman,” Grayson murmured. “Sixteenth century, give or take.”

“Now we have five,” I said. In the center of the hedge maze outside, there was a hidden compartment that held four longswords, originally purchased for the four Hawthorne brothers. And now there were five.

On the front, I’d gone for a familiar Latin phrase. EST UNUS EX NOBIS. NOS DEFENDAT EIUS. It was something Grayson had said about me once. On the back, I’d opted for English, something that I had said to him. IT GOES BOTH WAYS.

“Merry Christmas, Grayson,” I said. I was on the verge of proposing a tie, but I didn’t get the chance. “Avery?” Grayson took a step toward me, and his lips curved into one of those very Grayson Hawthorne smiles, subtle but true. “You win.”

Beside them, Jameson snapped his fingers. “I need my own marker and an index card,” he told Xander, with an expression that could be described as either wicked… or inspired. Grayson scowled. “Do not give him an index card.” “I will not,” Xander replied solemnly. “I shall give him five index cards!”

Excellent! Xander was pleased. “The ice is a metaphor,” he said sagely. Nash cocked a brow. “A metaphor for what?” “Either your heart or your ass,” Xander replied immediately. “It’s hard to say which.” Nash snorted. “My heart ain’t ice, Xan.”

“Wins the right to choose our fake names for the evening! And last one to the top…” “Has to wear the leather pants,” Jameson cut in. Grayson’s right eyebrow twitched. “What leather pants?” “The leather pants,” Jameson replied. “I like to think of them as yours.” Xander adopted an angelic expression. “I might have brought them with me to London. A Hawthorne comes prepared!”

“You three done silently plotting against me yet?” Nash drawled. “What’s that saying of yours?” Jameson gave his own ice ax a twirl. Xander and Grayson supplied the answer in a single voice: “There’s no such thing as fighting dirty if you win.”

“Sure would,” Nash drawled. “I’m livin’ my life on my terms. Getting married to a girl of my choosing. Helping people, when and where I want to. Someday, Lib and me, we’ll have a family, and our kids?” Nash’s whiskey-smooth voice grew thick. “They will always be enough for me.” Nash looked down at the drop and didn’t so much as blink. “Let the great Tobias Hawthorne chew on that.”

“Think he’ll take the bait?” Jameson asked. Grayson brushed an imaginary speck of lint off his suit. “What do you take me for, an amateur?” Sure enough, Nash followed. Did the four of them have to pounce the moment he came out the door? Strictly speaking, no. Did they have to overpower him, duct-tape him, blindfold him, and hoist him into the air? Also no. But did they?

“Lib would approve,” Nash said quietly, and Xander wondered if Nash was imagining getting married to Libby in a place just like this: eerie but beautiful—almost otherworldly.

“Black champagne,” Grayson said, crossing the room to remove it from the ice, “in Libby’s honor.”

“Right after Emily died,” Jameson said softly, his eyes still on Nash’s, “you came home.” “And you,” Nash countered, “stole my motorcycle.” Xander’s eyes widened. After I worked so hard to prevent it the first time?

Lol

“Do you remember the time I climbed that tree?” he asked Nash. “Which tree?” Nash replied calmly. “Sequoia National Park.” Xander could feel himself smiling. “I was five.” “The giant sequoia?” Nash groaned. “I still don’t know how the hell you got all the way up there.” Now it was Xander’s turn to meet Nash’s eyes. “You got me down.” A muscle in Xander’s throat tightened as he raised his glass. “To Nash.”

then Grayson spoke. “The December that Xander was born,” he said quietly. “The day he came home from the hospital.” Nash gave Grayson a look. “No way you remember that. You were two.” “I remember… you.” Gray’s voice was thick now. “Always you.”

“Always,” Nash said, his voice coming out rough and low. “Lib and me getting married won’t change that. It won’t change us. This.” Silently, Grayson raised his glass all the way up. One by one, the others did the same. “What happens in the tree house…,” Grayson said, his voice thick with emotion. “Stays in the tree house,” Xander, Jameson, and Nash finished as one.

He jumped to his feet. “Stay away from Avery. And my brothers.” An untraceable poison. An unmistakable threat. Who the hell was Alice Hawthorne?

“The old man,” Jameson called out. “Did he know?” Silence was his grandmother’s only reply, but Jameson’s mind, wired as it was for puzzles and riddles and codes, came up with an answer of its own. Who else would have drawn that map? The old man had known that his beloved was alive. That she was in Prague. The real question was what else Tobias Hawthorne had known. What else there was to know.