Games Untold: An Inheritance Games Collection

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I was smart enough to know that there was no sense in shouting at hurricanes or worrying about a Hawthorne with a love of Hail Mary passes, semi-calculated risks, and walking right up to the edge of incredible drops. Jameson had a habit of landing on his feet.

At this point, our roles were clearly defined. I was the teenage billionaire heiress philanthropist. She put out the fires. And Jameson Hawthorne blazed.

At seventeen, when my life had changed forever, I’d been the lucky girl from the wrong side of the tracks, plucked from obscurity and given the world at the whim of an eccentric billionaire. But now? I was the eccentric billionaire. I’d come into my own. And the world was watching.

Two sentences. That was all it took for Jameson Hawthorne to make my heart start beating a little harder, a little faster. Welcome to the City of a Hundred Spires, Heiress. Feel like a game of Hide and Seek?

Jameson twirled the coin from one finger to the next. “Heads or tails, Heiress?” My eyes narrowed slightly, but I deeply suspected my pupils were dilating, drinking it all in. This was us. Jameson. Me. Our language. Our game. Head or tails?

Heads I kiss you, he’d told me once, tails you kiss me, and either way, it means something.

I’d been Hawthorne-adjacent long enough to know that billionaire Tobias Hawthorne’s real legacy hadn’t been the fortune he’d left me. It was the marks he’d left on each of his grandsons. Invisible. Enduring. This was Jameson’s: Jameson Winchester Hawthorne was hungry. He wanted everything and needed something, and because he was a Hawthorne, that elusive something could never be ordinary. He couldn’t be ordinary.

This was my story. I was writing it. This was my chance to change the world. But for another few minutes… I brought my hand to Jameson’s jaw. It’s just you and me. On this rooftop, at the top of the world and the base of a castle, it felt like the two of us were the only people in the universe. Like Oren wasn’t standing guard down below. Like Alisa wasn’t waiting outside the gates. Like I was just Avery, and he was just Jameson, and that was enough.

“I don’t have meetings for another hour,” I pointed out. Jameson’s adrenaline-kissed smile was, in a word, dangerous. “In that case,” he murmured, “could I interest you in some shapely hedges, a statue of Hercules, and a white peacock?”

“Alisa said to tell you no puppies.” “A peacock is not a puppy,” Jameson said innocently, and then he brought his lips to just almost graze mine—an invitation, a gauntlet thrown, an ask. Yes. With Jameson, my answer was almost always yes. Kissing him set my entire body on fire. Losing myself to it, to him, I felt like standing at the base of something much more monumental than a castle. The world was big, and we were small, and this was everything.

Arrows appeared on the floor. It was just like Jameson to not even bat an eye at the idea of invisibly defacing the single nicest hotel suite I’d ever seen. “Key word invisibly,”

On top of the dome, one hand on the spire, was Jameson Winchester Hawthorne. Only the gentle angles of the roof and the fact that there was a small stone terrace below the dome could even remotely justify Oren’s assessment that there was no danger here. Or maybe he just knew that Jameson and I had a habit of landing on our feet.

Based on experience, I knew that in a puzzle like this one, when you hit a wall—figuratively or literally—the best thing to do was go back to the beginning and question every assumption and choice you’d made.

He went to brush past me, and I stopped him with a single word. “Jameson.” He turned his head toward me, like he couldn’t help it, like I was his north. “Avery.” Something about the sound of my given name on Jameson’s lips, combined with everything else, almost undid me. He said Avery like a plea and a curse and prayer. He said it like he’d said it to himself while blood streamed down his chest.

Beside me, Jameson held out an open pomegranate, brimming with jewellike seeds. “Playing Hades?” I asked him wryly. Jameson leaned back on his elbows, the sun turning his brown hair almost gold. “Come on, Persephone. What harm could a few bites do?” Despite myself, I smiled. Jameson Hawthorne was temptation personified—but right now, I was more tempted by the puzzle. The game. Our kind of game.

I picked up the music box last. “One question.” I stood, looking down at Jameson, part of me wishing that I was just a little less competitive and little bit more easily distracted. “What’s the song?” I turned the crank—slowly, gingerly—to those same four notes. “Excellent question, Persephone.” Jameson popped an entire handful of pomegranate seeds into his mouth. “As it happens, that particular John Lennon song is called ‘Do You Want to Know a Secret?’”

There were three of them total—the small but deep one at the base of his collarbone, no wider than the width of my smallest nail, and the lighter ones—no more than scratches now—that gave the wound its pseudo-triangular shape. No, I thought, as I pulled my hand back. Not a triangle. An arrow.

The chisel and I got to work. Five minutes later, I held a ring in the palm of my hand. Rather than a jewel or knot on top, the gold ring bore the infinity symbol. Jameson took it from me, then turned my right hand over, slipping the ring onto my right ring finger. A breath caught in my throat. Maybe it was the way his skin had brushed across mine with the motion. Maybe it was the fact that Jameson Hawthorne had just slipped a ring onto one of my fingers. Or maybe it was the knowledge, heavy in the air between us, that in our lifetimes, this probably wouldn’t be the only ring that Jameson gave me.

“Hypothetically speaking, what would you do if I asked you to write something with this pen now?” I checked the time. He’d been working long enough. I wanted to get out of this hotel room and into the city as much as he did. I shrugged. “I would say take off your shirt.”

Logically, I knew that it was an illusion, that nothing in this place was infinite except for Jameson and me. But the mirrors were very convincing.

“Like the sun and the moon,” I said, my lips on his, his every breath ripping through me, the touch of our skin electric. “I loved him.” Jameson looked at me like I was the force of nature. Like I was the mystery for the ages. Like he could spend a lifetime solving me. “Avery.” My name escaped his lips. “Heiress.” For better or worse, this was us. Us. Us. Us.

“Hannah? Stop.” My mother’s voice ricocheted through the room like a bullet. But all I could think was: Do no harm. I finished the stitch, and then I stopped.

I was a Rooney of Rockaway Watch, and one of my family’s own was dead. “Someone is going to take me out there,” I said. All eyes were on me. I didn’t repeat myself. I just waited for one of the men at the bar to stand.

Hannah the Same Backward as Forward:

“Civic. Madam. Race car.” His eyes, the color of a forest at night, never left mine. “Rotator. Deed.” He was reciting palindromes, the smug bastard, and I was going to kill him.

It’s not stealing when you’re sisters, I could hear Kaylie saying. It’s borrowing with the intention not to return.

Tears were weak, but crying in the shower didn’t count.

His hands still in my hair, he tilted my head back, trailing kisses along my jaw and down my neck. “You hate me.” I hate you, I thought, my back arching. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

I never decided to let him in. I just stopped lying to myself, and there he was—past my shields, under my skin, this horrible boy, this person I’d hated and hated and hated and somehow didn’t hate anymore.

“I don’t mind being someone’s dirty little secret, as long as it’s yours.”

No regrets. “What are we doing?” My lips brushed his with every word. Harry murmured his answer directly into my skin: “Nothing—or everything.” For him—and maybe for me—there was nothing in between.

“Anything can be a game, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward, if you know how to play.”

“I can’t go with you,” I said. The words were almost lost to the wind, but nothing was ever lost on him. “Why not?” he demanded. He kissed me to punctuate that question, but there was nothing demanding about the way he kissed. Every one of his kisses was an invitation, a love song, a beckoning to something more.

“We don’t have to do anything.” His voice started soft, then grew in strength and volume, in intensity. “I don’t need anything, Hannah, except this.” His voice surrounded me. He was right in front of me now, and I couldn’t bear to open my eyes. “Except you,” he whispered.

He fought me. Toby Hawthorne fought to die, and I fought back harder. In the end, I won, because he wouldn’t hurt me, and I had no such compunctions. If I had to hurt him to save him, then that was too damn bad.

“You hated me.” He understood now, so many things he hadn’t before, and I heard it in his voice: If it wasn’t this cliff, it would be another. “I hated you until I loved you,” I said. “And I’ll love you until the end.”

“No matter who gave birth to me or what blood runs in my veins, I’m a Hawthorne, everything my father raised me to be. I won’t poison you, too, Hannah. You deserve—” “You,” I bit out. I pushed myself up into a sitting position and locked my eyes on to his. “I deserve you. I deserve to be happy, and you make me happy, you impossible, arrogant, self-destructive, infuriating, brilliant, wonderful son of a bitch.”

“No regrets,” I reiterated when I was done. “She made me promise.” “God, Hannah, I’m so—” “Don’t tell me you’re sorry.” I put my hand to his mouth. Words could never be enough, but he was. We were. “I don’t want you to be sorry.” I wanted him to be mine.

He played three-dimensional checkers and quoted poetry, and I wasn’t even sure he knew what a person could actually buy at a grocery store, other than bourbon and lemons. He loved palindromes. He loved me.

I love you. I love you. I love you. “You son of a bitch,” I said, breathing the words the moment I could. “I love you, you bastard.”

“I love you,” Toby Hawthorne told me. “I have loved you from the moment you dumped a half-dozen lemons on my bed. From before that, even. From the moment I saw you folding paper, from the first sugar castle, from the instant you promised me a merciful death and lied.”

“I loved you,” he whispered, “when the world was pain and the only thing that made sense was your eyes. I loved you before I knew to hate myself, and I have loved you every day since.” I love you. I love you. I love you.

The love of my life tucked my brand-new baby onto my chest, and just like that, he was gone. Like the wind. Like a dream.

He held my baby girl like she was ours, and our girl looked so tiny in his arms. He cradled her against his chest. “Are there scars?” I asked him. “Numerous scars,” he told me, and something about the way he said it made me think that he cherished them—every single one. He lowered his head, nuzzling the top of hers, and my daughter opened her eyes and looked straight at the man I loved.

I sat in the rocking chair I’d bought at Goodwill, and I rocked my sleeping baby, and I played our new game, whispering into the night. “I have a secret…”

Standing in an enormous, sparkling marble bathroom bigger than my first apartment, waiting to see if a second pink line appears on that stick, I look from the pregnancy test to the ring on my left ring finger: a deep red stone that glows almost black in some lights. It’s a garnet, not a ruby, and he cut the stone himself. It’s perfect. I think about the man who put this ring on my finger, and for once in my life, I don’t daydream anything. I remember. And remember. And remember.

I’m not usually prone to arguing with people, but (a) he’s wrong about my sister, who wants to major in something called actuarial science and who wouldn’t know teenage rebellion if it bopped her on the nose, and (b) I kind of like arguing with Nash Hawthorne.

“How’s your endurance?” Nash asks. “Relentlessly optimistic and also stubborn.” I grin. “How’s yours?” Brown eyes linger on mine. “I was built for the long haul.”

“You feelin’ lucky, Lib?” I take the key from him. “I always feel lucky. Reality just doesn’t always get the memo.”

“Your sister needs you,” Nash tells me, and then his hands find their way to my face—again. I can’t help remembering the other times, can’t help remembering Cartago. “She needs you, Lib.” The real me. That’s what he’s saying. I am dyed-neon hair and dark nails and way too much kohl rimming my eyes. I’m thigh-high boots and black velvet chokers. I’m not normal. I’m not special. I’m me.