Page 167 of Mama Si's Paradise

He thought he scared me. He thought I didn’t want him near me—and I shouldn’t havebecause he’d killed his own father and he’d just admitted it to my face!

So, what in the world was I thinking when I said, “Walk with me?”

I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t know myself, but he was as surprised at my words as I was—so surprised he didn’t even reply.

Without giving myself a chance to think through what I’d done, I turned and walked around him and between the mirrors with my head up, pretending I hadn’t completely lost my mind. Pretending I was perfectly calm.

Grey followed me.

He walked by my side in perfect silence, but I felt his attention on me. He analyzed my every move, and I was willing to bet anything that he knew I was dirty.

Could he tell I had fallen against rocks? No idea, but he said nothing as we moved in the deserted hallways, as dark as always in the castle. For a moment, it was like I’d never left. For a moment, I even forgot I’d been out there, that I’d felt the sun on my face, and I’d seen people other than the staff and the guards and the brides and the Evernights.

The silence was comfortable, as much as that surprised me. His presence wasn’t suffocating me like I always expected it to—on the contrary.

And when we reached the stairs to the fifth tower, Grey stopped.

“If you have the time tomorrow, I want to show you something,” he said. “I don’t have to be there at all—you can look at it yourself.”

Yes—something.Something he made for me, he said earlier.

Suddenly, I was dying to know what it was. “Okay,” I whispered with a small smile.

Grey gave me a deep nod and met my eyes again. He looked perfectly calm still, a version of him I’d only caught glimpses of when he was alone with me.

“Goodnight, Fall.” He started walking backward, never breaking eye contact, and it felt like he waspullingat me with his gaze.

I turned around to climb the stairs, so torn you’d think the fate of the world hung on my shoulders. But I kept going, putting one foot in front of the other, climbing up and up and up, and…

Then I stopped.

Don’t do it, Fall,I said to myself because I already knew that today was not the day of smart decisions. Today was most definitely not my best day because my sanity seemed to have slipped out of me secretly, and maybe it had even remained somewhere in Faeries’ Aerie.

Yes, most probably, because I was turning around again, looking down at the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, at Grey who had stopped near the corner to wait for me to leave, get up there to my room as I should have.

Instead, I said, “I have time now.”

My God, I was so screwed.

“If you’re not too busy, of course.”

He moved so fast he turned to a blur, and suddenly Grey was climbing the stairs, looking up at me like I hung the damn moon in the sky, even if he couldn’t see it from here.

“Never,” he said, offering me his hand to take.

And I took it.

I took Grey Evernight’s hand willingly, and it was warm and soft, and it made all the butterflies in the world come to throw a damn party in my stomach. If I wasn’t so excited, I’d have felt patheticforbeingso excitedto hold hands with someone, even if that someone was Grey.

As it was, I let him lead me down the stairs again, andthrough a series of hallways and corridors I hadn’t been to before. My step didn’t falter, and I didn’t understand why I was suddenly so…open.

Almost like being away from here for a little while, seeing the Aerie, and most importantly, seeing that story in Emerald’s Storyteller, had opened my eyes to more possibilities. Like I’d seen in black and white until today, but now, I was also seeing…grey.I was seeing more colors than I thought there were in this castle.

He held my hand tightly in his every step of the way. Even though he didn’t look at me as we walked, I still knew he was perfectly aware of my every movement.

When we reached a set of big black doors I’d never seen before, he pulled one open and said, “Welcome to the third tower. Consider it yours.”

He pulled me inside gently. My heart slammed against my ribcage and I tried to control it through my breathing, through clearing my throat, but it didn’t work because I was used to suppressingfear,and I wasn’t afraid right now. I was in Grey’s part of the castle, his tower, and I wasn’t afraid in the least.

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