The Brothers Hawthorne (The Inheritance Games Book 4)
The Brothers Hawthorne: Two Years and Eight Months Ago

Grayson sat hunched on the floor of the tree house, his knees pulled to his chest. Posture unbefitting of a Hawthorne, he thought dully. The words didn’t hurt the way they should have.

He ran his thumb over the bit of metal in his hand. Grayson remembered being eight years old and writing haiku after haiku, crossing out the words, calmly tearing sheet after sheet out of his notebook. Because when you only got three lines, they had to be perfect.

He had wanted—so badly—for them to be perfect. He’d agonized over focus and content, metaphors and wording. A drop of water. The rain. The wind. A petal. A leaf. Love. Anger. Sorrow. But reading over the final product now, all he could think was that what he’d written hadn’t been perfect.

He hadn’t been—and this was the cost.

Everywhere Grayson looked, he saw Emily. Emily’s amber hair blowing in the wind. Emily’s wild, larger-than-life smile. Emily lying on the shore.

“Dead.” Grayson made himself say it out loud. It didn’t hurt the way it should have. Nothing hurt enough.

He read the damn haiku again, his grip on it viselike, the metal biting into his fingers. When words are real enough, he remembered telling Jameson, when they’re the exact right words, when what you’re saying matters, when it’s beautiful and perfect and true—it hurts.

Grayson had wanted Emily to love him. He’d wanted her to choose him. Being with her had made him feel like perfect didn’t matter. Like he could afford, every once in a while, to lose control.

This was his fault. He’d taken her to the cliffs, when Jameson wouldn’t. Some people can make mistakes, Grayson. But you are not one of those people.

A sound like a fist beating flesh broke the silence in the tree house. Brutal. Repetitive. Merciless. And the more Grayson listened to it—without moving, without blinking, barely even breathing—the more he realized that the vicious, ruthless thwack, thwack, thwack he was hearing wasn’t the work of a fist.

Splintering wood. A crash. Another. More.

Grayson managed to stand. He walked over to the tree house window and looked down. Jameson was on one of the bridges below. There was an ax in his hand and other blades at his feet. A longsword. A hatchet. A machete.

The bridge was barely holding on, but Jameson didn’t stop. He never stopped. He attacked the only thing holding him up like he couldn’t wait to fall.

Down below, Nash ran toward the tree house. “What the hell are you doing, Jamie?” In a flash, he was climbing to Jameson, who swung the ax harder, faster.

“I would think the answer’s apparent,” Jamie replied, in a tone that made Grayson think that he was enjoying this, destroying a thing they both had loved.

He blames me. He should blame me. It’s my fault she’s gone.

“Damn it, Jameson!” Nash tried to lunge forward, but the ax came down right next to his foot. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

He wants to hurt me. Grayson thought about Emily’s body, her hair wet, her eyes vacant. “Let him.” Grayson was surprised at the sound of his own voice. The words felt guttural, but they sounded almost robotic.

Jameson flung the ax down and picked up the machete.

Nash eased forward. “Em’s gone,” he said. “It’s not right. It’s not fair. You want to set something on fire—either of you—I’ll help. But not this. Not like this, Jamie.”

The bridge was decimated now, hanging by threads. Jameson stepped back onto a large platform, then swung. Nash barely had time to jump to the other side.

“Exactly like this,” Jameson said, as the bridge came crashing down. The remaining blades fell roughly to the dirt.

“You’re hurting.” Nash made his way down the tree and over to the other side—to Jameson.

All Grayson could do was watch.

“Hurting? Me?” Jameson replied, going at the tree house walls with the machete. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. “Nothing hurts unless you let it. Nothing matters unless you let it.”

Grayson didn’t realize he’d moved, but suddenly, he was on the ground, right next to the longsword.

“Don’t come any closer, Gray,” Nash warned him.

Grayson swallowed. “Don’t tell me what to do.” His throat felt swollen and rough.

Jameson looked directly at him. “So says the heir apparent.”

If you’re so perfect, Grayson imagined his brother saying, why is she dead?

“It’s my fault.” The words felt like they stuck in Grayson’s throat, but Jameson heard them all the same.

“Nothing’s ever your fault, Grayson.”

Nash moved in, and when Jameson went to raise the machete again, Nash caught his wrist. “Jamie. Enough.”

Grayson heard the machete clatter to the floor of the platform on which his brothers stood. My fault, he thought. I killed Emily.

That sentence rang in his mind: five syllables, so real and true they hurt. Grayson dropped his long-ago haiku to the ground. And then he bent, picked up the longsword, turned back to the tree house, and started swinging.