Grey skied up easily beside her, no hint of discomfort on his face at all. “Okay.” He began making his way to the lift, but Jaya put a hand on his elbow.
Pointing to a cluster of incredibly tall pine trees off to the side, nestled around a boulder in the darkness, she said, “Could we sit there for a little bit?”
Grey looked at the boulder and then back at Jaya, his eyes hooded and unreadable. “All right,” he said finally.
Grey
They sat in silence on the large boulder off of which Grey had swept a thick, fluffy layer of snow. Aspen sprawled below them, glittering and twinkling like a starlet bedecked in jewels. All the little kids had headed inside, presumably for dinner and baths and bed, and only a few quieter, older couples remained on the bunny slope.
“This is so beautiful,” Jaya said, her brown eyes shimmering with the lights reflected up the mountain at them. “I know I keep saying that, but wow. It’s like being on a movie set.”
Somewhere below them, some dude whooped in pleasure.
Grey didn’t say anything. The truth was on the tip of his tongue, an arrow waiting to leave the bow. He knew what he needed to say, but he also knew that once he said it, Jaya would change her mind about not being angry with him anymore. She’d drop the congenial act, strike a blow, tell him he was a miserable, wretched piece of shit for breaking into her room. He knew once the words left his mouth, she’d tell everyone that Grey Emerson was a sociopath or a thief or a miscreant of some kind, and that they should all stay away from him even more so than they did before. But he knew he needed to come clean, to confess, to tell her. She’d been gracious; she’d given him all day and gone skiing with him. It was time. He opened his mouth to begin.
“Hey.” Jaya looked at him, her ski goggles pushed up on her ridiculous—and weirdly charming—pompom-adorned hat.
He gazed warily back. “Yeah?”
“You know what you said earlier? About playing into the illusion of being better than regular people? You asked if I was okay with it.”
Grey nodded.
“I said I was, but the truth is…” She looked away and absentmindedly patted down the snow beside her. “Sometimes I do get tired of it. Sometimes I think, why can’t Isha just be who she is? And why can’t I just do what I want? Is it really such a crime if she wants to take robotics classes?” She paused, biting on her glossy lower lip, apparently psyching herself up to say something. Curiosity pricked through the fog of Grey’s dark mood. “Or… or if I want to, say, travel the world for a year after high school rather than going straight to college?” She glanced at him, her eyes wide, as if she couldn’t believe she’d said that out loud. Before Grey could respond, she was speaking again. “Anyway, adhering to all of these rules—and there are enough to fill a library’s worth of books, believe me—is incredibly…” She took another breath, this one deep and tired. “Enervating.”
Grey forgot his fear of reprisal for a moment. Jaya Rao, proper princess of all things prissy, wanted to travel the world instead of going to college right away? She had doubts about telling her sister she couldn’t take robotics classes? “Hmm,” he said finally. “I never would’ve guessed you felt that way.”
“On occasion,” Jaya said, turning to look at him. Her nose was red from the cold. “Not that I’d ever confess that to my parents. Appa—my father—would probably have a heart attack.”
“Fathers have a way of dictating who you are,” Grey said, more harshly than he’d intended.
They sat together for a while, pondering this.
Without quite making the decision to, Grey found himself speaking. “Do you know anything at all about your pendant?” he asked, staring straight ahead.
Also looking straight ahead, Jaya said carefully, “Well, as I told you before, my father got it at a gold souk in Dubai. But that’s really all I know.”
Grey studied her clear brown eyes. He believed her, he decided. And suddenly he wanted to tell her, almost more than he’d ever wanted anything in his entire life. He’d never considered telling anyone before, but the idea of telling Jaya felt… different somehow.
And how amazing would it feel, to set this burden down, just for a few moments? To share it with someone else for a bit? How sweet would the relief taste, if he were able to share this shameful, dark secret that had plagued him since he was born? How hilariously ironic, and maybe perfectly fitting, that the first person he’d tell would be the progeny of the one who’d cursed him in the first place?
Grey took a few lungfuls of the cold, icy air, tasting snow in the back of his throat. He moved his gaze from the city below them to Jaya’s face as he said the next sentence, the first time he’d ever uttered it out loud. Grey was aware he was passing through a doorway, that he’d never be able to take this back once it was out there. But maybe it was time. “I killed my mother and my father believes I’m cursed.”
Jaya
Jaya stared at him, her blood going cold. She was suddenly aware she’d chosen a rather out-of-the-way spot to have this conversation with a very large man. “You… you killed your mother?” How had she not known this? Why hadn’t anyone at St. Rosetta’s told her? She’d always thought that Grey’s mother had died in childbirth, not as a consequence of matricide.
Grey nodded. “She died in childbirth, bringing me into this world.”
A sigh of relief whooshed out of Jaya. “Oh. Oh.” She shook her head. “That doesn’t mean you killed—”
His blue eyes flashed. “Yes, I did. It was all foretold. Because, like I said, I’m cursed.”
Jaya frowned a little. “Cursed? What do you mean?” What was he talking about? Was that some kind of slang she was unfamiliar with? Then, as understanding dawned, her eyebrows shot straight up. “Does this have anything to do with my family? The ruby stolen from the temple in the 1800s?”
Grey dug his boots into the powdery snow. “I’m not surprised you’ve heard of it. It was your great-great-grandmother who cursed the ruby.” Jaya could tell he was trying not to say it like an accusation, but he didn’t fully succeed.
“Yes, but…” Surely he wasn’t serious. Surely Grey, a well-educated boy in the twenty-first century, didn’t believe in something as far-fetched as a curse. Jaya watched him for a second. He gazed steadily back at her. “Grey, that’s just a story. No one in my family believes it to be true. My great-great-grandmother was angry; back then, a lot of Indians were angry with the British. They stole, they plundered—it was all so awful. The curse was just meant to strike fear into the hearts of those who stole the ruby.”
“Do you know what it says?” Grey asked. “Have you ever heard the actual words she’s supposed to have spoken?”
Jaya thought about it. “I know it had something to do with a future heir, but…” She shook her head.
He spoke the words quickly but clearly, the words coming as easily as if he were reciting “Jack and Jill.” It was as if they’d been ingrained in him since he was a little boy, right alongside all the nursery rhymes.
“A hallowed dream stolen,
A world darkly despairs
A storm, a life, a sudden death
Herald the end, the last heir.
“As the glass rose dims,
So the hope of redemption
Eighteen years, one by one,
Until what’s left is none.
“Mend that which is broken
Repair that which is severed
Or the Emerson name is forsaken
And shall vanish, at last, forever.”
The weight of the words hovered between them. Gooseflesh rose on Jaya’s arms and legs. When she spoke, her voice was quiet. “What does it mean? Parts of it sound like riddles.”
“I used to think that too,” Grey said. “But things are starting to get clearer. The ruby my family stole from the temple was sold to a jeweler in the Middle East and then broken apart and placed into a rose-shaped pendant. You said your father bought your pendant in Dubai.”
Jaya’s hand flew to her throat, grasping for the pendant that wasn’t there. “No—you don’t think—my pendant holds the original ruby?” It seemed impossible. The ruby was stolen from the temple in the 1800s… and it coincidentally ends back up around her neck in the twenty-first century? What were the chances?
The wind whistled through the pine trees around them as Grey spoke. “I didn’t really want to believe it either. All my life this curse has hovered over me. It’s why my dad sent me to St. R’s. My mother died because of me—a storm, a life, a sudden death, herald the end, the last heir.
“The night I was born, Westborough saw the worst storm it had seen in a century. My father was away on business, and he couldn’t get to the estate in time. No one could, actually. My mother had to deliver me herself with the help of our housekeeper.” Grey paused. Jaya could almost see the old story he must’ve been told all his life working its way under his skin, the guilt blossoming in his chest. “She died shortly after I was born.” He swallowed and brushed more snow off the boulder with one hand. “The doctor wasn’t able to come and she didn’t get the medical care she needed. My father knew immediately… it was the curse.”
As Jaya looked at him, at the wretched hopelessness on his face, the truth she’d begun to suspect blinked on in her mind, an old flickering light bulb finally coming to life: Grey Emerson could not have engineered the scandal against Isha. For one, he’d been nakedly, genuinely curious about why she and Isha were here. She’d searched his face for signs of recognition, deception, or gloating, and found none. At the mixer, he’d told her he wasn’t speaking to any member of his family—and now she knew why. And hearing him talk about the curse… Jaya realized her previous half-joking thought in the sushi restaurant, that Grey wasn’t capable of being a criminal mastermind because of his hermitlike tendencies, was probably quite true. He was a recluse because he thought he was damaged, because he’d been told all his life that he was worth nothing.
But if Grey wasn’t behind the scandal, who was? Every certainty she’d had was unraveling.
The cold from the boulder began to seep in through Jaya’s clothes. She brought her mind back to the present. “And you really believe in the curse?” she asked softly.
“I wasn’t really given a choice; I was told what the truth was when I was very young, and I accepted it, like we all do. My father has always believed in the curse, very strongly. The Emersons have always believed in it, in fact, going back many generations. Of course, when they first heard it had been cursed, they didn’t want to return it to Mysuru. They were way too spiteful and small-minded for that, so they broke it up and sold it instead, hoping that would get rid of the curse.” Grey took his ski hat off and pulled a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “Do you know how many times I’ve wished I wasn’t an Emerson? How many times I’ve wished I was born an orphan, with no name and no title?” After a moment, gathering himself, he said, “Anyway, then I met you.” He glanced at Jaya and back down at the city. “You had a pendant that fit the bill, but you didn’t seem to know it. That first morning in the dining hall when you told me a ruby had fallen…”
“You left the table,” Jaya mused, remembering the way he’d looked, like he’d had a bad scare. “I wondered why.”
“I was completely and thoroughly shocked. I thought I had to be overreacting. I didn’t know if you were playing a joke on me.”
Jaya looked down at her hands and didn’t say anything. Guilt squirmed in her chest. She had been playing a trick on him, just not the trick he thought.
Grey continued, oblivious to her thoughts. “And then at the mixer when two more rubies fell… I began to panic.
“As the glass rose dims,
So the hope of redemption
Eighteen years, one by one,
Until what’s left is none.
“It’s counting down to my eighteenth birthday in December. I can feel it. Every time I’m around your pendant, I can practically hear a clock’s hands, ticking down the time until…” He turned to her, his eyes roving her face. “That’s the reason I don’t date, Jaya. Once that last ruby falls, I’m… That’s the end of me. The Emerson line is finished, and so am I.” He looked at her. “At sunrise, I presume. That’s when I was born.”
Grey
He hadn’t meant to say all that, least of all to a Rao who was a direct descendant of the one who’d cursed him. And yet there it was. There was a certain openness to Jaya, something that invited confessions under the stars.
She shook her head slowly. “You… you believe you’ll die? On your eighteenth birthday?”
“I have no reason not to believe it.”
Jaya’s face was full of pity. “Grey…”
“You might not want to feel too bad for me,” he said, forcing a grim smile. He didn’t want her feeling sorry for him, the cursed hereditary thief. “That’s why I went to your room.” He looked her right in the eye and said, “I wanted to steal the pendant. I didn’t know if it would help, but I had this idea that I could have it fixed and maybe somehow return it to the temple in Mysuru. And maybe that would be enough, even with all the missing rubies. Maybe that was the way to mend that which is broken and repair that which is severed. I don’t know. I don’t know.” He rubbed his cold face, then stopped and dropped his hands to his lap, looking straight ahead. “But maybe most of all, it means I am what my father says I am. Different. Cursed. Broken.”
They sat in silence for a full minute. Saying those words out loud, Grey felt freer than he ever had before. But lurking under that open sky of freedom was a vast black ocean of shame and a surety that he was not just doomed but corrupt, too.
Grey glanced at Jaya, sitting, pensive, beside him. “You can yell. It’s okay. Or you can leave. I’ll understand.”
She shook her head slowly. “I… I won’t say it doesn’t make me angry, that you were in my room without asking. That you wanted to steal a gift my father gave me, that might actually belong to my family in the first place.” Her voice was hard as she said the last part, as if there were big things, like chunks of rock just under the surface, she wasn’t saying. “But the point is,” she said after a moment, her voice much gentler, “that you were desperate. We’ve all done things when we’re desperate that we might not do otherwise.”
“I somehow doubt that you, Perfect Princess Jaya, have done anything so crass as trying to steal someone else’s necklace.”
“Maybe not stealing,” she said, shaking her head. She kept her gaze straight ahead too. “But I have planned to do things that I might never have considered under other circumstances.”
“Really?” Grey was intrigued. “Like what?”
She looked at him, something burning in her brown eyes. She opened her mouth, paused, and then closed it again. “The details aren’t important,” she said quietly, averting her eyes.
They sat in silence another moment, and then Jaya said, “But wait a minute. You said you wanted to steal the pendant to end the curse, but you didn’t steal it. I brought it with me.” She patted her coat; presumably, the pendant sat nestled in an interior pocket.
“I didn’t take it because more rubies began to fall out when I touched it,” Grey said, his voice shaking slightly at the memory. “You’ll see when you look at it. There are more rubies missing. And the same thing happened when we were dancing, remember? Two rubies fell out. I feel like…” He didn’t know if he should say what he really thought.
Jaya waited, watching him without speaking.
Well, he’d told her so much already. What was a little bit more? Needing to get it all out, Grey continued, in a rush. “I feel like it senses my presence, and it doesn’t like when I get too close.” He laughed mirthlessly. “I know. I know how that sounds, believe me.”
Jaya stared out at the city lights, breathing steadily in and out. The slope was quiet now, almost deserted. Grey let her have her space. Finally, she turned to him, unsmiling. “I can’t convince you otherwise, can I?”
“No,” he said bleakly. “You can’t.” He paused. “Why did you bring it here, to Aspen?”
“I wanted to have some of the rubies replaced before my father saw I’d been careless with it.” Glancing at her watch, she added, “Though I don’t think I’ll have the time now.”
“You weren’t careless,” Grey said as the wind whipped against them. “It’s me. I’m the reason.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll be eighteen in just seven weeks, you know.”
“But…” He heard the edge of frustration in Jaya’s voice; she was holding back what she really wanted to say.
“But you think I’m doing this to myself? That the curse is just a fabrication of my imagination and my father’s? That this is all a self-fulfilling prophecy?”
“Yes!” she said, the word bursting out of her with the energy of her agitation. “How can you believe what he’s told you, in this day and age? Don’t you want something better for yourself?”
He turned on her, his temper flaring at the hypocrisy in her words. “Why do you care so much, anyway? What’s it to you?” She looked at him, taken aback, no answers to give. “And anyway,” Grey continued, anger like a flame inside his chest, “I could ask the same thing of you. Don’t you want something better for yourself? Or do you want to be your father’s puppet forever? What about that self-fulfilling prophecy, Jaya?”
She stared at him, her expression all ice and sharp edges, that earlier softness completely gone. “Here’s the difference between my self-fulfilling prophecy and yours, Grey. Mine hasn’t turned me into a thief. Mine hasn’t made me some twisted, perverted version of myself! How about yours?” And she stood up and skied off, leaving him sitting alone, encased by drifting snow and darkness.
CHAPTER 12
Of Curses and Kisses Page 17
