Chapter Text
Grace never doubted she’d feel the morning sun on her face again. If she had, she wouldn't have won the fucking game.
Dawn creeps over the resort in thin gold strips, catching on shattered glass and broken doors, but Grace stands with her back to the wreckage. Different day, different wedding dress, yet still soaked through with blood.
This time, it doesn’t reach her the same way. Whatever part of her had panicked before was gone now, burned out or left behind with everything else. It is done, whatever it had been, and she wears that certainty like something stitched into her bones.
The cigarette between her lips tastes indecently good.
If Grace had a dollar for every time she’d been hunted for sport by soulless, devil-worshipping rich people… she’d have two dollars. Which isn’t a lot, but it is fucking weird that it happened twice.
Faith stands beside her, just as blood-soaked, but with an expression more thoughtful than traumatised. She tilts her head. “What are we gonna do with the goat?”
Grace sighs. “I don’t know.” She drops her cigarette and sticks a boot out from beneath layers of black lace to grind it into the ground. “Let it go? We can’t keep it.” She says as the three of them wander unhurriedly down the long driveway.
“Aw, but it’s so cute.” Faith frowns, reaching down to trail her fingertips along the coarse hair at its spine. The goat bleats nonsensically.
“Come on.” Grace stops and crouches to unloop the rope from around its neck. “You can’t keep a goat in an apartment.”
“But we saved it,” Faith coos, still entirely focused on the goat. Then she looks up at Grace. “He was going to be sacrificed,” she says in a fierce whisper, an attempt to save the goat from learning of its failed fate, Grace assumes.
Grace exhales through her nose and stands back. She gives the unmoving creature a small flick of her wrist “Go on,” she says “you’re free.”
For a moment, nothing happens.
“Shoo” Grace flicks both her wrists this time. Still, the goat stands there.
“Shoo! Sho—’ Then it crumples.
The goat just fucking drops dead.
“Fuck!” Faith yells. “What the fuck?”
“Lets just get out of here.” Grace grabs her sister's arm and slowly backs them both away.
The road they find themselves on is long and empty this early in the morning. They walk in silence, Grace trying to think of what to do next, Faith still very clearly thinking about the goat.
They just have to keep going, eventually they’ll come across something. Or the police will pick them up again. Fuck, Grace doesnt want that to happen.
The sound of a smooth engine grows louder from behind them. Grace fully intends to ignore it, since there are no sirens. Her trust in humanity has stretched far too thin to gamble what’s left on a stranger, no matter how stranded she and her sister are.
The vehicle slows as it approaches. A sleek black limousine, of all things.
It stops a few feet ahead, as if anticipating that they won’t. As the girls pass, the tinted driver's side window glides open with a soft mechanical whir, revealing a man Grace has never seen before. “Ms. MacCaullay?”
Dread stops Grace dead.
That name feels odd being attached to her, like it’s calling back something she already buried. She’d only given it up two days ago, but it was dawn the following day that she'd decided to take it back. “Who’s asking?”
“The Lawyer requests a meeting,” His voice is low, gravelled, distinctly English. “I’m here to escort you.”
Faith leans around her, peering at the car like it might purr if she gets close enough. “Grace,” she says under her breath, “it’s a limo.”
Grace doesn’t look at her. “Yes. I can see that.”
“I’m just saying,” Faith goes on, gesturing lightly, “if a mysterious man is going to kidnap us, this is… best case scenario.”
Grace lets out a quiet breath.
Honestly? She’s tired. She doesn’t have a better plan, and she’s fairly certain that if The Lawyer wanted to meet, they would be meeting one way or another.
“Fine.”
__
Grace doesn’t know exactly how long they’d been driving for before they start to slow again.
The limousine comes to a stop before a pair of imposing iron gates, and a moment later they creak open as if expecting them. Grace turns to watch through the rear window as they swing shut behind them, a faint unease settling in at the feeling of being sealed inside another enclosed estate.
As they continue down the long driveway, the building comes into view gradually, revealed in pieces between the trees rather than all at once.
It’s as big as you’d expect, with an entrance like that. Stone, pale and solid, spread wide instead of tall. The warm morning light sits on the surface of it, but doesn’t soften anything. Ivy climbs the walls, not thick enough to choke the stone, just unruly enough to curl around the tall windows as if it’s been there for years and nothing could shift it now.
“Okay,” Faith says, leaning over Grace to peer out of the window. “This is not where you take someone for a quick meeting.”
Grace doesn't comment, but she agrees.
The gardens are kept, clearly, but not controlled. Shrubs and flowers layer into each other, colours tucked in between different shades of green, with paths that curve naturally instead of cutting straight through.
It’s not commercial like a hotel or a resort, polished into something impersonal. It’s quite clearly a home, even if an absurdly grand one.
Is this where The Lawyer lives? Working for The Devil, apparently, has its benefits.
When they pull up to the front of the house, the drive is empty of any other vehicles, yet The Lawyer is already standing on the wide stone steps, waiting.
“Grace,” he smiles. “Faith!” He turns to the driver, who now holds open Grace’s door, and gives him an appreciative nod. “Thank you, Mr. Jones.”
“Hey, what is this place?” Faith calls out, looking up to the gargoyles on the roof.
The Lawyer doesn't answer, but instead turns in place and walks through the heavy-looking front doors. “Follow me!”
The entrance hall is dark with no windows, and on the walls are mounted heads that range from that of stags, to more exotic animals like the polar bear, whose glass stare Grace makes eye contact with as they move into the dining room.
The table The Lawyer settles down in the middle of is so long and wide, that even though Grace and Faith take their places just opposite him, it feels as if they're still miles out of reach of the thick stacks of papers in front of him.
The Lawyer had asked for this meeting with the kind of quiet urgency that doesn’t feel like urgency at all. He does not waste any time, though he is composed as ever, as though this were simply any other administrative errand.
“What’s going on?” Grace asks, suspicion plain in her voice.
“Well,” The Lawyer says with a brightness that makes her uncomfortable. “As far as the structure of Mr Le Bail’s game is concerned, you and Faith are now the only surviving participants with any legal standing.”
The sisters turn to face each other but remain silent, confused.
He goes on to explain, carefully and without embellishment, that as the recognised winners of Mr Le Bail’s game, Grace and Faith are now the only surviving participants tied to its outcome. That alone makes them the final legal anchors for what remains of what previously belonged to the members of the council.
“The six families involved have no living claimants left. Their bloodlines, in every official sense that mattered, ended in the same night.” He speaks matter-of-factly, “which means, quite simply, that everything they owned now has to go somewhere.”
Grace stares at him. “Which is… where?”
The lawyer meets her eyes directly as he answers. “To you, Grace. The winner.”
There's silence, once more.
“Wait, sorry–” Faith speaks up. “Sorry, I'm confused. What is happening?”
The Lawyer folds his hands neatly in front of him. “With their extinction, the assets of five of the Council families has already been dismantled, converted, and redistributed through several offshore structures,” The man explains.
“You see, half the world’s wealth appearing in one woman’s name overnight would, of course, be terribly suspicious.” He smiles, like what he's telling them doesn't sound incredibly immoral. “On paper, the wealth simply continues to exist; fragmented, rerouted, carefully obscured. Nothing that points cleanly to a single transfer, and nothing obvious enough to be traced or challenged. But in practice, it all remains accessible to Grace.”
Faith frowns. “But you said there were six families.”
“The Danforth estate,” The Lawyer says, “is the exception.”
Grace goes very still.
“Since Grace married into the family, the inheritance there required no concealment or restructuring. It passed through the expected legal channels, intact and uninterrupted.”
The room suddenly feels far away, the long table stretching wider, the glass eyes from the severed animal heads in the hall glaring through the wall.
Grace’s voice, when it comes, is quieter than either of them expect. “I don’t want it.”
The Lawyer’s expression does not change.
“That,” he says gently, “is rarely how inheritance works.”
“I mean it.” Her eyes lift to his, sharp now. “I don’t want their money. I don’t want their house. I don’t want anything with that family’s name on it.”
Then, with maddening calm, “Unfortunately, it’s already yours.”