Glorious Rivals(35)

“Why don’t I just assume they’re all suggestions from now on?” Lyra reached for the opera glasses.

“If it’s ever an order,” Grayson told her, “you’ll know.”

She shot him a look. “Same.” Lifting the opera glasses to her eyes, Lyra felt Grayson shift beside her, and instead of fighting her body’s awareness of his, Lyra let it roll over her.

“Nothing,” she informed Grayson. “Still pitch black.” Her mind went to the original owner of the diamond-encrusted opera glasses as she lowered them. She glanced at Grayson and knew his mind had gone to the same place. “You’re thinking about Odette.”

“Odette,” Grayson replied, allowing his gaze to linger on Lyra’s, “is not the only one I am thinking about.”

“I know.” A few hours earlier, Lyra would have ignored his confession or misinterpreted it, but she couldn’t unsee that drawing. “I didn’t dance when I was alone in the ballroom.” Lyra felt compelled to give him something true. She wasn’t even sure why. “I just couldn’t let myself do it.”

“I know,” Grayson replied.

Lyra wasn’t used to anyone being able to read her. “Now it’s your turn,” she told him, casting her gaze back out on the island.

“My turn for what?” Grayson said.

“Your turn to tell me something else that I already know.”

“You don’t fall.” Grayson nodded toward the edge of the roof. She was standing closer to it than he was.

“I kn—”

Grayson didn’t let her finish. “You don’t fall,” he said again, a certain intensity in those words. “I do.” It couldn’t have been clearer to Lyra that he wasn’t talking about balance. “I fall, Lyra.”

First the kiss, then the drawing, and now this. And all Lyra could say was: “Why?”

“Why what?” Grayson returned.

Why would someone like you fall for me? He was Grayson Hawthorne. He had the whole damn world at his fingertips. Lyra sure as hell wasn’t about to say that out loud.

“Why a bird’s-eye view?” she deflected “Why are you sure that darkness won’t be a problem?”

Grayson studied her for a moment, then answered the question. “Echoes. The kind that happen from game to game. In one of the old man’s final games, there was a clue that could only be seen from above. Jameson and Avery played that game, and they’re the ones who masterminded this one. Infinity—or eight—is another echo from the same sequence.”

Echo after echo after echo. Lyra wondered if this one was even intentional. And then she realized: “What if the calla in the music box is another echo from one of your childhood games?” Lyra’s mind churned as she walked closer and closer to the edge of the roof. “It might not even be intentional.”

They already knew that Tobias Hawthorne had discovered that his wife was still alive. What else might the billionaire have known? “What if your grandfather encoded something in one of those games?” Lyra insisted. “Something about Alice.”

Alice and calla lilies.

The night air was quiet, except for the waves breaking down below.

“The right kind of disaster just waiting to happen,” Lyra said. “What if that’s what Odette meant? You and me. My memory and yours.” She took another step forward, needing the movement, needing to think. She was right on the edge of the roof now, and suddenly, Grayson’s words came back to her, haunting her the way that so many things he’d said did.

You don’t fall. I do. I fall, Lyra.

There was a flash of light in the distance. From somewhere near the ruins. At first, Lyra thought she’d imagined it, but then there was another, not far from the first.

“Did you see that?” Lyra asked.

“I did,” Grayson confirmed. “How much would you like to wager that the flashes continue and form a lemniscate? One of us should stay here and track the progression and the other should go investigate at the source.”

“And when you say one of us should go investigate…，” Lyra prompted.

“Let me do the recon,” Grayson replied.

“Just to be clear, you want me to stay here in the light while you go gallivanting off in the darkness by yourself to check this out?”

“Someone has to watch for the pattern.”

“That someone could be you,” Lyra pointed out. “And I could do the gallivanting.” There was another flash of light—this one closer to the forest than the ruins.

“Humor me. Please.”

It was the please that did it. Lyra expelled a breath. “Fine, but prepare yourself for some very cutting sarcasm when you get back—and no moving on to the next puzzle without me if you find something.”

“I’ll do recon,” Grayson promised with a twitch of his lips. “And that is all.”

He disappeared down the ladder, and Lyra trained her gaze back on the island, keeping watch. There was one more flash of light, and then nothing. For minutes, nothing—until Lyra heard footsteps on the dock below.

Footsteps that weren’t Grayson’s. Footsteps—coming up.

Lyra had time to take two steps back before someone else stepped onto the roof. Not a player. Not the game makers. A woman. She couldn’t have been more than three or four years older than Lyra, and there was something eerily familiar about her. She had hair a shade too light to be red, a heart-shaped face, a scattering of freckles—and no weapons that Lyra could see.