Glorious Rivals(50)

“Now this,” Rohan said, sauntering forward, “is something.” Something as in a sight to behold—and something as in an excellent place to hide a hint. Built into the deck, there was a large hot tub, clearly operational, and beside it, there was a pool filled to the brim with ice.

Rohan headed straight for the latter. Nestled among hundreds of thousands of ice cubes were bottles of champagne—dozens of them. Gliding over the deck with long, powerful strides, Savannah cut past Rohan to take up position between the hot tub and the pool. In the faint but warm light of the yacht, Rohan could see steam rising from the surface of the hot tub, like smoke in the night.

Rohan crouched, running a hand over the ice and then latching his fingers around a bottle of champagne. “Don’t mind if I do.” He helped himself to the bottle and thought back to the champagne glasses they’d been given at the beginning of the game.

The next thing he knew, Savannah had her own glass in her hand. How? Rohan’s gaze went to the white, beaded bag dangling from her wrist. A bold move, transporting something that fragile. Savannah was fortunate it hadn’t shattered.

As was he.

“Well?” Savannah demanded. “Are you going to open that champagne or just stand there, staring at the label?”

The label was blank. Rohan did away with the cork and took a swig from the bottle. “Cheers, Savvy.”

Savannah shot Rohan a death glare that made him want to make her glare harder, and then she lowered herself to the ground and reached for a bottle of her own. As she prepared to pop it, she aimed the cork squarely at Rohan’s chest.

“Like a bullet through the heart,” Rohan told her, his voice a low and humming murmur. “And in case you were wondering, love? Yes, that’s a challenge.”

And yes, it was an invitation.

Savannah popped the cork. Rohan caught it.

“Show-off,” Savannah retorted.

“Always,” Rohan agreed, making his way to the hot tub. He crouched and sank his champagne bottle into the steaming water. Eyes on Savannah’s, he pulled it out. “Voilà.”

The label was no longer blank.

“The infinity symbol,” Savannah said. “Just like her dress.”

Still not saying the heiress’s name, Rohan noted. He wondered if Savannah even truly realized that Avery was not the one she hated most, not really. Grayson was the one that Savannah had let in.

Family was capable of inflicting wounds the rest of the world could never match.

“Infinity like the dress,” Rohan echoed, “and like one of the symbols on the head of our room keys.”

Rohan reached into his jacket pocket, producing the key in question. It had played a role in the game already, but better safe than sorry. He pushed at the lemniscate on the key’s head—or, viewed differently, the number eight.

Nothing happened.

He tried submersing the key in the hot tub, the way he had the bottle of champagne, and when that, too, yielded no results, he withdrew the key and poured champagne over it.

“Nothing,” Rohan commented—out loud this time. He took another swig from the bottle. “Pity to waste it.”

“Pity.” Savannah poured herself a glass of champagne, and then she joined Rohan at the edge of the hot tub. Kicking off her heels, she sat and pulled her dress up, baring her legs to the knees. Tossing a look at Rohan, she submerged her legs in the hot tub and brought the champagne flute to her mouth.

Rohan caught her wrist, his touch light. “Look.”

Luminescent letters had appeared on the flute, to either side of the H cut into the crystal. An N, an I, and a G to the left, a lone T to the right.

“Night,” Rohan said. Infinity. Night. “Tricky bastards, aren’t they?” he asked Savannah, ridding himself of shoes and socks, and beginning to roll up the pants on his deep purple tux. “First they drown us in details, obfuscating the actual clue in any given puzzle, and then they give us enough hints to do the same.”

“More than one puzzle.” Savannah’s calm was a thing to behold. “More than one hint.”

“Unless, of course, they’re meant to go together.” Rohan sat and sank his legs into the hot tub, the shock of heat nothing to him. “Infinity. Night. Endless night.”

“Except this night isn’t endless,” Savannah countered. “We only have, what, four or five hours until dawn?”

With each passing minute, the two of them drew closer to the end of the game, to the moment when one person winning would require the utter obliteration of the other.

“We’re losing.” Savannah’s tone made it clear that she could not and would not tolerate that.

“Brady is at least one puzzle ahead of us,” Rohan agreed. “Perhaps two. For all we know, the hints we’ve uncovered are for his puzzle, not ours.”

Savannah looked at her glass. “How did he pull ahead of us to begin with?”

That question might have been rhetorical, but Rohan recognized the benefit of considering every possible answer to even the most rhetorical of questions. “Based on his performance in last year’s Grandest Game,” he noted, “Brady Daniels particularly excels at puzzles involving symbology, mythology, and music.”

Savannah glanced down at the writing on her arm. Rohan raised his hand to just almost touch her skin. Taking in the code, he moved his fingers slowly down her arm, never touching her or the ink, but letting her feel the ghost of his touch.