Glorious Rivals(65)

“Grayson?” Lyra’s low voice echoed through the marble room. “Do you need your sister to lose this game?”

“That would be ideal.”

“In that case…” Lyra reached for the shelf with her name on it and claimed the objects on top. From inside the leather pouch, she slid out an antique compass—bronze, just like the key to her room. She opened the compass and found an inscription inside—their next clue.

DON’T LOOK.

DON’T JUDGE.

CAN’T SEE.

WHAT YOU WANT IS NUMBER THREE.

DON’T PUT.

DON’T COUNT.

NOT WITHIN

BUT WITHOUT.

The words rang in Lyra’s mind. Before, she’d been playing this game for herself, for Mile’s End. Now, she was playing it for Grayson, too. The only way to ensure that Savannah lost this game was to win it.

As Grayson claimed his own compass, Lyra turned, taking in the whole of the empty room, and the oddest feeling settled over her body—part anticipation, part uncanny certainty, almost like déjà vu, like she knew what was going to happen before a single conscious thought had formed.

She took off Grayson’s tuxedo jacket and tossed it to him, and then Lyra reached for the opera glasses threaded through the chain on her bag.

Chapter 55

GRAYSON

Grayson slipped on his tuxedo jacket as Lyra lifted Odette’s opera glasses to her eyes. She truly was terrifying, Lyra Kane—the way she’d pieced together the meaning of his interaction with Savannah, the way she’d known that his conversation with Toby had affected him, when to the rest of the world, Grayson’s stony mask was impenetrable. Terrifying though you may be, Lyra Kane, there is so much that you don’t know.

So much that he could not tell her.

As if on cue, the watch on Grayson’s wrist vibrated. He had sent a message to his brothers in response to what Toby had said on the chopper. Three words, sufficiently vague: TOBY KNOWS SOMETHING.

The reply he’d just received was almost, though not quite, as oblique. ABOUT EVE?

The or on the end of that question went unsaid.

“Grayson,” Lyra said beside him. “There’s something written on this wall.”

Taking advantage of the fact that she still had the opera glasses to her eyes—that she could not see him—Grayson typed back two letters, the briefest of messages. NO.

He trusted that Jameson and Avery, at least, would read the correct meaning into that: Not about Eve. About Alice. What specifically Toby knew, Grayson had not been able to ascertain, but whatever it was, Grayson’s Hawthorne intuition said that Toby had known it for a very long time.

Grayson forced himself to set that thought aside and crossed to Lyra. He had to stay the course: keep Lyra focused on the game, try again with Savannah as soon as he could get her away from Rohan, and trust that Avery could get something out of Toby.

“May I?” Grayson asked Lyra. She handed him the opera glasses, and he looked at the wall. There was indeed something written there—a hint, he would wager. Unfortunately, the script that the opera glasses revealed was not nearly as clear as the writing on the compass. There were some letters visible on the wall but also disjointed symbols. Or parts of letters.

“Invisible ink.” Grayson lowered the opera glasses and walked to the wall in question. It had an abundance of seams. Squares, Grayson realized. The seams divided the marble into twenty squares—four by five. Grayson recognized this particular trick for what it was.

“Look for a loose square,” he told Lyra. “One of these will come off.”

A few seconds passed as they searched. “Here,” Lyra called. “This one.”

Grayson slid in beside her and helped remove the piece of marble in question—thin enough not to be too heavy. With that piece removed, he put a hand on one of the other sections and slid it sideways—assumption confirmed.

“It’s a puzzle,” Grayson told Lyra. “Slide the squares, arrange them just so, and a hint to the riddle will appear.”

They got to work. It took time. The countdown overhead hit zero. The deadbolt flipped open, but no one was waiting on the other side of the vault door. We were the last to this clue. That didn’t sit well with Grayson, but as their hint took form on the wall, Grayson knew: They wouldn’t be behind for long.

Lyra did the honors, peering through the opera glasses one last time and reading the message on the wall aloud: “Actions speak louder than words.”

Chapter 56

ROHAN

Don’t look.” Savannah’s voice withstood the wind on the cliff, the remains of the bonfire from the night before barely visible on the beach below. “Don’t judge. Can’t see.”

“What you want is number three.” Rohan marked the way Savannah Grayson moved as she paced the rocky terrain, like the cliff’s nearby edge didn’t faze her in the least. Rohan was the one who’d suggested they continue their discussion of this particular riddle out here, rather than in the house, where they might be more easily overheard.

No witnesses. That made certain kinds of traps easier to lay.

“Don’t put,” Rohan continued, his voice silky and pitched to surround her. “Don’t count. Not within…”

“But without.” Savannah took back over, the way Rohan had known that she would. There was an art to controlling others through the openings you gave them.