Glorious Rivals(77)

“What would you say if I told you that we’re simply giving Brady Daniels time to make his next move?” Now that Brady had possession of Rohan’s dart, he was bound to show up at the tree eventually. He’d clearly already figured out the darts were needed. “Let us see what he discovers.”

“Have I ever given you the impression that I rely on the discoveries of others?” Haughty was a good look for Savannah Grayson. The world around them was black and gray except where it was green and overgrown, wild in contrast to his opponent’s icy control.

Find an excuse to leave me. Go to Brady. Take his deal. Rohan had always had infinite patience in waiting games, his next move always dictated by strategy and strategy alone, but this time, he tired of waiting.

If not now, Savvy, then when?

“If Brady has yet to prove useful…” Rohan turned slowly, making a show of taking in the view of the ruins. “Then perhaps we should take him out. I am now in possession of a third photograph.”

Savannah processed that in silence. You don’t want him disqualified, do you, love? Once he’s out of the game, perhaps that offer of his no longer holds.

“What did the third message say?” Savannah asked.

Rohan offered her an abridged version: “It’s time.” He gave Savannah a look. “I tend to agree. Three photographs, at least two of which were almost certainly received while he was playing the game.” Rohan gave a little shrug. “I’ve taken out rivals with less. And Jameson Hawthorne is predisposed to believe me.”

“You’re working for Jameson. For them.” And there it was. Her anger. Her weakness. The Hawthornes and Avery Grambs.

“Like you, Savvy, I work only for myself.”

“You are so desperate to believe that, aren’t you?” Savannah said, and the lines of her body said so much more.

They said that she was ready for a fight. Aching for one. And Rohan did hate to disappoint.

“Perhaps,” he said, his voice low and pitched to surround her, “the game makers will disqualify you both. Brady, for communication with his sponsor, and you, because they’ve discovered yours.”

Go on. Fight. See me as the threat I am.

“There’s nothing to link me to any sponsor but conjecture.” Savannah might as well have announced that she was not in the business of blinking first.

“Are you so sure,” Rohan said silkily, “that Avery Grambs and the Hawthorne brothers will care whether or not there is conjecture involved? Or will they care only about taking out a threat to themselves?”

Take the scholar’s deal, he willed her silently. Betray me. Hurt me. Do your worst, Savannah Grayson. Pain only counted if you didn’t see it coming. Pain only counted if you cared.

“Is that how it is?” Savannah closed the space between them, rendering it nonexistent in the bat of the eye. Toe-to-toe and face-to-face with him, she was anything but distant, anything but cool. “Is this your play? Once our alliance has reached its end, once the competition has been dispatched—are we going head-to-head the way we planned, or are you hoping to take me out the coward’s way?”

Rohan leaned forward, so he could speak directly into Savannah’s ear, his lips almost brushing skin. “No spoilers.”

Savannah stared him down for an exquisite second or two, and then she took a step back. “Why are we here, Rohan?” There was a different quality to her voice now, something more guttural, something sharper—and she’d used his given name. “What are we doing?”

It was clear: Savannah wasn’t talking about the ruins anymore. This thing between them had a weight to it, a gravitational pull that held them together like a binding, a fist-thick rope running from the core of him to the core of her. And there Rohan was, brandishing a knife. He’d been cutting through fiber after fiber with each push, and damn it—

Why hadn’t it snapped? Why hadn’t she? Make your move, love. Make it now.

“Do you know what this place is?” Savannah said in that socialite voice of hers, the corresponding mask descending over her face as she dragged manicured fingers lightly over a stone fireplace that still stood. “To me?” Savannah Grayson was not a person who gave an opponent long to answer. “My cousin Colin died in this fire. He died here, before I was even born.”

“Colin Anders Wright.” Rohan knew the names of the victims of the fire, but his research into the Hawthorne family had only gone back so far.

“My father raised him like a son,” Savannah said, that high, clear voice of hers struck through with iron. “Loved him like a son—more than he could ever love a daughter.” There was the slightest of pauses and then: “Gigi looks like Colin. Our father adored her for that from the day she was born. I was different. I did not look a thing like the lost son. I was not an easy child to love. But I played the game.”

The game as in basketball—or being exactly what your father wanted, expected, and demanded you to be? Rohan could feel himself getting sucked into the labyrinth, into the room in his mind devoted wholly and entirely to her.

Careful, boy, the Proprietor’s voice warned, the reminder surging through Rohan’s body like current through a wire.

“Are you done?” Rohan asked Savannah.

“I think sometimes,” Savannah Grayson said softly, “about what it might have been like if Colin hadn’t died. If Toby Hawthorne hadn’t thought it was a good idea to play with fire.”