Glorious Rivals(93)

Grayson’s mind went to the letter A.

Lyra let loose of him and slid off his thighs, standing and orienting her body toward the water. “I don’t feel anything anymore. Whoever’s responsible for those flowers—they’re gone.”

Grayson was not sure which defied logic more: her certainty or his predisposition to believe it. He climbed to his feet. “I’ll let my brothers know.”

The image of calla lilies on the water, illuminated for less than a second by a lightning strike, was emblazoned on Grayson’s mind. It felt, to him, like a warning.

A declaration of war.

He typed and sent the message, then looked back up at Lyra, who beat him to speaking.

“There is only one way that this is going to work,” she said.

This. Grayson lingered on the word. This. This. This.

“I get to pull you back from cliffs, too.”

Grayson felt the rise and fall of his own Adam’s apple, then a tightening of the muscles in his throat and a loosening of the ones between his shoulder blades. This. “I accept your premise,” he said, a Hawthorne striking a deal, “but I do not like it.”

“Join the club,” Lyra told him. “And no more lies. If there’s something you can’t tell me, just say that. You’re entitled to secrets, Grayson. You are entitled to put your family first, to protect them, but if you ever lie to me or try to manipulate me again, this—us—we’re done.”

“No more lies.” Grayson could agree to that much at least—for her. Differently. Better. “To that end, there is something that you need to know. You said that I would not choose you.”

“I’m not asking you to—”

“You were wrong. I would choose you, Lyra—not over my family but as a part of it.” Grayson thought about Nash saying that he’d known immediately with Libby, about the old man and his propensity for talking about the way that Hawthorne men loved.

“You can’t mean that,” Lyra replied. “It’s only been three days.”

“Try telling me again,” Grayson suggested silkily, “what I can and cannot mean.”

Before she could say a word, his watch buzzed. Grayson looked down at it, expecting a return message in response to the warning he’d sent, but instead, an image had taken over the face of the watch.

A diamond.

After three or four seconds, the diamond dissolved, only to be replaced with words. A PLAYER HAS REACHED THE FINAL PUZZLE.

“A player,” Lyra said out loud, having received the same message. “A Diamond—Rohan or Savannah.”

Grayson looked back out at the ocean. They could try taking the long way down, try to track a threat that was probably already long gone—or they could see this through, make one last attempt to give Lyra the ability to save Mile’s End, one last attempt to save Grayson’s sister from herself.

“Emily Dickinson,” Lyra said, as intense and intent as any Hawthorne. “We’re headed back to the house—to the library.”

Chapter 81

ROHAN

Rohan ignored the buzzing at his wrist, not even blinking as he opened a leatherbound copy of Emily Dickinson poems. The pages inside had been hollowed out.

Sitting there, staring back at Rohan, there was a silver charm—a quill—and beside it, much larger, there was a gleaming, metallic gear. Platinum. Rohan removed first the charm, then the gear, and the moment he lifted the latter, he heard a compartment opening in the floor behind him.

He whirled. The ledger. Rohan had it in his hands in an instant. He flipped it open to a single name, the only player in this game who’d beat him here.

Savannah. Rohan could make out the places she’d dripped on the floor easily enough, and as expert as he usually was at locking memories away in the labyrinth of his mind, Savannah Grayson’s words down on the dock haunted him.

I never gave you permission to be the one who ended things.

All you get to decide is whether you are really that scared. Of me.

When I win, I’ll give you the—

Rohan cut Savannah’s vow off in his mind. Only a fool would rely on the promise of a woman he’d scorned. As he pressed his watch to the ledger, Rohan registered the message he’d received and ignored.

A PLAYER HAS REACHED THE FINAL PUZZLE.

Of course she had. Rohan did not know whether to be gratified or infuriated that the Grandest Game—and his future, the Mercy—was going to come down to this. To the two of them—on her terms, not his.

Rohan returned the ledger. The compartment closed, and as Savannah obviously had before him, Rohan descended the spiral staircase from the fifth floor to the fourth, from the fourth to third and then down one more story, to a door covered in gears of bronze, silver, and gold—but not completely covered.

There were gaps here and there—one fewer, Rohan would wager, than there had been before. He pressed his gear to the door, into one of those open spots, and the moment he did, all the other gears began to turn.

A lock clicked.

The door swung outward.

Rohan stepped across the threshold—and onto a ledger.

He added his name below Savannah’s. Where are you, love? He assessed the rest of the room. The floor was made entirely of stained glass, a rainbow of tiles in every shade imaginable, no two squares exactly the same hue. Hanging from the ceiling were strings of sparkling jewels—dozens of precious stones and crystals, suspended midair in a room that seemed to be made of light.