Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (39)

“Is there a switch?” Rohan asked. “Or was it remotely triggered?”

Savannah didn’t bother answering that. “I tried warming the music box first, to no avail. Same for the bracelet, the charms, the dice, and the lock on my chain.”

“And then…” Rohan strode to stand beside her, in front of the crackling flames. “You tried Brady’s photographs.”

“Did I?” Savannah replied.

Yes.

As Rohan watched, Savannah held one of the photographs of Calla Thorp—the worn one, the one that Rohan suspected Brady had carried with him for years—up to the fire. As the paper warmed, letters began to appear on the back, a message in feminine script.

Do exactly as I say.

“It strikes me,” Rohan murmured, “that there is more than one kind of sponsor.”

Brady Daniels had been invited to this game by the Hawthorne heiress herself. That meant that any would-be sponsors would have had very little time to approach him and make their case. In the previous year’s game, resources had mattered. Sponsors had something to offer. But this year?

This year, external resources had only been a boon in the initial hunt for wild card tickets. Given that Brady wasn’t a wild card, his sponsor had to have played this a different way.

“And the other photograph?” Rohan prompted.

Savannah held the other, less-worn picture up to the flames. Letter by letter, a second message appeared.

The game must go on. Ensure that it does.

Before Rohan could mull that over, his watch buzzed.

“Midnight,” Savannah said beside him.

A message appeared on their watches from the game makers.

“Don your tux and your mask…,” Rohan read aloud.

Savannah looked up from her own watch and finished the sentence. “Be on the dock at quarter past.”





Chapter 35





ROHAN


In Rohan’s room, a new wall had parted, revealing a closet bearing armor of a very different kind. Formal wear. Rohan let his fingers skim over the tuxedo jackets the way another person might have lightly dragged their hand through the surface of a pool or lake. He stopped when his hand hit fabric the same dark purple color as the velvet that had lined the music boxes.

For Rohan, the shade was a familiar one, calling to mind a special ink.

Ink. Rohan could feel the memory rising, like water around his ankles, then his knees, then his thighs. Dark purple ink and a book and a quill. This time, he did fight—and lost. The memory took him under anyway, wholly, completely, body and soul.

“Sharp, isn’t it?”

Rohan is five years old, and the man across from him is a stranger—a stranger who holds a metal feather out to Rohan.

“The edges will cut you—if you let them.” The man smiles. “But you won’t, will you, Rohan?” The man’s smile deepens but doesn’t reach his eyes. “Let them hurt you?”

Rohan might be small, but he understands that the man in front of him isn’t really talking about the metal-sharp edges of that feather. He’s talking about people.

People will hurt you, if you let them.

Rohan says nothing, staring angrily and defiantly back at the man, and then he turns to stare just as hard at the book the man has placed before him. The book is big. It is old. It is, Rohan knows instinctually, the reason for the metal feather and the small, silver bowl of dark purple liquid that reminds Rohan of blood in the night.

“Ah. You want to know what is in this book. An excellent question. You see, Rohan, to join the Devil’s Mercy, one must pay. The price is steeper than money, steeper than blood. Don’t look at me like that, child. It’s not your soul I’m after.” The man twists the metal feather in his fingers, a certain sharpness in his eyes. “Secrets,” he says. “That is what this book contains. Horrible secrets. You have one of those, don’t you, my boy?”

Rohan looks to the purple liquid in that bowl and thinks about blood.

“Do you know how to write?” the man says. “Or would you prefer I write your secret down for you?”

Rohan looks ups from the book and glares daggers at the man.

“What about your name?” the man asks. “Or just the letter R? Can you write an R, Rohan?”

Clamping his mouth closed, his voice a distant memory and rage burning inside him, Rohan nods.

“Well, then.” The man dips the pointy end of that metal feather into the deep purple ink. “What if I told you that I could turn you into the type of person who never has to hurt? The type who never has to be afraid. The type who is feared and adored the way that only those with true power can be. What if I said I could make you more than the sum of your parts?”

The book is opened. The man sets the quill’s point on the page.

“In exchange for that, would you give me your secret, Rohan? Would you tell me what you did?”

Every muscle in his little body tight, Rohan nods.

“All right then.” The man bends down. “Whisper your secret most horrible to me. Tell me what you did tonight, Rohan, and I will give you the world.”

Rohan has not spoken in so long that he is not even sure that he can. But he wants to be what this man is. He wants to be the one holding the quill, holding the book.