Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (44)

“Somewhere on this yacht,” the Hawthorne heiress announced, “you’ll find a hint or two to the puzzles you’re working on.”

“Puzzles, plural,” Rohan noted. “I take it someone has already solved the music box.”

Clearly, it wasn’t him—or Savannah. Lyra and Grayson hadn’t solved it yet, either. That left only one player, the one who’d given Lyra one answer in this game already. Brady.

“You’re also welcome to eat, play, and rest up while you’re here,” a voice called down to them. “If you need it.”

Lyra looked up. A masked figure stood on top of a metal railing on the uppermost deck. Jameson Hawthorne.

“And just like that…” Rohan snapped his fingers. “The scholar disappears.”

Lyra looked around. Sure enough, Brady was already nowhere to be seen.

“After tonight,” Avery told the remaining players, “you won’t be seeing us again until the end of the game. No more ballgowns. No more masks. No more parties. Just puzzle to puzzle to puzzle until the end.”

“Until,” Jameson called down, “we have our winner.” There was a tone in Jameson’s voice that Lyra couldn’t quite read, and this time, when she looked up, Jameson Hawthorne was staring down at her—and only at her. Unlike the rest of them, he wasn’t masked.

And he wasn’t smiling.

Lyra looked away from Jameson, and Savannah Grayson caught her gaze. He’ll choose them every time, Lyra could practically hear her saying. He’ll choose her.

Beside Lyra, Grayson was looking at Avery in that infinity gown.

I’m not asking him to choose me, Lyra thought fiercely, but she still couldn’t push down the feeling of dread churning in her stomach at the thought of what was to come.

Opposite Lyra, Savannah turned to Rohan and bared her teeth in a glittering, socialite’s smile. “Game on.”





Chapter 39





LYRA


I have to tell him, Lyra thought. Avery and the other players had taken their leave. It was just Lyra and Grayson left on the lowermost deck now.

“There,” Grayson said. “Two decks up.”

Tell him. Lyra’s internal monologue was stubborn as hell, but she ignored it—not forever. Just for now. She wanted, maybe even needed, one more moment, one more memory of this before.

She looked up, following Grayson’s gaze. “What do you see?”

His lips curved. “Can you climb in that dress?”

Lyra pretended that there was no tightness in her stomach, no ball of anxiety in her throat. “I can do anything in this dress.”





There was nothing on the third-story deck, but just off it, in the interior of the yacht, there was a lounge. The room was large and round, lined with arched doors. The carpet was deep red and plush, and set up all around the room there were game tables.

Poker.

Craps.

Roulette.

Grayson strode toward the poker table. Sitting on top of it was a stack of poker chips unlike any Lyra had ever seen.

“Made from a meteorite.” Grayson picked up one of the chips. “Lined with Burmese rubies and Sri Lankan sapphires.”

“Let me guess,” Lyra said dryly. “The corresponding deck of cards is made of solid platinum and inlaid with fragments of Cleopatra’s tomb.”

“Sarcasm suits you.” Grayson laid the chip down. “Though I feel compelled to point out that there are no cards on this table—or any other.”

The only thing on the poker table besides chips was a trio of masquerade masks—one turquoise, one purple, one black, all divine. Lyra looked to the other gaming tables and saw more masks. Options, she supposed, for anyone who wished to trade.

Crossing from the poker table to the roulette wheel, Lyra picked up the mask that sat beside it. “Sarcasm might suit me, but this mask…” She trailed her finger across the surface of it. “Suits you.”

The mask in question was a duller kind of gold, the metal of a royal knight’s breastplate, battered and cracked. Smooth bronze arcs marked the mask over both eye holes, the balance of the markings uneven, the asymmetry of the mask somehow eerie and inviting all at once.

In a smooth motion, Grayson took off his black mask and picked up the asymmetrical one. “Roulette,” he commented, donning the new mask, “is the only game in this entire room that we could actually play.”

He reached for the small, silver ball, and Lyra instinctively spun the roulette wheel, pushing down all other thoughts that wanted to come.

Somehow, she wasn’t surprised when the ball landed on the number eight.

“Did you see the lemniscates on Avery’s dress?” Lyra said, and then she cursed herself silently, because it had been obvious to her from the beginning—from before she’d even ever even met Grayson—that he saw everything where Avery Grambs was concerned.

“Ask me,” Grayson said in that low, even voice of his.

“Ask you what?” Lyra replied. “What the symbol means? What we’re missing?”

“Ask me,” Grayson told her quietly, “about Avery.”

Lyra shook her head. “It’s none of my business.”

“I disagree.” Grayson reached for the roulette ball, and, as Lyra watched, slowly rolled it around the palm of his hand. “My grandfather had a collection of watches,” he said. “Extraordinary ones, clockwork marvels, each like a puzzle in and of itself. There was one watch in particular among his collection that my brothers and I all coveted. The clock face featured a tiny, mechanical roulette wheel encased beneath a crystal dome.”