Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (55)

Lyra looked down, and Grayson wondered if she was thinking about the two of them. Her breath hitched slightly, and Grayson felt that lone hitch of her breath in every single hollow place.

“And second,” he continued, his hand making its way to her hair, as he finally gave in to the impulse to let his fingers begin to untangle it, “that nearly all problems are a matter of perspective.”

Touching her felt right. Even when it was just his hand and her hair. Even when he couldn’t feel the softness of her skin. It felt right—and it bought him just a little more time.

Grayson knew that he was a bastard for doing this to her, the very asshole that she had accused him of being multiple times. But Lyra was, in her own way, fearless, and she was dogged in pursuit of truth, and she wouldn’t care that Alice Hawthorne was dangerous.

He cared. About her. About Avery and his brothers. About Libby and the babies.

Grayson Hawthorne had always—always—cared too damn much.

“A matter of perspective,” Lyra repeated, then suddenly, she looked down at the roulette wheel—and then back up again. “Are you saying that maybe the symbol isn’t infinity or eight?”

Keep her focused on the game. Grayson took Lyra’s hand in his, and he drew the symbol on her palm: one loop, then another.





“I see it,” Lyra said again. “Not literally, but…” She looked at the game tables all around them, at the masks scattered on those tables.

And just like that, Grayson saw it, too. Lyra Kane was remarkable. She was lethal in the best possible way, and she was right.

“What if it isn’t a symbol at all?” Grayson murmured, lifting his hand to her face and feeling the delicate metal and jewels of her mask beneath his fingertips. “What if it’s a very rudimentary drawing?”

“What if,” Lyra said, her voice low, “it’s a mask?”





Chapter 47





ROHAN


Rohan did not mind sweating—or waiting. Steam had a habit of rising to the ceiling, but when there was enough of it, it also tended to stick to mirrors, fogging them up—except where some kind of invisible coating had been applied.

The kind that was water resistant.

Four mirrored walls surrounded Rohan, and now, on each of those walls, roughly at eye level, was an infinity symbol. There was some variation in the exact placement of the symbols. Eye level for different individuals. Rohan stepped up to the mirror that bore the symbol at the level closest to his height. The infinity symbol was superimposed over his blurred reflection—over his face, its shape now obvious.

A mask over his mask.

“Clever,” Rohan said, his voice echoing through the mirrored room, through steam growing heavier in the air by the moment. Shifting his suit jacket and shirt to his left hand, Rohan lifted his right to his own mask, the one he’d been given at the start of the Grandest Game.

An object with a specific use—just like the sword, just like the key. Rohan turned his metallic, asymmetrical mask over in his hand, then stepped into the hall to inspect the back.

And there it was, engraved in the tiniest scrawl. A hint. Two words, nothing vague or difficult to interpret about them.

Time Signatures

The waltz, the tango, and “Clair de lune.” Three songs, three different time signatures. Three-four, four-four, nine-eight. How could he have played that piano and not seen it?

Not heard or felt it?

As with all puzzles properly constructed, the answer was simple—simpler, in a whole host of ways, than the hint.

Thirty-four, forty-four, ninety-eight. Three numbers. Rohan would have known exactly where to go with that, even if the calla lily in the music box had not been made of white marble, struck through gold—the same stone as a certain vault-like door.

“Not bad,” Rohan said under his breath.

“I’m flattered.” Jameson appeared at the end of the hall. He eyed Rohan’s bare chest as he strolled around the corner. “Get dressed.”

“Not a phrase I hear all that often.” Rohan made no move to put on either his tuxedo jacket or the midnight blue dress shirt he’d worn underneath. “Lyra Kane knows you put me on her,” he told Jameson.

“How would she know that?” Jameson had an excellent poker face.

Rohan shrugged his bare shoulders, like he didn’t have a care in the world. “I told her.”

Jameson stalked down the long hall toward Rohan. “Why the hell—”

“—did you want her out of the game and gone to begin with?” Rohan cut in. “A valid question, I agree.” He looked Jameson up and down, sizing him up as quickly and neatly as he once had in a fighting ring. “Something has you frazzled, Mr. Hawthorne, and it occurs to me that it might be a secret.”

Rohan was walking a very thin line, but he’d spent a lifetime doing exactly that, and if there was one thing that it had taught him, it was that there was never any harm in securing for oneself a backup plan. He was going to win the Grandest Game and, in doing so, win the Mercy. But if the worst somehow happened, there was potential in this.

In whatever had Jameson Hawthorne on edge. In his secret.

For that matter, there was potential here even if Rohan won. The Proprietor of the Devil’s Mercy traded in secrets.