Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (65)

As she crossed the room, Lyra pieced together Grayson’s interaction with his sister, the tension in his muscles now, the way he’d gone quiet and intent after his conversation with Toby. With Eve’s father. And just like that—just like another puzzle or riddle or code falling into place—Lyra saw it.

“Why does Eve want Savannah to win the Grandest Game?” she asked. In the silence of the vault, Lyra could hear Grayson breathing in and out, and her breaths fell into his rhythm. “Grayson?”

“You are frightening, Lyra Kane.”

She passed the ledger to him. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Grayson pressed his watch to the page. “No Hawthorne has ever fallen for a woman who did not, on occasion, terrify him.”

Words rang in Lyra’s memory. You don’t fall. I do.

“I’m not wrong, am I?” Lyra said. “About Savannah.” The most logical reason for Eve to want Lyra to lose the game was to increase another player’s odds of winning. “Maybe, if I’d been as antagonistic to the Hawthorne family as Eve had hoped I would be, she would have tasked me with aiding your sister, but—”

“It is possible,” Grayson allowed, “that I have been keeping a secret from Savannah, one I’d hoped to spare her from. One that left her vulnerable to Eve.”

And that, Lyra realized almost immediately, was all that Grayson was going to say on the topic. She thought about what he’d said earlier—about Eve, about Avery. It’s complicated. From that and from the way Grayson had spoken to his sister, Lyra assumed that Savannah Grayson’s motives for playing the Grandest Game weren’t exactly pure.

She has a plan.

“Grayson?” Lyra’s low voice echoed through the marble room. “Do you need your sister to lose this game?”

“That would be ideal.”

“In that case…” Lyra reached for the shelf with her name on it and claimed the objects on top. From inside the leather pouch, she slid out an antique compass—bronze, just like the key to her room. She opened the compass and found an inscription inside—their next clue.

DON’T LOOK.

DON’T JUDGE.

CAN’T SEE.

WHAT YOU WANT IS NUMBER THREE.

DON’T PUT.

DON’T COUNT.

NOT WITHIN

BUT WITHOUT.



The words rang in Lyra’s mind. Before, she’d been playing this game for herself, for Mile’s End. Now, she was playing it for Grayson, too. The only way to ensure that Savannah lost this game was to win it.

As Grayson claimed his own compass, Lyra turned, taking in the whole of the empty room, and the oddest feeling settled over her body—part anticipation, part uncanny certainty, almost like déjà vu, like she knew what was going to happen before a single conscious thought had formed.

She took off Grayson’s tuxedo jacket and tossed it to him, and then Lyra reached for the opera glasses threaded through the chain on her bag.





Chapter 55





GRAYSON


Grayson slipped on his tuxedo jacket as Lyra lifted Odette’s opera glasses to her eyes. She truly was terrifying, Lyra Kane—the way she’d pieced together the meaning of his interaction with Savannah, the way she’d known that his conversation with Toby had affected him, when to the rest of the world, Grayson’s stony mask was impenetrable. Terrifying though you may be, Lyra Kane, there is so much that you don’t know.

So much that he could not tell her.

As if on cue, the watch on Grayson’s wrist vibrated. He had sent a message to his brothers in response to what Toby had said on the chopper. Three words, sufficiently vague: TOBY KNOWS SOMETHING.

The reply he’d just received was almost, though not quite, as oblique. ABOUT EVE?

The or on the end of that question went unsaid.

“Grayson,” Lyra said beside him. “There’s something written on this wall.”

Taking advantage of the fact that she still had the opera glasses to her eyes—that she could not see him—Grayson typed back two letters, the briefest of messages. NO.

He trusted that Jameson and Avery, at least, would read the correct meaning into that: Not about Eve. About Alice. What specifically Toby knew, Grayson had not been able to ascertain, but whatever it was, Grayson’s Hawthorne intuition said that Toby had known it for a very long time.

Grayson forced himself to set that thought aside and crossed to Lyra. He had to stay the course: keep Lyra focused on the game, try again with Savannah as soon as he could get her away from Rohan, and trust that Avery could get something out of Toby.

“May I?” Grayson asked Lyra. She handed him the opera glasses, and he looked at the wall. There was indeed something written there—a hint, he would wager. Unfortunately, the script that the opera glasses revealed was not nearly as clear as the writing on the compass. There were some letters visible on the wall but also disjointed symbols. Or parts of letters.

“Invisible ink.” Grayson lowered the opera glasses and walked to the wall in question. It had an abundance of seams. Squares, Grayson realized. The seams divided the marble into twenty squares—four by five. Grayson recognized this particular trick for what it was.

“Look for a loose square,” he told Lyra. “One of these will come off.”