Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (85)

Rohan started at the outside, spiraling in, but halfway through, he stopped and reversed course, starting at the center—with the R—and spiraling out.

R, skip two letters, O, skip two letters, H…

And there it was in black and white, a directive literally tattooed onto Brady’s skin: R-O-H-A-N-M-U-S-T-L-O-S-E.

Rohan must lose.

This was not a temporary tattoo. Based on the look and depth of the ink, it wasn’t of the semipermanent variety, either. No, this tattoo was real, and it was fully healed. Brady Daniels had been one of the Hawthorne heiress’s picks for the game. He would have had all of three days’ notice of that, and yet, the man had clearly had this tattoo for at least a month or two.

You had a sponsor long before you received that invitation, didn’t you, scholar? Long before the nature of this year’s game was even announced. And that sponsor had not given Brady his most important directive directly. That sponsor had not sent Brady into this game knowing that his mission, above all, was to make sure that Rohan lost.

No, Brady’s sponsor had only triggered that order much more recently—sometime after the bonfire but before the yacht. Once it was clear that Savannah and I were still working as a team. Once it was clear just how formidable the two of us were.

Rohan could only conclude that it would have been cleaner for Brady’s sponsor if Brady never knew who his target really was, cleaner if Brady had simply been in position to win the Grandest Game himself. But said sponsor had built in a fail-safe—one that, unlike a message written in invisible ink, could not be intercepted or stolen.

Was the scholar supposed to memorize this sequence? Did he have this inked into his own skin—or did you? Rohan silently addressed those questions to Brady’s sponsor—the same sponsor who had equipped the man with information about the death of Savannah Grayson’s father. Gigi’s, too.

Had Brady been given leverage on any of the other players? It hardly mattered. What mattered most was the fact that this one message—this one directive—had merited different treatment. Weeks before Brady was chosen as a player, he was given this code. Weeks before I became a player, someone knew I would.

Someone had been playing the long game here, and that, as much as the way he’d been targeted, told Rohan exactly who Brady’s sponsor was.

The Devil’s Mercy was many things. A luxurious gambling club. A place where deals were struck and fortunes set. A historic legacy. A shadow force—like an invisible hand, guiding outcomes just so, one long game after another.

And there were only two individuals at the Devil’s Mercy who would dare target Rohan like this. One was the Proprietor himself, and the other was the only person on this planet who needed Rohan to lose the Grandest Game. The person who stood to gain the Devil’s Mercy if he did.

Like hell, Duchess.





Chapter 72





ROHAN


Thunder rumbled as Rohan made his way back to the forest, his golden dart held between his middle finger and thumb. A storm was coming, but there wasn’t a storm in the world that could have kept Rohan away from a certain tree as night fell.

If Zella expected Rohan to fall prey to Brady Daniels—or Savannah—she was going to be sorely disappointed.

You played the long game, Duchess. I play a vicious one. Rohan knelt and stabbed the dart into the side of the silver plaque. This time, there was a click. “Only at night,” Rohan murmured, as the plaque rotated ninety degrees, revealing an opening underneath.

Rohan thrust his hand down and into it. His fingers locked around the leather cover of a ledger, and when he pulled it out, he heard the delicate clinking of metal. Charms, attached to a ribbon on the book. He helped himself to one—a tree, by the feel of it—then opened the ledger and pressed his watch to the page. The book lit up, allowing Rohan to see his name appear on the otherwise blank sheet. First.

There was a flash of brilliant light to his left, and Rohan turned to see an ultra-powerful spotlight shining up into the sky through a break in the canopy overhead. Rohan tilted his head back, taking in the result. Letters—three of them—appeared against the backdrop of the night, washing out the stars.

LIE.

And there’s the next clue, Rohan thought. He did a thorough examination of the hidden compartment to ensure there was nothing further, and then he tossed the ledger back into the hole, locked his fingers around the golden dart again, and pulled it from the plaque. The spotlight didn’t switch off, but the plaque descended, covering the compartment once more.

Rohan stood. There was a rustle in the woods about twenty yards away. Thanks to the spotlight, he was able to make out the full outline of Lyra Kane’s silhouette as she made way toward him, toward the tree. She lifted her gaze to the sky, taking in the word that appeared there.

LIE.

“Some lies are beautiful,” Rohan told his opponent, “for a time.”

Lyra knelt next to the plaque, her gaze on the dart in Rohan’s hand, leaving Rohan to wonder if she still had her own. Wasting no time, Lyra ran her hand around the edge of the plaque and found the hole, and then Rohan got his answer about the dart as Lyra withdrew hers from her jacket pocket.

Raindrops began to fall as she made use of it.

Soon enough, she’d signed the ledger and returned it to the compartment, and it occurred to Rohan that there was one more thing he could do to put distance between Lyra Kane and Grayson Hawthorne, between Savannah and himself. Perhaps he’d already pushed Lyra too far.