Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (91)

“Unless I am mistaken,” Zella said, in the tone of someone who knew quite well that they were not, “the Grandest Game will soon be coming to its end. I have put in motion all I can on that front, and now it seems there are bigger games to play. Tell me what the Watcher said.”

Slate stared her down for three full seconds—and then he dropped his hand and backed away. There was something unrecognizable in those dark eyes of his, and Gigi thought about his knife, about the number of horrible things he claimed to have done. Fourteen.

“Who is she?” Eve walked to stand toe-to-toe with Zella. “The Watcher. How did you know she would come? How do you know her?”

“We were sisters,” Zella said, “once upon a time.”

Gigi’s eyes widened. And widened some more. “Calla is your sister?” Gigi thought back to the Woman in Red and her story about the seventeen-year-old girl she’d once been. She’d said something about Orion Thorp having a biological child, even though Calla was the one who’d borne the Thorp name.

“Calla is long gone.” Zella let her disconcertingly calm gaze settle on Gigi. “Now, what did the Watcher want with you?”

With me. Gigi thought about the flower she’d found—the calla lily she’d been sent. “She wanted information about the game.” Gigi had always excelled at trusting people who’d done nothing to deserve it, so why change now? “About Lyra.”

“And what information did you give her about Lyra Kane?” Zella asked.

Gigi glanced pointedly at Eve. “Someone told her all sorts of things.”

“Oddly enough,” Eve said, crossing her arms over her chest, “I find I’m no longer in a sharing mood.”

“Defy your mood,” Zella replied, “and in return, I will arm you.” One second, her hands were empty, and the next, she was holding a sheathed blade.

“My knife.” Slate’s voice was flat, even for him, and Gigi’s sixth sense for broody boys told her that he was about half a second from going for that knife.

“Omega,” Gigi blurted out. Her optimism had run desert-dry, and she wasn’t taking any chances with that blade.

With Mattias Slater.

“That’s what Eve told Calla,” Gigi continued, trying not to sound like she was babbling. “Something about omega, something about lilies, something about Alice Hawthorne.”

There was the slightest incline of Zella’s chin. “That will give her the ammunition she so badly desires. She always was the ambitious one.”

“Ammunition for what?” Gigi said, but all she could think was: The time for watching is done.

Zella spun the knife in her hand to grip it by the sheath and held the handle out to Slate, who took it. “If you’re still keeping a tally,” Zella told him, nodding to the knife, “you’re not all the way gone yet.” The elegant woman turned to Gigi and Eve. “As for the two of you, I will arm you with this: If the time comes that you see my sister again—or anyone like her—know that it is in your power to say no.”

Gigi blinked.

“No to what?” Eve said.

“Regardless of how the question might be phrased or what pressure is brought to bear, it is an invitation, an ask. And asks may be answered, invitations declined.” Zella turned back toward the infinity fountain on the wall, and a moment later, it parted.

Freedom.

Zella waited for them to take it. “Four miles, due north,” she told Slate. “There’s a bar. It’s a rather seedy establishment, but if you take her there, someone Hawthorne-adjacent will come for her soon enough.”





Chapter 79





LYRA


Respect the grayest pile—the words echoed through Lyra’s mind as she walked through the remains of that once-great mansion—for the departed creature’s sake that hovered there a while.

For Lyra, the clue called to mind a tombstone—or ashes, which was how she’d ended up back in the one place on the island where it was even harder not to think about Grayson Hawthorne: the ruins.

Lyra remembered walking this place with her eyes closed on day one. She remembered Grayson’s hand on her arm—then forced herself to focus on the charred world around her. Respect the grayest pile…

At night, with no source of light but her watch, there was no reason for Lyra to close her eyes, but she did it anyway.

For the departed creature’s sake… She found her way to what remained of the hearth. That hovered there a while.

Nothing lasted forever. That was what Lyra took from the words, no matter how hard she tried to see them as a riddle. All any human could hope for was to hover for a while, and then, in the blink of a cosmic eye, that person’s life was over and gone and done, and the world went on.

Beside the hearth, Lyra sank to her knees, opening her eyes and running her hands over the ground. There was no floor to speak of, only what remained of the foundation, which was cracked and splintered, vines growing through it.

Respect the grayest pile…

Even the word grayest hurt—too close to his name. Lyra swept her hand out and over the rubble. Crawling forward, she did the same thing again and again and again, and then finally, she must have tripped some kind of wire or trigger, because delicate beams of light began to shine up through the cracks in the foundation, illuminating the ruins in a strange, piecemeal kind of way—a little unearthly and wholly unsettling.