Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (95)

Savannah’s chain.

Rohan knew then how she had paid the toll—with a form of payment that wasn’t an option for any other player. For days, Savannah had worn that platinum chain wound around her waist, and then she’d opened this room with a gleaming, precious-metal gear, and when a toll had been requested…

She’d paid.

Rohan did not have time to dither, to wonder, to curse himself for not removing her advantage earlier. Unlike Savannah, he had no trump card to play here, no ability to shortcut this puzzle. He needed an answer. What toll? Rohan looked up again, scanning the items hanging from the ceiling, and then he stood, walking through them, zigging, zagging. Which item?

Which object?

It hit him—hard and all at once. There is one object left in this game that has never been used in any way, shape, or form. Rohan reached for his pocket, for his dice. He went back to the indigo tile and placed them on its surface. When that didn’t work, he tried rolling them.

Still nothing.

Rohan did not have time for this. The Mercy hung in the balance. Promises were no harder to break than glass. He punched a closed fist into the indigo tile—not hard enough to shatter it but hard enough to hurt.

With pain came clarity. Rohan needed that clarity. To his surprise, the second time he punched the tile, another word flashed across its surface.

LOVELY.

Rohan’s mind raced. Pay the toll. Lovely. He hit the indigo tile again and again and again until another word appeared. ALLURING.

Overhead, riches awaited, and these descriptions—they could describe any of them. Lovely. Alluring. Rohan would beat his knuckles raw if he had to, but it didn’t come to that, because the next word to flash across the tile was PRINCE.

Rohan let out a low and rumbling chuckle. Lovely. Alluring. Prince—

“Charming,” Rohan murmured. The jewels hanging from the ceiling were nothing but a lovely bit of misdirection. The dice were not the only objects left in this game. “The charms.”

There was a sound behind him, then—turning gears. Company, incoming.

Rohan moved like lighting, dropping his charm bracelet and the attached charms onto the indigo tile. When that yielded no effect, he tore the charms off one by one.

The sword.

The clock.

The music note.

The tree.

The quill.

He dropped the charms—and only the charms—onto the tile, and the effect was immediate. The five bits of precious silver rearranged themselves, each pulled with what had to be some kind of magnetic force to a specific location on the tile.

Not silver, Rohan realized, but steel.

The door behind him opened, but Rohan didn’t even look back. Together, the five charms now formed an arrow. The indigo tile dropped, causing his charms to fall into the compartment below—his toll, accepted, and the wall that the arrow had pointed to parted.

Rohan dashed through the opening, and the watch on his wrist vibrated, the same message as before.

A PLAYER HAS REACHED THE FINAL PUZZLE.

The wall closed behind Rohan, and he turned back just long enough to catch sight of Lyra Kane and Grayson Hawthorne.

How much did they see? Rohan dismissed the question. He did not have time for questions. Before him, there was a darkened staircase. Rohan resisted the urge to run down it and was rewarded when he noticed something—besides water—on the second step down. Earbuds. Multiple pairs. Rohan plucked a set up and plugged them into his ears.

As he descended the remaining stairs, the voice of Avery Grambs rang in his ears. “Biggest, smallest, white, red,” the voice said. “Do you know the question yet?”

Rohan reached immediately for the dice in his pocket—red dice that rolled a six and a two, every time, for a total of eight. Savannah’s white dice had yielded the same result through a slightly different roll—a five and a three.

Biggest, smallest, white, red. Do you know the question yet?

Rohan could do the Hawthorne heiress one better. He knew the answer. The code. Stepping off the staircase, Rohan looked for a way to input it. The room before him was plain. The floor was made of what looked like cement. The walls were white and bare. There was no keypad, no combination dial, no flatscreen on which to enter the code that Rohan knew.

The only object in the entire room was a small glass cylinder sitting on the floor, its circumference just slightly bigger than the breadth of Rohan’s dice.

And that was when Rohan knew: The dice weren’t just a clue to a combination. They weren’t a code. The dice themselves were the key to one final lock—and he needed both pairs.

Biggest, smallest, white, red. Do you know the question yet?

Rohan thought back to words that Avery Grambs had spoken at the beginning of phase two. Only one of you can win this year’s Grandest Game, but in a very real sense, none of you are in this alone.

“I knew it was going to be you.” Savannah stepped out of the shadows, and in Rohan’s mind, he heard yet another voice. It ain’t gonna be you, kid.

Nash Hawthorne had predicted that Rohan was going to lose the Grandest Game, because Hawthorne games had heart. And to win this game…

Rohan looked from the dice in his palm up to another palm, holding another set of dice. Savannah’s. From the room above, there was a rumbling sound—the wall at the top of the stairs, parting once more.

Rohan’s watch buzzed. Twice. Lyra and Grayson had paid the toll, and Rohan knew, whether or not they’d mended things, Grayson Hawthorne would give Lyra Kane his dice in an instant.