Page 22 of The Grandest Game
Don your costume and your mask, Lyra thought.The ball begins at quarter past.
She lifted the gown off the bed, revealing a mask, delicate and jeweled, underneath. It was the kind of mask that covered only the region of the face surrounding the eyes, the kind a person might have worn to Mardi Gras.
Or to a masquerade ball, Lyra thought. Bewitched despite herself, she laid the gown over her arm and ran her fingers lightly over the jewels on the mask. Surely those were rhinestones.Surelythose weren’t diamonds, arranged in elaborate, hypnotic swirls, each individual jewel small but flawless.
Surely.
Lyra forcibly turned her attention from the mask back to the gown. Guarding herself against the urge to get carried away in the magic of the moment, she did as she’d been instructed and donned her costume, shedding her own clothes and slipping on the gown.
It’s just a dress, Lyra told herself—but it wasn’tjustanything.
The bodice gripped her curves, the fit uncanny.Perfection.At the smallest part of her waist, the tulle skirt was the same dark blue as the bodice, but the fabric lightened, inch by inch, to a brilliant blue that gave way to a light, frothy one, that melded into the lightest pastel. The bottom of the skirt was completely white. The color didn’t change evenly across the skirt; it changed in waves.
Lyra felt like she was wearing a waterfall.
She reached for the mask. Long, velvety black ribbons hung from either side. Lyra wasn’t sure what she’d expected from the Grandest Game—but not this. She hadn’t expected it to feel like this. Likemagic.
Glittering mask in hand, Lyra made her way from the bedroom into the attached bathroom, drawn to the mirror. She studied herown features as if they belonged to a stranger: dark hair, amber eyes in a heart-shaped face, golden-tan skin.
She stepped back, taking in the look, the feel, the damnauraof the dress, trying to remember that this wasn’t a fairy tale.
This was a competition.
Her gaze caught on the bathroom drawers—two of them, built into the vanity. Inside one, Lyra found a pair of ballet flats. She put them on.
Inside the other drawer, she found a pair of dice.
They’re made of glass, Lyra realized. The glass dice were positioned off-kilter from each other, like they’d been rolled.A three and a five.Lyra picked them up, and the instant she did, words appeared on the bathroom mirror, transposed over her reflection.
PLAYER NUMBER 4, LYRA KANE.Lyra stared at herself, and then the words on the mirror changed.GAME ON.
She put on the mask.
Chapter 18
LYRA
As Lyra stepped into the hallway, she saw a flash of someone else headed down the spiral staircase. She went to follow, but as she hit the stairs, she paused, glancing back at the clock.
5:13.
The stairs spiraled down. The stairs spiraled up.
They’d been given hours to explore the island, but what about the house? Giving in to instinct, Lyra ran up the steps, light on her feet, surprised at how comfortable the ballet flats she’d been given were, how sturdy they felt beneath her feet as she came to the very last step of that grand spiral staircase and—
Lyra came to a complete and utter stop. The staircase let out in a circular room, theonlyroom on the top floor of the house.
A library.Lyra took three steps forward—and spun. She couldn’t help it. Fifteen-foot shelves ringed the room, filled with thousands of books. The ceiling was made of thick stained glassthat, in daylight, would have cast colored light across the gleaming wood floors.
Like the dress and the mask and all the rest of it, this room was magic.
“I’m a sucker for libraries.” The voice came from behind her. “Circular ones in particular.”
Lyra turned to come face-to-face with the speaker—or, more accurately, mask-to-mask.
If she’d thought her own mask was breathtaking, this one was a sight to behold, and so was the gown that went with it, the fabric a deep, midnight purple, richer somehow than Lyra’s blue, the skirt full and covered in breathtaking stitching in a shade of silver like moonlight on water.
The matching mask was lined with delicate black gemstones, with deep purple ones framing the eyes, but the most remarkable thing was the metalwork. Was there such a thing as black gold? If so, some artisan had cajoled it into delicate, interlocking tendrils that resembled nothing so much as lace.
