Page 23 of The Grandest Game
Stop staring, Lyra told herself. She looked back to the shelves circling the room. “It’s beautiful,” she said, but what she was thinking wasThere’s only one player I haven’t met.
“And you don’t trust beautiful things?” There was something in the masked girl’s tone, an audible spark, like Lyra had just tipped her hand more than she’d intended to. Belatedly, Lyra recognized that voice, and she knew suddenly who the girl in that moon-kissed dress, behind that dark, glittering mask, was.
Not a player.“You’re Avery Grambs.” The Hawthorne heiress, here, right in front of her.
“I was you once.” The heiress smiled, but because of the mask, Lyra had no idea if that smile reached Avery’s eyes. “Trustingpeople wasn’t exactly my forte, either. But if I could give you a little advice, going into this game?”
Everything about this interaction felt surreal. Lyra exhaled. “Like I’m going to turn down advice from the person who masterminded all of this?”
The one pulling the strings. The one at the center of this game. The billionaire. The philanthropist.TheAvery Kylie Grambs.
“Sometimes,” Avery said, “in the games that matter most, the only way to really play is tolive.”
Lyra’s throat tightened, and she looked away. She wasn’t even sure why. When she’d gathered herself, when she glanced back—
The Hawthorne heiress was gone.
Chapter 19
LYRA
Instrumental music floated up from the ground floor as Lyra descended the spiral staircase. Avery Grambs was nowhere in sight. It was like the heiress had disappeared into thin air.
When Lyra made it to the foyer, she discovered that it had been transformed. Towering chocolate and white chocolate fountains sat opposite Greek columns the height of her waist. Each column boasted a platter piled high with meat or fruits. The three massive doors Lyra had seen earlier were now open, revealing the rooms beyond.
A dining room. A study.The music was coming from beyond the third door, on the far side of the staircase. Lyra followed the sound of it into what was, unmistakably, a Great Room. Soaring ceilings boasted an elaborate crystal chandelier, but Lyra barely even noticed the sparkling crystals. Her brain couldn’t process anything butthe view.
The entire back wall of the Great Room was made of glass.
Floor-to-ceiling windows offered an unvarnished panorama ofthe Pacific Ocean at twilight. Thousands of fairy lights dotted the rocky shore. Lyra paced forward, pulled to the windows like a moth to a flame, and it was only once she’d crossed the room that she was able to turn back and shift her attention to what was happening inside the Great Room.
To the ball.
Lyra still didn’t see Avery anywhere, but based on the number of tuxedo-clad masked men present, at least some of the Hawthorne brothershadto be there.
Not Grayson.Lyra couldn’t shake the feeling—the very annoying feeling—that she would have recognized him instantly, no matter the mask he wore.
Forget him. Focus on your competition.Odette was easy to pick out, with her long, thick, black-tipped hair. The old woman wore a black velvet gown complemented by matching gloves that covered her from elbow to fingertip. Her mask was white.Feathered.On the outside edge of each catlike eye, there was a single, deep-red gem.
Rubies, Lyra thought—and not small ones.
Savannah was just as recognizable. Her platinum blond hair was pulled into an even more elaborate braid now than it had been before. From behind, Lyra couldn’t see Savannah’s mask, but that did nothing to lessen how striking the other girl looked draped in ice-blue silk, a vintage-style gown that seemed like it had been plucked straight from the 1930s.
The heavy chain Savannah had worn around her arm before encircled her hips now.
“You’re staring, pet.”
Lyra hadn’t heard Rohan approach, hadn’t so much as seen him out of the corner of her eyes. His mask was a light and shining silver, the metalwork more befitting a crown. It covered the entireleft side of his face but for his eye and extended above his brow and down the temple on his right. The startling asymmetry of the mask made Rohan look, if not broken, then just a little bit twisted.
In a good way.
“I wasn’t staring,” Lyra said.
“Let me guess,” Rohan murmured. “You were looking at the walls.”
The walls?For the first time, Lyra looked to the perimeter of the Great Room. Wood panels lined the walls. A raised design in the wood was reminiscent of Art Deco, but the longer Lyra stared at it, the more the design called to mind a maze.
This is the Grandest Game. What are the chances that itisa maze?
