Page 2 of The Grandest Game
“Go,” the Proprietor said, blocking the way back to Rohan’s rooms.“Now.”
Rohan knew London. He could move through any part of the city, high society or low, like a ghost. But for the first time since he was five years old, he didn’t have the Mercy to go back to.
Look for an opening. Look for a loophole. Look for a weakness.His mind churning, Rohan looked for a pint.
Outside his pub of choice, two dogs fought. The smaller of the two had the look of a wolf about her. She was losing the fight. Stepping into the middle of it probably wasn’t the wisest course of action, but Rohan was a little beyondwisdomat the moment.
When the larger dog had been sent on its way, Rohan wiped the blood off his forearm and knelt in front of the smaller one. She snarled. He smiled.
The pub door opened. Inside, a television blared—an anchor’s voice. “We’re hearing reports that the first annual Grandest Game, the sprawling, mind-twisting competition designed and funded by Hawthorne heiress Avery Grambs, has reportedly reached its conclusion. A winner of the seventeen-million-dollar prize is expected to be announced via livestream any—”
The door slammed shut.
Rohan met the dog’s wolfish gaze. “Annual,” he murmured. Meaning that next year, there would be another. He would have a year to plan. A year to arrange things just so. Fortunately, Avery Grambs had never been amemberof the Devil’s Mercy.
Hello, loophole.Rohan stood. He reached for the pub door and glanced down. “Coming?” he asked the dog.
Inside, the owner of the pub recognized Rohan immediately. “What’ll it be?”
Even without the backing of the Mercy, a man of Rohan’s skills and reputation still had a card or two to play. “A pint for me,” he said. “A steak for her.” Rohan’s lips curved, more on one side than the other. “And transportation out of London. Tonight.”
Chapter 1
LYRA
The dream started the way it always did, with the flower. Seeing the calla lily in her hand filled Lyra with sickly sweet dread. She looked to her other hand—and the sad remains of a candy necklace. It held only three pieces of candy.
No.
On some level, Lyra knew she was nineteen, but in the dream, her hands were small—a child’s hands. The shadow looming over her was large.
And then came the whisper:“A Hawthorne did this.”
The shadow—her biological father—turned and walked away. Lyra couldn’t see his face. She heard footsteps going up the stairs.
He has a gun.Lyra woke with a start, a breath trapped in her chest, her body rigid, and her head… on a desk. In the time it took for her vision to clear and the real world to slide firmly back into place in front of her, Lyra remembered that she was in class.
Except the lecture hall was almost empty.
“You have ten minutes left on the test.” The only other person in the room was a fifty-year-old man wearing a blazer.
Test?Lyra’s gaze darted to a clock on the wall. As she registered the time, her panic began to ebb.
“Might as well just take the zero at this point.” The professor scowled at her. “The rest of the class is already done. I suspecttheydidn’t spend last night partying.”
Because the only reason a girl who looks like me could be tired enough to fall asleep in class is because she was partying.Annoyance flared inside Lyra, banishing the last remnants of the dream’s dread. She looked down at the test. Multiple choice.
“I’ll see what I can get done in ten minutes.” Lyra fished a pen out of her backpack and began to read.
Most people could see images in their minds. For Lyra, there were only words and concepts and feelings. The only time shesawanything in her mind’s eye was when she dreamed. Luckily, not getting bogged down in mental imagery made her a very fast reader. And just as luckily, whoever had written this test had fallen into a predictable pattern, a familiar one.
To find the right answer, all a person had to do was decode the relationships between the options offered. Were two of them opposites? Did one of those opposites vary from the remaining choices only by nuance? Or were there two answers thatsoundedthe same? Or one or more answers thatseemedtrue but probably weren’t?
That was the thing about multiple-choice tests. You didn’t need to know anything about the material if you could break the code.
Lyra answered five questions in the first minute. Four the next. The more test bubbles she filled in, the more palpable the professor’s irritation with her grew.
“You’re wasting my time,” he said. “And yours.”
