Page 49 of The Grandest Game
“There’s something therapeutic about winning.” Rohan made that statement sound more cavalier than it was, lest she realize he’d just told her something true.
On the other side of the room, a section of the floor dropped.A trapdoor.Savannah walked toward it, then stopped, turned, and walked back toward him.Long strides. Angry ones.
He’d gotten a rise out of her, and he hadn’t even been trying to. Much.
She stopped with her face mere inches from the blade of thesword. “Save that wolfish smile for someone else. Save the quips and the charm and, while you’re at it, save the rest.”
“The rest?” Rohan stole one of her habitual facial expressions and arched a brow.
“The way you always angle your body toward mine,” Savannah said. “The way you pitch your voice to surround me. Calling melove. Shortening my name. Pretending youseeme, like I am a person desperate to be seen.” Savannah’s gaze flicked up and down the sword’s blade. “I am not desperate. I seeyou: Rohan the charmer, Rohan the player, Rohan the great manipulator who thinks he knows the first thing about who I am and what I’m capable of.”
She smiled, a cutting, socialite smile backed by all the poise in the world. “There’s a message engraved on that blade, by the way.” With that parting shot, she stalked back toward the trapdoor.
“Is there now?” Rohan twisted the sword in his hands. Words stared up at him from the blade’s edge. “From every trap be free,” he read.“For every lock a key.”
“For the record,” Savannah said, standing with her back to him at the edge of the trapdoor, “this was the last time you will ever beat me to anything.”
Those words were both promise and threat—and what a promise and a threat they were.
“And for your edification…” Savannah began lowering herself into the darkness, “I do not care whatwordsother people use to describe me, because those people are beneath me.” He knew what was coming. “And so are you.”
Rohan should have taken the fact that she was lashing out as a sign that he’d read her a little too well, gotten a little too close to something raw, but for some reason, Savannah’s statement took him back to the woman. To being small.
Todarkness.
Todrowning.
“Consider thisyourfair warning, British.” Savannah’s voice cut through the darkness. “I don’t have any tender feelings for you to play on. I don’t have any weaknesses for you to exploit. And when it comes to winning this game? I promise you:Iwant it more.”
Chapter 37
LYRA
Lyra descended a hidden staircase into darkness, Grayson in front of her, Odette behind. With the sword gripped in one hand, Lyra felt her way along the wall with the other, listening for Grayson’s footfalls, counting his steps.
The staircase turned, and Grayson’s voice cut through the darkness. “Take my hand.”
From the sound of his voice alone, she could tell he’d turned to face her, and somehow, her body’s sense for his was so strong that sheknewexactly where his hand was in the darkness.
Take my hand.Doing that would have been a mistake, so Lyra didn’t. But shewantedto, and somehow, that was worse. “Good balance, remember?” She stepped forward, past him and down onto something…metal?
Behind her, Grayson addressed Odette through the darkness. “Just two more steps, Ms. Morales. I’ve got you.”
“Youwouldthink so.” The old woman’s voice was dry. “Where are we?”
The instant that question left Odette’s mouth, lights flared to life, built into the floor of the room they’d just entered. Lyra blinked, taking in her surroundings. The still-dark staircase had let out into a small room with rounded metal walls.
More chamber than room, Lyra thought. It was shaped like a cylinder, maybe seven feet in diameter, ten feet tall.Metal walls. Metal floor. Mirrored ceiling.
There were only two objects in the chamber: a curved monitor affixed to the wall and, beside it, a retro telephone that looked like it had been lifted straight from the nineties. The phone was see-through with a teal cord, its inner parts brightly colored—neon pink, neon blue, neon green.
Lyra walked toward the phone. Odette followed. Suddenly, there was awhirringsound. The floor held steady, but the metal walls shifted, whirling and closing off the stairs.
They were trapped now, just the three of them, the retro phone, and the screen, which flickered to life. Gold words appeared in elaborate script.
From this point on
Three paths diverge
