Page 57 of The Grandest Game
“You’re not really selling me on Knox’s villain origin story here,” Gigi warned.
“The bully was twelve, huge for his age, pretty much a playground psychopath. Knox was half his size, three times as vicious, and completely out of control. Like a scrawny, pissed-off little berserker. To this day, I have never seen anyone fight like that.” Brady gave a subtle shake of his head. “Afterward, when I tried to thank my utterly unhinged, semi-feral defender, Knox told me to piss off.”
Gigi wondered: If she threw herself into good listener mode with everything she had, would Brady tell her the rest of it? How he andKnox had become like brothers? What kind oftrainingthey’d done? Who Severin was? WhoCallawas?
Gigi knew better than to push for any of the answers she really wanted. “What did you do after scrawny, berserker Knox told six-year-old-kid-genius Brady to piss off?”
“Little punk decided we were going to be friends.” Knox stepped back into the chamber. His hair was sopping wet, like he’d doused it—and his face—repeatedly. “Nerdy little pain in my ass just wouldn’t give up. He started bringing two lunches to school each day, and it wasn’t like I was going to turn down food.” Knox looked away. “Eventually, I started eating dinner at his house, too. Every night.”
“My mama’s a good cook,” Brady said, and the fact that he’d mentioned his mama at all reminded Gigi of the way the fight had gone out of Knox the moment he’d heard about Brady’s mother’s cancer.
Dinner at Brady’s house, cooked by Brady’s mama, every night.They really had been like brothers, and Gigi knew to the depths of her soul that they needed a moment. Alone. Maybe they would actually talk to each other. Maybe they’d just focus back on the riddle.
But either way, Gigi had to at least give them the chance.
Decision made, she jack-rabbited through the opening in the chamber wall. “Bathroom,” she called back in explanation. “Though for the record, my bladder is actually quite large!”
Chapter 43
ROHAN
Time passed—too much of it for Rohan’s tastes. You couldn’t rush a riddle, but he saw no utility in remaining static. There were times when winning required patience, but more often, it required action.
“I’ll make you a wager, Savannah Grayson.”
“Will you?” Savannah’s tone was coolly detached, but there was something in the set of her lips that felt more… aggressive.
“How many more puzzles do you think we have to solve before dawn?” Rohan was, among other things, an excellent fencer, but since the sword in his hand was made for fighting of an altogether different type, he fell back on verbal parrying. “And how long have we been staring at this riddle and getting exactly nowhere?”
No response.
“Shall I tell you what you’ve been thinking?” Rohan continued. “Black and whitecould mean either that the answer is clearand unambiguous or that it is literally black and white. A zebra. A newspaper. A checkerboard.”
“Playing cards,” Savannah countered, “in clubs or spades.”
“Not bad.” Rohan looked to the wall. “But not right, either.” He stepped forward, running his hands over the writing, digging his fingers into the grooves of the letters. “Let’s make this interesting, shall we? I’ll bet that I can solve this riddle before you do. A little extra motivation never hurt anyone.”
That was a lie, but Rohan was, in his heart, a liar.
Savannah didn’t bite. “Either you’ve already solved it, and this is your poorly engineered attempt to press your advantage, or youcan’tsolve it, and you’re hoping in vain that this will shake something loose.”
“I don’t have the answer.” Rohan parried once more. “I simply recognize the strategic value of changing up the game.”
“You’re lying.” Savannah turned her back on him.
“If I win,” Rohan pressed, “you have to tell me why you want to become the victor of the Grandest Game so very badly.” He purposefully didn’t use the wordneed. “Whereas if you solve the riddle first, I will tell you everything I know about our competition. The other players’ strengths, their weaknesses, their tragedies, their secrets.”
Rohan wasn’t in the habit of giving other people entry to the labyrinth, but in this case, he was willing to risk a very limited exception.
“You’re bluffing,” Savannah said flatly, but her pupils gave her away—that and the slightest curl of her fingers toward her palms. “The players in this year’s Grandest Game were never publicly announced. How could you possibly know anyone’s secrets?”
Rohan gave a deadly little shrug. “Maybe I made a deal with the devil.”
“I doubt you have anything he wants.”
“Everyone wants something from me.” Rohan found the truth useful—at times. “I know their secrets, Savvy, because knowing such things is my job.”
“And what job is that?” Savannah countered.
