Page 82 of The Grandest Game
That wasn’t just a truth. That wasthetruth of Rohan’s life. The Mercy was his, and hewasthe Mercy. Without it, he was just a five-year-old boy drowning in dark water.
No one and nothing mattered more.
Rohan waited until the chip lit up, then flipped over another one.Dare.He drew a card. There was only one object left on the table, so he was utterly unsurprised when the image of the glass rose stared back at him.
What do the rest of the cards hold, then?Rohan sidelined that question and locked a hand around the glass rose. And then he held it out to Savannah. “Break it.”
“Excuse me?”
He leaned over to lightly place the rose down on the table, right in front of her. “I see you, Savannah. The real you. Theangryyou.” Rohan let his voice go low and rough. “Fire, not ice.” He nodded toward the rose. “I dare you to break it.”
“I’m not angry.”
It was a good thing the chip he pressed into her palm wasn’t fortruth. “Scared to let go?” Rohan asked her. “You don’t want to admithow angry you are,” he said, his voice low and taunting, “because if you do, someone might ask why.”
There were reasons for him to ask that went beyond wanting—almost needing—to know.
It was all connected. Why she was here. That anger. Her father.What else does the winner of the Grandest Game receive, besides money?
“I bet,” Savannah said, calmly picking up the rose, “that no stranger has ever told you to smile.” She paused. “Perhaps I’m angry because women like me don’tgetto be angry.”
Rohan opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, Savannah turned and threw the glass rose as hard as she could.
It shattered into pieces.
“There you are, Savvy,” Rohan murmured.I see you.
Chapter 60
LYRA
Oh, stop looking at me like that, you two,” Odette said. “I was young.”
“Let me guess,” Grayson replied. “It was a lifetime ago—and how many lives?”
In lieu of responding, Odette hit a button on the projector, and the title card forChanging Crownsgave way to a scene—to a woman. Her hair was red. Her youth was palpable, her features both striking andfamiliar.
“You?” Lyra asked Odette.
“For a time, I wasOdette Mora—not Morales.” Odette paused the film once more. “They made me change that, just like they dyed my hair red the first time I stepped on a studio lot. I was nineteen, and I agreed to it all—the name change, the hair change, the less-than-ideal contract terms. My predator of a husband got me speaking roles in four movies before I left him. He tried to destroy me.” Odette smiled that eagle-on-a-hunt, grandma-baking-cookiessmile. “It didn’t take. I booked a string of movies without him, a few very prominent roles, includingChanging Crowns.” She paused. “And then I stopped.”
“Just like that?” Grayson said.
“I got pregnant.” Odette clipped the words. “I was unmarried. I refused totake care of the situation, and that was the end. This was my last film.”
It was on the tip of Lyra’s tongue to ask Odette how she’d gone from Hollywood starlet to cleaning houses to law school—and eventually, somehow, to Tobias Hawthorne. But instead, Lyra couldn’t help making an observation. “You dye the tips of your hair black now.”
“Perceptive girl. I like the gray, personally—but also? Screw them for ever making me dye it red.” Odette reached out and lightly touched Lyra’s chin. “As a woman, I find it good for the soul to have a physical reminder of the people I’ve buried.”
“Metaphorically buried,” Grayson said. “Of course.”
Odette didn’t comment on that. “I was invited to play the Grandest Game,” she said instead, “as one of the Hawthorne heiress’s personal picks.”
That makes two of us,Lyra thought. And both of them had connections to Tobias Hawthorne, to that List of his. That didn’t strike Lyra as a coincidence.
“The game’s architects knew that I would be playing when they designed these puzzles,” Odette noted. “It appears as though they were also quite confident I would end up inthisroom. It makes one wonder, doesn’t it, what else they arranged just so?”
Lyra thought about Jameson Hawthorne’s wicked smile, back on the helipad.Right after his brother heard my voice for the first time.
