CHAPTER 10 ROHAN
ROHAN
I t was quite some time into the evening before Rohan allowed himself three seconds to relish the sight of Savannah in form-fitting white.
A thick metal chain, won earlier in the game, was wound around her body, just above her hips.
Rohan could almost tell himself that his interest was the chain—but then, in his line of work, almost was never enough.
The Proprietor’s voice echoed in the halls of his mind. What are distractions, Rohan?
Even in firelight, Rohan could make out every line of Savannah’s body beneath her so-called armor. Weakness , Rohan thought, the word a murmur in his mind. Distractions were weakness, and Rohan was many things—but never weak.
Instead of allowing himself to dwell further on his one and only ally in this game, he turned his attention to the competition. Lyra Kane was sitting near the bonfire. Brady Daniels stood at the darkened ocean’s edge, longsword held at his side.
And then there was the Hawthorne of it all.
Only a lifetime spent in shadows allowed Rohan to pinpoint Grayson’s exact location. He tracked his quarry’s progress back down the cliff, then looked for Grayson’s brother, the Hawthorne that Rohan knew best.
Jameson was nowhere to be seen.
“Notice how one of the game makers pulled Grayson aside?” Savannah and that white armor of hers slid in beside Rohan. “And Grayson and Lyra were the first two down here tonight. A cynical person might say this game appears to be rigged.”
“All games are rigged, love.” Rohan continued tracking Grayson’s progress.
“In the long run, the house always wins. If you’ve gotten this far without realizing that nothing in life is fair, then evidence suggests that perhaps you are the house.
” Rohan’s voice was like silk in the night air. “Perhaps you always have been.”
Savannah had a trust fund. She had a mother—an excellent one, based on Rohan’s pre-game reconnaissance, not to mention a sister who was all things good and light.
Savannah’s jaw hardened. “You’re thinking that my ticket to this game was handed to me.”
Rohan noted that she did not specify the person who had given her that ticket. In fact, by Rohan’s accounting, Savannah had not said the Hawthorne heiress’s name once since the night before and that tantalizing confession of hers. Avery Grambs killed my father.
Rohan doubted that very much, but he was not in the business of correcting false beliefs that he could use.
“Frankly, love, I’m less interested in how you received your ticket to the Grandest Game than I am in knowing who got to you immediately thereafter.
” Rohan knew exactly how to pitch his voice to ensure that he was not overheard. “That sponsor of yours.”
“Your interest is of little concern to me,” Savannah said tartly.
In the distance, Grayson made it to the base of the cliff, and Rohan allowed himself to turn and drink in the sight of Savannah once more, his gaze going slowly to the thick platinum chain just above her hips. “That’s going to slow you down.”
“Is that why you didn’t bring our sword?”
Their sword—or more accurately, Rohan’s —was well hidden, and it would stay that way until its use in the game became apparent. Being weighed down was a liability, a risk. Weakness.
“There is limited utility,” Rohan advised Savannah, “in the kind of weapon that other people can see.” With a magician’s flourish, he produced a photograph seemingly out of thin air, one he’d helped himself to earlier as he’d brushed past Brady Daniels.
Zippered pockets provided little protection against an accomplished thief.
“What is this?” Savannah asked, less question than demand.
In the photograph, a teenage girl with heterochromia—one blue eye, one brown—drew an arrow on a longbow.
“The scholar had it in his jacket pocket,” Rohan told Savannah, allowing her a moment longer to look before he made the picture disappear as easily as he’d stolen it in the first place.
“ For every lock a key ,” he quoted, his lips twisting into a not-so-subtle smile.
“Weakness and motivation are often one and the same. The girl in that photograph is Brady’s. ”
His weakness. His motivation.
Savannah took a second to reply—only one. “You knew about this girl coming into the game.”
Rohan had made it his business to gather as much information as he could about all of the other players, which made the things he did not know that much more enticing. “Puppy love, tragic endings, etcetera, etcetera,” he told Savannah. “The girl is missing, presumed dead. Has been for years.”
Rohan didn’t tell Savannah that the girl’s name was Calla Thorp or that Calla’s father had sponsored one of the eliminated players, Knox Landry, in this year’s game. Even without those details, the lovely and merciless Ms. Grayson zeroed in on the appropriate question with admirable efficiency.
“Does Brady have a sponsor?”
“Not that I know of,” Rohan replied. He neglected to point out that this lack of knowledge was itself significant because it suggested either that Brady Daniels was not much of a threat at all… or that his sponsor was a very big one.
Discretion, Rohan had learned over the years, was not merely the better part of valor. Discretion—flying below notice at will—was a blade.