CHAPTER 21 ROHAN
ROHAN
R ohan abandoned the idea of searching for the other swords and headed straight back to the helipad, but he considered the slight delay and the accompanying shift in his plans to be well worth it. There’s a threat of some sort, and Jameson Hawthorne believes it centers on Lyra Kane.
“Took you long enough.” Savannah was waiting for him at the edge of the landing pad, and she was alone.
Rohan leapt up beside her. “How long did it take your brother to realize you were faking an injury?” That was a guess as to the method’s she’d employed.
“Half brother,” Savannah corrected. “And long enough. I see you have the sword.”
Rohan spun the hilt in his hand. “Shall I do the honors?” Rohan asked. “Or will you?”
Savannah grabbed the hilt directly above Rohan’s hand. The barest brush of skin. He let her have the sword. There were benefits to letting your adversaries win battles that didn’t matter.
As Savannah strode toward the very center of the helipad, Rohan took his sweet time joining her, arriving at her side just as she gripped the hilt with both hands and plunged it into the slit in the metal.
Rohan placed his hands above hers and twisted the sword. Almost immediately, the metal beneath them began to give way, splitting, seams becoming visible for only a second before the entire circle folded in on itself like fanned-out cards being swept back into a single deck.
Rohan jumped for solid ground. Savannah did the same. The taste of anticipation was sweet—almost as sweet as the moment Rohan’s gaze landed on the sole object in the hidden compartment they’d just uncovered.
A ledger, bound in leather. Rohan’s mind went briefly to another ledger, a very valuable one that would be his once he won the Mercy, but the second he retrieved the Grandest Game ledger, he returned to the here and now.
Opening it, Rohan found a single page. A screen, designed to look like paper. He pressed his watch to the page.
Like magic, his named appeared in cursive, as if scrawled by his own hand—a neat little digital trick, that. Savannah went next, and her name appeared directly below his. Almost immediately, she was on the move again, and Rohan realized why.
Two more sections of the landing pad had popped up. Two more hidden compartments, revealed. One Rohan’s. One Savannah’s. Sign the ledger , Rohan thought, get another clue .
Savannah claimed one of the compartments, and Rohan strode toward the other.
Removing its concrete top, he stared at the rectangular cavity underneath.
It was perhaps a foot deep and filled with water.
Through the liquid, Rohan could make out two objects resting at the bottom of the compartment: a delicate bracelet and a metal charm.
Rohan pushed up his sleeve and reached down through the water to claim them.
As he did, a voice spoke, the words coming from all around him.
“From every trap be free, for every lock a key.” The voice was Jameson’s. The phrase was repeated in Avery’s voice when Savannah retrieved the objects from the bottom of her compartment. The tilt of Savannah’s chin gave away her feelings about that .
Deciding against prodding at her, Rohan turned his attention to the charm. A miniature sword.
“A charm bracelet and a charm,” Savannah summarized tartly.
Turning that over in his head, Rohan stood.
Water dripped from his hand onto the helipad.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The sound—or possibly the sensation—gripped him like a fist tightening bit by bit, and for an instant, Rohan felt his body soaked to the bone, felt air much colder than the November night cutting into his skin like a thousand icy splinters.
Slamming his mental walls back into place, Rohan forced a lazy smile onto his face. “From every trap be free, for every lock a key.” He relished quoting the words, because when he was relishing anything, taking pleasure or pain in anything, there was only the now. “Repetition.”
“We already know that the inscription on the sword meant that it was a key.” Savannah walked back toward the hidden compartment. She tossed the ledger in, then gripped the longsword’s hilt with two hands and twisted it counterclockwise.
Like a deck of cards being fanned out once more, the metal sheet covered the compartment, obscuring the ledger as Savannah pulled the key from the lock .
Locks and keys. Charms and swords. “A chain,” Rohan said out loud, looking from the bracelet to the chain around Savannah’s waist. “And a chain.” Perhaps that mattered.
Perhaps it did not. His mind had a way of moving through multiple trains of thought at once, like a half dozen steam engines going full speed ahead on parallel tracks.
“And this isn’t the first time the game has repeated a key phrase. ”
“ From every trap be free, for every lock a key and…” Savannah moved toward Rohan. “Every story has its beginning.” It was clear, just from the way she moved, that she could have done some real damage with that sword.
“ Every story has its beginning ,” Rohan echoed, and suddenly, his brain reached the end of one of those tracks. “A key phrase, in more ways than one.”
Rohan slipped his room key out of the inside pocket of his jacket.
Savannah reached for her own. The designs on the heads of their keys were identical, a combination of four shapes: a diamond, a heart, a club, and the infinity symbol—or, tilted sideways, the number eight .
Words had been engraved into the stem of the key on either side.
EVERY STORY HAS ITS BEGINNING… TAKE ONLY YOUR OWN KEY.
Upon adding their names to the ledger, they’d been given a charm bracelet and a charm. But what if neither of those things was the next clue?
“The water.” Rohan crouched next to the compartment from which he’d retrieved the bracelet and the charm. “There’s a reason for it.” He closed his eyes and breathed in. The smell was faint, but it was there. “This isn’t water.”
He opened his eyes in time to see Savannah crouch beside him.
“I am splendid, am I not?” Rohan said.
“You don’t want me to answer that,” Savannah told him. Her lips curved as she dropped her key into the compartment. Immediately, the liquid inside bubbled and began to shift colors.
“A chemical reaction,” Rohan noted. He gave it a full minute, then thrust his hand down into the liquid, locking his fingers around Savannah’s key and pulling it out. Certain letters now jumped out of the phrase that had been engraved on the front of the key, nearly luminescent.
E V ERY STORY HAS I TS BEG I NN I NG…
Rohan turned the key over to see one more luminescent letter.
TAKE ON L Y YOUR OWN KEY.
Rohan turned the key back and forth in his hand, focused on the letters.
V
I
I
I
L
Adrenaline was an old friend of Rohan’s—and so was victory. “Fair warning, love, I’m about to become insufferable.”
“You’re already insufferable,” Savannah said. Rohan could feel her presence beside him, feel the moonlight shining down on them both like warmth on his skin.
Savannah not-so-gently grabbed Rohan’s jaw, angling his face toward hers. “Tell me, British, why are you about to become even more insufferable than usual?”
“Because I know exactly what a V , three I ’s, and an L spell.” Rohan let that sink in, and then he continued, “A finite number of answers. I know where we’re going next.” He brought his lips within a centimeter of Savannah’s, and this time, his smile was downright wicked. “Do you?”