CHAPTER 71 ROHAN
ROHAN
B urn it all down. Rohan watched Lyra Kane from a distance. She was running, and she was alone. Perhaps his earlier warnings to her had finally paid off. Perhaps not. Either way, it wasn’t personal. Strategy was strategy.
People were a means to an end, and that was all.
It made sense, from that perspective, to light another match, another fuse. After all, there was little else for Rohan to do in the hour remaining before night fell.
Clever Hawthornes and their clever little tricks.
Rohan followed Lyra, staying far enough away that she wouldn’t see him immediately and close enough that she might feel him closing in. When she did, when she turned to glance back over her shoulder, Rohan disappeared into shadow.
Just a little while longer.
Just another few minutes.
And then he looped around, approaching her from the front. Let her believe there’s someone else on her tail.
“I tried to warn you,” Rohan called in greeting.
Lyra said absolutely nothing, and Rohan read in her silence and posture and eyes absolutely everything he needed to know. Some people wore devastation as armor and some as a veil. Hers was both, but her body—
The body gave her away. Lyra was tougher than most would have given her credit for, but she was broken.
Burn it all down.
“Grayson Hawthorne has a history, you know,” Rohan told her, “of fancying himself in love with girls and failing to follow through. It’s the idea of a person for him, not the actuality.
You are, I’m afraid, one in a long line.
” True, not true—it hardly mattered. Sometimes, broken things were useful only if mended, and sometimes, they needed to be broken just a little bit more.
“Less than seventy-two hours in, I’m not sure how you thought you were anything else. ”
“Stop.” There it was—more than just a hitch in her voice. A chasm, split open.
Burn it all down. “I’ll see you at the tree at nightfall,” Rohan told Lyra. It had been the fact that she and Grayson had retreated to the house for a nap that had let Rohan spot the trick in their latest clue, but he hadn’t slept.
He hardly needed sleep once the switch had been flipped.
In fact, right now, all he needed was to find Brady Daniels. Savannah had doubtlessly taken the scholar’s deal by now. Time to burn that down, too.
Rohan located the scholar in the ruins. Savannah was not with him, but as far as a deal went, that meant very little.
And Rohan wasn’t here about Savannah. He was here for his dart.
“You again.” Brady did not sound surprised.
“Me again.” Leaving all of six feet between them, Rohan lifted his left wrist—his watch.
“I wanted you to observe as I sent this.” The message to the game makers was already partially typed.
Rohan finished it off with no small amount of flourish.
“A copy of your latest missive from your sponsor. I haven’t the faintest idea what it means, but perhaps the game makers will. ”
Brady took a single step forward. “I can’t you let you do that.”
In his current state, Rohan truthfully felt very little, not even satisfaction at a move well made. “I know.”
“Has it occurred to you what it means that I don’t have to win this game?” Brady said with what Rohan recognized as an artifice of calm. “That all I have to do is take you down?”
“It would be egocentric of me,” Rohan replied facetiously, “to assume that I am your only target.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Brady stated. “But I will.”
Rohan read the truth of that statement in the way Brady stood, feet shoulder width apart, weight slightly to the balls of his feet. It means you have no incentive whatsoever to follow the competition’s rules.
Rohan was counting on that. To preserve his own place in the game, he could not attack first. He had to let Brady Daniels get in a couple of good hits—before he put the scholar down .
“Perhaps the game makers won’t just disqualify you when they receive my message,” Rohan said, his finger hovering over the screen of his watch. “Perhaps they’ll call off the game. I wonder what your sponsor will do to your Calla if they do.”
That did it.
One moment, Brady Daniels was standing perfectly still, and the next, his body was a blur.
Rohan recognized immediately that Brady’s goal was close combat—close enough for the weight he had on Rohan to be an advantage.
Close enough to grapple. Close enough for choke holds and forceful strikes delivered with elbows, shins, and knees.
Rohan let him have that—for a time. He let himself be beat bloody, and then…
Push him back. Rohan did exactly that, without leaving a single mark, without drawing a single drop of blood.
It hadn’t taken him long to pinpoint the mix of styles Brady fought with.
Unfortunately for Rohan’s opponent, Rohan’s strength as a fighter had always been that he had no style.
Every move he made was calculated based solely on what his opponent was about to do.
There were no restraints to the way Rohan fought. He was whatever he needed to be.
There was clarity in pain, and clarity —in a fight of this kind or any other—was always a matter of understanding one’s opponent.
You’re fighting like her life depends on it.
Your sponsor made you believe that it does.
In the labyrinth of his mind, Rohan could hear Nash Hawthorne telling him that he wasn’t going to win the Grandest Game.
Our games have heart. It ain’t gonna be you, kid.
But Rohan didn’t need heart to win this fight.
All he needed to do was take advantage of Brady’s, to give the scholar an opening, one small enough that the intrepid and desperate Mr. Daniels would believe it authentic.
Rohan purposefully overswung. Brady ducked and charged—but Rohan was not as off-balanced as he seemed. He’d cut his teeth fighting in alleyways and palaces and everything in between. The best assaults were always masked with defeat.
He gave Brady a moment—just one—to believe that he’d gained the upper hand, and a fraction of a second later, Rohan was behind the scholar, his arm wrapped around his neck.
A choke hold. An arterial reflex. A sudden drop in blood pressure. A less-experienced fighter—or a more principled one—would have let go when Brady Daniels went limp. Rohan held on just a while longer. Not long enough to do permanent damage—not this time.
He hadn’t even left a mark.
Beaten and bloody himself, Rohan lowered his fallen prey to the ground, and then unzipped the man’s jacket, confiscating every object he had—including two golden darts. Brady hadn’t even bothered to hide them.
“Some people never learn,” Rohan told the scholar, and then, belatedly, he checked the man’s pulse. Steady. Strong. It was just as well. Death was messy. This was a moment for precision.
Rohan lowered Brady’s wrist, and his gaze caught on the tattoo he’d seen earlier, a spiral lined with letters on the inside of the man’s arm. Dozens and dozens of letters, spelling nothing, a seemingly random assortment, and then Rohan realized…
Not random at all.
A potential meaning of the third message that Brady had received from his sponsor hit Rohan as solidly as any blow. One out of three. Every third letter.
Rohan started at the outside, spiraling in, but halfway through, he stopped and reversed course, starting at the center—with the R —and spiraling out.
R , skip two letters , O , skip two letters, H…
And there it was in black and white, a directive literally tattooed onto Brady’s skin:
R-O-H-A-N-M-U-S-T-L-O-S-E.
Rohan must lose.
This was not a temporary tattoo. Based on the look and depth of the ink, it wasn’t of the semipermanent variety, either.
No, this tattoo was real, and it was fully healed.
Brady Daniels had been one of the Hawthorne heiress’s picks for the game.
He would have had all of three days’ notice of that, and yet, the man had clearly had this tattoo for at least a month or two.
You had a sponsor long before you received that invitation, didn’t you, scholar?
Long before the nature of this year’s game was even announced.
And that sponsor had not given Brady his most important directive directly.
That sponsor had not sent Brady into this game knowing that his mission, above all, was to make sure that Rohan lost.
No, Brady’s sponsor had only triggered that order much more recently—sometime after the bonfire but before the yacht. Once it was clear that Savannah and I were still working as a team. Once it was clear just how formidable the two of us were.
Rohan could only conclude that it would have been cleaner for Brady’s sponsor if Brady never knew who his target really was, cleaner if Brady had simply been in position to win the Grandest Game himself.
But said sponsor had built in a fail-safe—one that, unlike a message written in invisible ink, could not be intercepted or stolen.
Was the scholar supposed to memorize this sequence? Did he have this inked into his own skin—or did you? Rohan silently addressed those questions to Brady’s sponsor—the same sponsor who had equipped the man with information about the death of Savannah Grayson’s father. Gigi’s, too.
Had Brady been given leverage on any of the other players?
It hardly mattered. What mattered most was the fact that this one message—this one directive—had merited different treatment.
Weeks before Brady was chosen as a player, he was given this code.
Weeks before I became a player, someone knew I would.
Someone had been playing the long game here, and that , as much as the way he’d been targeted, told Rohan exactly who Brady’s sponsor was.
The Devil’s Mercy was many things. A luxurious gambling club. A place where deals were struck and fortunes set. A historic legacy. A shadow force—like an invisible hand, guiding outcomes just so, one long game after another.
And there were only two individuals at the Devil’s Mercy who would dare target Rohan like this. One was the Proprietor himself, and the other was the only person on this planet who needed Rohan to lose the Grandest Game. The person who stood to gain the Devil’s Mercy if he did.
Like hell, Duchess.