CHAPTER 81 ROHAN
ROHAN
R ohan ignored the buzzing at his wrist, not even blinking as he opened a leatherbound copy of Emily Dickinson poems. The pages inside had been hollowed out.
Sitting there, staring back at Rohan, there was a silver charm—a quill—and beside it, much larger, there was a gleaming, metallic gear. Platinum. Rohan removed first the charm, then the gear, and the moment he lifted the latter, he heard a compartment opening in the floor behind him.
He whirled. The ledger. Rohan had it in his hands in an instant. He flipped it open to a single name, the only player in this game who’d beat him here.
Savannah. Rohan could make out the places she’d dripped on the floor easily enough, and as expert as he usually was at locking memories away in the labyrinth of his mind, Savannah Grayson’s words down on the dock haunted him.
I never gave you permission to be the one who ended things.
All you get to decide is whether you are really that scared. Of me.
When I win, I’ll give you the—
Rohan cut Savannah’s vow off in his mind. Only a fool would rely on the promise of a woman he’d scorned. As he pressed his watch to the ledger, Rohan registered the message he’d received and ignored.
A PLAYER HAS REACHED THE FINAL PUZZLE.
Of course she had. Rohan did not know whether to be gratified or infuriated that the Grandest Game—and his future, the Mercy—was going to come down to this. To the two of them—on her terms, not his.
Rohan returned the ledger. The compartment closed, and as Savannah obviously had before him, Rohan descended the spiral staircase from the fifth floor to the fourth, from the fourth to third and then down one more story, to a door covered in gears of bronze, silver, and gold—but not completely covered.
There were gaps here and there—one fewer, Rohan would wager, than there had been before. He pressed his gear to the door, into one of those open spots, and the moment he did, all the other gears began to turn.
A lock clicked.
The door swung outward.
Rohan stepped across the threshold—and onto a ledger.
He added his name below Savannah’s. Where are you, love?
He assessed the rest of the room. The floor was made entirely of stained glass, a rainbow of tiles in every shade imaginable, no two squares exactly the same hue.
Hanging from the ceiling were strings of sparkling jewels—dozens of precious stones and crystals, suspended midair in a room that seemed to be made of light.
It would have made for a dazzling finale, but Savannah was nowhere to be seen, which meant that Rohan was still behind. He hadn’t reached the final puzzle yet.
But she hasn’t solved it. Rohan had to believe that all of the players would have been informed if Savannah had finished the game, and that meant that he hadn’t lost yet. I just have to catch up.
Pacing the edges of the room, Rohan took in each and every string of jewels.
Different colors. Different sizes. There was even a geode or two.
He processed that—processed everything about this room, all at once, including the pattern of the water that Savannah had dripped onto the colored tiles.
It looked like she’d traversed nearly the entire room. Doing what?
Rohan came to the spot with the biggest puddle, the spot where she’d stood dripping the longest. He knelt, examining the tile there. It wouldn’t come up, but when he put his palm flat against it and pressed down, words appeared for a second or two.
PAY THE TOLL.
Rohan knew better than most: Everything came at a cost.
But what cost? He tilted his gaze up to look again at the riches dangling from the ceiling, a veritable maze of shining, sparkling things. What toll?
Refusing to even consider a process of trial and error, Rohan looked back down at the tile he’d found, indigo in color, perhaps eighteen inches by eighteen inches, translucent enough for light to shine through.
In fact… Rohan shifted, dropping his chest to the floor, bringing his eyes very nearly level with the tile. He depressed it again. No words this time, but enough light shined up through it that, for a split second, he was able to see through to what lay underneath.
The object in question lay coiled beneath the surface like a snake, and though Rohan could not make out much more than its silhouette, he recognized it immediately.
Savannah’s chain.
Rohan knew then how she had paid the toll—with a form of payment that wasn’t an option for any other player. For days, Savannah had worn that platinum chain wound around her waist, and then she’d opened this room with a gleaming, precious-metal gear, and when a toll had been requested…
She’d paid.
Rohan did not have time to dither, to wonder, to curse himself for not removing her advantage earlier.
Unlike Savannah, he had no trump card to play here, no ability to shortcut this puzzle.
He needed an answer. What toll? Rohan looked up again, scanning the items hanging from the ceiling, and then he stood, walking through them, zigging, zagging. Which item?
Which object?
It hit him—hard and all at once. There is one object left in this game that has never been used in any way, shape, or form. Rohan reached for his pocket, for his dice. He went back to the indigo tile and placed them on its surface. When that didn’t work, he tried rolling them.
Still nothing.
Rohan did not have time for this. The Mercy hung in the balance. Promises were no harder to break than glass. He punched a closed fist into the indigo tile—not hard enough to shatter it but hard enough to hurt .
With pain came clarity. Rohan needed that clarity. To his surprise, the second time he punched the tile, another word flashed across its surface.
LOVELY.
Rohan’s mind raced. Pay the toll. Lovely. He hit the indigo tile again and again and again until another word appeared. ALLURING.
Overhead, riches awaited, and these descriptions—they could describe any of them. Lovely. Alluring. Rohan would beat his knuckles raw if he had to, but it didn’t come to that, because the next word to flash across the tile was PRINCE.
Rohan let out a low and rumbling chuckle. Lovely. Alluring. Prince—
“Charming,” Rohan murmured. The jewels hanging from the ceiling were nothing but a lovely bit of misdirection. The dice were not the only objects left in this game. “The charms.”
There was a sound behind him, then—turning gears. Company, incoming.
Rohan moved like lighting, dropping his charm bracelet and the attached charms onto the indigo tile. When that yielded no effect, he tore the charms off one by one.
The sword.
The clock.
The music note.
The tree.
The quill.
He dropped the charms—and only the charms—onto the tile, and the effect was immediate. The five bits of precious silver rearranged themselves, each pulled with what had to be some kind of magnetic force to a specific location on the tile.
Not silver , Rohan realized, but steel .
The door behind him opened, but Rohan didn’t even look back. Together, the five charms now formed an arrow. The indigo tile dropped, causing his charms to fall into the compartment below—his toll, accepted, and the wall that the arrow had pointed to parted.
Rohan dashed through the opening, and the watch on his wrist vibrated, the same message as before.
A PLAYER HAS REACHED THE FINAL PUZZLE.
The wall closed behind Rohan, and he turned back just long enough to catch sight of Lyra Kane and Grayson Hawthorne.
How much did they see? Rohan dismissed the question.
He did not have time for questions. Before him, there was a darkened staircase.
Rohan resisted the urge to run down it and was rewarded when he noticed something—besides water—on the second step down.
Earbuds. Multiple pairs. Rohan plucked a set up and plugged them into his ears.
As he descended the remaining stairs, the voice of Avery Grambs rang in his ears. “Biggest, smallest, white, red,” the voice said. “Do you know the question yet?”
Rohan reached immediately for the dice in his pocket—red dice that rolled a six and a two, every time, for a total of eight. Savannah’s white dice had yielded the same result through a slightly different roll—a five and a three.
Biggest, smallest, white, red. Do you know the question yet?
Rohan could do the Hawthorne heiress one better.
He knew the answer. The code. Stepping off the staircase, Rohan looked for a way to input it.
The room before him was plain. The floor was made of what looked like cement.
The walls were white and bare. There was no keypad, no combination dial, no flatscreen on which to enter the code that Rohan knew .
The only object in the entire room was a small glass cylinder sitting on the floor, its circumference just slightly bigger than the breadth of Rohan’s dice.
And that was when Rohan knew: The dice weren’t just a clue to a combination. They weren’t a code. The dice themselves were the key to one final lock—and he needed both pairs.
Biggest, smallest, white, red. Do you know the question yet?
Rohan thought back to words that Avery Grambs had spoken at the beginning of phase two. Only one of you can win this year’s Grandest Game, but in a very real sense, none of you are in this alone.
“I knew it was going to be you.” Savannah stepped out of the shadows, and in Rohan’s mind, he heard yet another voice. It ain’t gonna be you, kid.
Nash Hawthorne had predicted that Rohan was going to lose the Grandest Game, because Hawthorne games had heart . And to win this game…
Rohan looked from the dice in his palm up to another palm, holding another set of dice. Savannah’s. From the room above, there was a rumbling sound—the wall at the top of the stairs, parting once more.
Rohan’s watch buzzed. Twice. Lyra and Grayson had paid the toll, and Rohan knew , whether or not they’d mended things, Grayson Hawthorne would give Lyra Kane his dice in an instant.
Biggest, smallest, white, red. Do you know the question yet?
Rohan knew. He’d solved it. And it didn’t matter. Bloody Hawthornes and their bloody games. There was no time. No time to make a go at lifting your dice, love. No time for persuasion. No time for bargains.
The Devil’s Mercy hung in the balance, and there was no time for Rohan to do anything except the one thing that Nash Hawthorne had clearly not expected him to be capable of.
“Damn it all to hell and back.” Rohan crossed to Savannah and pressed his dice into her hands.
Trust was weakness.
Affection was weakness.
Rohan was not wired to rely on anyone else, ever—not like this. But what choice did he have? He’d aligned himself with Savannah Grayson, and he’d pushed her away. He’d pushed and pushed and pushed, and the betrayal had never come.
Make your move, love.
Savannah did not hesitate. She never hesitated, was incapable of it. One after another, she dropped the glass dice into the cylinder: White dice first, the five before the three. Then the red six and the red two last.
Biggest, smallest, white, red. Do you know the question yet?
The second the last die was in the cylinder, music filled the air. Church bells. The ceiling parted. A flatscreen television descended, an obvious camera attached to its side. The screen flickered to life—but the light on the camera never came on.
On the screen, there were four chairs. One for each of the game makers, but those chairs were…
Empty.
Rohan’s watch buzzed. He didn’t look down, his eyes trained on Savannah. Behind him, Lyra Kane read the message they had all just received aloud: “We have a winner.”
Savannah. She’d won the Grandest Game. But there was no one on the screen—no Hawthornes, no heiress, not even their lawyer. There was no livestream, no one to accuse.
“Where are they?” Savannah Grayson was fury and poise and best-laid plans come to ruin. “I won .” Savannah did not raise her voice, but she might as well have been screaming for all the power and heartbreak in those words. “Where are they?”
Rohan had warned her. She’d never stood a chance without the element of surprise. Should have taken Brady’s deal, love. But before Rohan could say that out loud, Grayson Hawthorne took a heavy step forward, staring bullets at the screen and those empty chairs.
“Something is wrong.”