Words.” Savannah’s silvery gaze locked on to the Scrabble tiles, then the poetry magnets. “They’re just words.”

Rohan’s mind made quick work of the last anagram, but he let himself linger longer on her. “You say that as if it’s a phrase you’ve said to yourself before.” Rohan met her eyes. “They’re just words.”

He wondered what words people weaponized against someone like her. “Not everyone shares my appreciation for unapologetically powerful

women,” Rohan noted. “How many times have you been told you think you’re so much better than us?”

How many times had someone called her a bitch—or worse? And how many times had she believed it?

“You’re in my way.” Savannah held on to every ounce of her admirable control.

Rohan wasn’t a stranger to refusing the empathy of others, so he could hardly blame her for doing the same. “Then by all means, love, go around me.”

She took a threatening step forward. “Don’t call me love.” “Does anyone call you Savvy?”

“No.” Savannah pushed past him to the screen. Rohan didn’t bother telling her the final answer. She knew it was sword.

Soon enough, there was a flash of green, then a chime, then bells. The melody wasn’t familiar, but something about it took Rohan back to another

time and place. To a nameless, faceless woman. To being small and warm, to a melody softly hummed.

To darkness. To drowning.

Rohan didn’t stay gone for long. He came back to himself to see the dining room wall separating in two, revealing a hidden compartment on the far side of the room—and a sword.

Savannah made a beeline for it. Rohan didn’t even think. He went over the dining room table, sliding across its surface, beating her to the prize. He gave a twist of his wrist, swinging the blade in a half-circle that left him holding the sword vertically, both of his hands on its hilt.

“There’s something therapeutic about winning.” Rohan made that statement sound more cavalier than it was, lest she realize he’d just told her something true.

On the other side of the room, a section of the floor dropped. A trapdoor. Savannah walked toward it, then stopped, turned, and walked back toward him. Long strides. Angry ones.

He’d gotten a rise out of her, and he hadn’t even been trying to. Much.

She stopped with her face mere inches from the blade of the sword. “Save that wolfish smile for someone else. Save the quips and the charm and, while you’re at it, save the rest.”

“The rest?” Rohan stole one of her habitual facial expressions and arched a brow.

“The way you always angle your body toward mine,” Savannah said. “The way you pitch your voice to surround me. Calling me love. Shortening my name. Pretending you see me, like I am a person desperate to be seen.” Savannah’s gaze flicked up and down the sword’s blade. “I am not desperate. I see you: Rohan the charmer, Rohan the player, Rohan the great manipulator who thinks he knows the first thing about who I am and what I’m capable of.”

She smiled, a cutting, socialite smile backed by all the poise in the world. “There’s a message engraved on that blade, by the way.” With that parting shot, she stalked back toward the trapdoor.

“Is there now?” Rohan twisted the sword in his hands. Words stared up at him from the blade’s edge. “From every trap be free,” he read. “For every lock a key.”

“For the record,” Savannah said, standing with her back to him at the edge of the trapdoor, “this was the last time you will ever beat me to anything.”

Those words were both promise and threat—and what a promise and a threat they were.

“And for your edification…” Savannah began lowering herself into the darkness, “I do not care what words other people use to describe me, because those people are beneath me.” He knew what was coming. “And so are you.”

Rohan should have taken the fact that she was lashing out as a sign that he’d read her a little too well, gotten a little too close to something raw, but for some reason, Savannah’s statement took him back to the woman. To being small.

To darkness. To drowning.

“Consider this your fair warning, British.” Savannah’s voice cut through the darkness. “I don’t have any tender feelings for you to play on. I don’t have any weaknesses for you to exploit. And when it comes to winning this game? I promise you: I want it more.”