The words on the wall stared back at Lyra, the letters evenly spaced, the grooves of the writing deep. There were six lines, twenty-six words total.
YOU MIGHT FIND ME IN A CAVE SOMETIMES I MIGHT MISBEHAVE WASH ME OUT
GIVE ME A KISS DON’T SAY A WORD BUT MAKE A WISH
“More times than I would care to admit,” Grayson said behind her, “when my grandfather’s games involved riddles, I lost.”
Lyra felt her hand tighten around the hilt of the sword, and she told herself that it had nothing to do with the way Grayson had said the words I lost. His billionaire grandfather had obviously done a number on him. Lyra remembered Rohan’s appraisal of the Hawthornes: self-aggrandizing, overly angsty, and prone toward mythologizing an old man who seems like he was a right bastard.
“Riddles are for people who enjoy playing,” Odette told Grayson. “Do you consider yourself playful, Mr. Hawthorne?”
“Do I seem as though I consider myself playful?” Grayson replied.
“No.” Lyra stared at the words on the wall. “But Tobias Hawthorne also
didn’t seem like the type to be so very fond of riddles.”
The riddle rang in her mind—not the words on the wall but the ones she’d been over and over in the year and a half since Grayson Hawthorne had put it in her head that her father’s final words might be a riddle. What begins a bet? Not that.
A bet was a wager, a gamble, a risk. An agreement, a competition with stakes, a laying of odds, a dare. An ante. Lyra had spent hours and hours lost in the weeds on that last one, because ante could mean price or cost, as well as before or preceding, and she hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that there might be something there.
Something she couldn’t quite grasp. Something forever just out of reach.
“Your mind is not occupied with this riddle.” Grayson’s voice didn’t break into Lyra’s thoughts; it enveloped them. Even when he was quiet and almost gentle, there was nothing the least bit understated about Grayson Hawthorne.
A perverse part of Lyra wanted to pretend that he hadn’t read her nearly as well as he had. “What can be found in a cave?” Lyra forced the tension from her body. Her gaze trailed over the words on the wall and settled on one in particular. Kiss.
The danger of touch, something whispered inside her, is the cruel beauty of a moment, gone too fast and burned into skin.
Lyra swallowed. “A frog?” That fit with the cave—and the mention of a kiss. Wasn’t that the way fairy tales went? Kiss the frog, turn him into a prince.
“When you answer a riddle correctly,” Grayson said, “everything makes perfect sense. If an answer fails to reveal the trick in the question but nonetheless seems plausible on its face, that answer is likely a decoy, meant to distract you and anchor your mind.”
“I am aware of the definition of the word decoy,” Lyra told him. “And I know all about trick questions.”
“Why,” Grayson murmured, “am I not surprised?”
“Close quarters getting to the two of you already?” Odette asked. The grandma-baking-cookies smile was back.
To save herself from replying, Lyra set the sword down. “May I?” Grayson asked.
Lyra was taken back to their dance. May I cut in? At least he’d asked first this time. She folded her arms over her chest. “Knock yourself out, Hawthorne boy.”
Grayson took the sword. Something about the lines of his body and the way he stood reminded Lyra that the correct way to hold a sword had very little to do with the hands that held the hilt.
Grayson Hawthorne held that sword like it was an exercise in whole- body control.
Think caves, Lyra told herself sharply. Think silence. Think wishes.
“There’s writing on the blade.” Grayson’s voice matched his body—
utter control.
Lyra went to see the writing for herself. “From every trap be free,” she read, her tone as neutral as she could make it. “For every lock a key.” She paused. “Sounds like another riddle.”
This game was drowning them in cryptic rhymes.
“I’m starting to really hate riddles,” Lyra said under her breath.
“Funny,” Grayson replied, lowering the sword, his silvery-gray eyes coming to rest on hers. “I’m rather starting to like them.”
