Savannah flipped over the first chip. “Truth.” She reached for the pile of white and gold cards and withdrew one. Rohan expected her to discard the predetermined question and ask him for details about the Mercy, but she didn’t—an indication that she was off her game.

Instead, Savannah Grayson read the question on the card in an almost bored tone as she placed the chip on the table and slid it across to him. “What is your earliest memory?”

Rohan placed his thumb flat on the center of the chip. “My earliest memory.” Rohan’s voice was unexpectedly low in pitch, even to his own ears. He was a person who kept his memories locked away in a labyrinth for a reason. Already in this game, the past had clawed its way to the surface of his mind twice, and that was two times too many.

But needs must. “I’m in my mother’s arms,” Rohan said, detached. “She’s humming, and then I’m in the water. We’re outside. It’s pitch black. The water is deep. I can’t swim.”

There wasn’t an ounce of emotion in his tone. Detaching further, Rohan considered the origin of the phrase needs must, the full proverb. Needs must when the devil drives.

“I know control,” Savannah said, “when I see it.”

Rohan met her eyes. “It wasn’t the first time.” For all his control, Rohan could feel his heart beating harder now. “That’s the most vivid part of the memory. I’m in the water. I can’t swim. I can’t see anything. And it’s not

the first time.”

They’d done it to him on purpose. Rohan had no recollection of who they were, beyond the woman. The rest of his family, perhaps. Children didn’t come to the keeping of the Devil’s Mercy for good reasons.

The chip under Rohan’s thumb lit up. He cleared his mind and set it down. Five more to go. He reached for a chip of his own and turned it over.

“Dare.” Rohan drew a black card. The image of the hairbrush stared back at him. He looked up at Savannah, at her braid. “Take down your hair.”

That wasn’t strategy. Rohan could admit that, if only to himself.

He heard the breath catch in her throat. “Is that your dare?” Savannah asked. I know control, she’d told him, when I see it.

“I dare you…” Rohan banished the memory of the water and the dark. “To let me brush it.”

He let himself savor the way Savannah took down her hair, as her nimble fingers made quick work of the braids on either side of her head. She was efficient.

Rohan picked up the brush.

“There,” Savannah said, clipping the word. “Done. Brush away.” There those walls were. He wondered if any part of her was thinking, as he was, of their rather tantalizing fight.

“I can come up with another dare,” Rohan told her, spinning the brush around once in his hand. “If you would like.”

Savannah gave him a look sharp enough to bisect him. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“The chip.” Rohan leaned forward to lay it on the table in front of her. She took it in her hand, and Rohan registered the way her long, pale hair danced all the way down her back with even the slightest movement.

“I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to.” Rohan walked toward her, making no effort to mask the sound of his steps. “I can come up with another dare.”

“I want,” Savannah said, “to win.”

You need to, Rohan corrected silently. The labyrinth beckoned. “Do it.” Savannah liked giving orders.

Rohan counted her breaths and his own, and when he reached seven for each of them, he brought the brush up and began expertly working out the

last remaining knots from the braids. He remembered fisting his hand in her hair, remembered her own painful hold on him, but this?

This was a different beast. Slowly. Carefully. Gently. This wasn’t his first time brushing hair—not even hair as long and thick and soft as hers. The knots were gone soon enough.

Rohan’s skill set was… eclectic.

He didn’t stop. He went section by section, guiding the brush through her hair and down her back, counting her breaths and his own.

One.

Two.

Three.

Her next intake of breath was a little sharper. Do you know what that does to me, winter girl? His thumb lightly skimmed her neck, and Savannah arched it, leaning into his touch.

His pulse. Hers. Softness and heat. Breath after breath after breath, Rohan kept brushing, kept counting.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

“Rohan.” The way she said his name was like a knife slid between ribs.

Savannah. Savannah. Savannah.

The chip in her fingers lit up. “Are we done?” Her voice was lower now, low and rich and brutally, irrefutably her.

“Are we, Savvy?” Rohan echoed the question back to her. “Done?” He saw and heard and felt her swallow. “It’s over.”

There was a difference, Rohan knew, between want and need. Staying on the right side of that line was an exercise of utmost control. He could want her to eternity and back, but he couldn’t let himself need a damn thing.

Rohan lowered the brush. “One dare down.”

“And one truth.” Savannah’s right hand lashed out, and an instant later, she’d turned over a third chip. Dare. She moved on to the card pile and

drew the knife.

As the Factotum of the Devil’s Mercy, Rohan had a certain level of skill with blades.

Savannah stared at the knife on the table. Rohan felt his lips curve, and then Savannah Grayson did something most unexpected: She grabbed her hair in her fist. “Cut it.”

Rohan was not a person who was easily taken off guard. Schooling his features to remain neutral, he picked up the pearl-handled blade and gave it a light spin. “You want me to cut your hair with this knife.”

“I dare you to cut my hair with that knife.”

She’d felt something. Rohan thought about her sharp intake of breath, about the way she’d leaned into his touch. She’d wanted it—and him. And this was her response.

“I’ve done worse things with knives,” Rohan warned her, “than cut hair.”

“Then why,” she countered, “are you stalling?”

Rohan took the knife in his hand and wondered if she was punishing herself for feeling—or him for making her feel. He placed his left hand over hers, and she pulled back, leaving him with her hair fisted in his hand, right at the base of her neck.

Before either one of them could breathe even once, Rohan brought the knife to the spot just above his hand and started to cut. It was dirty work, but he was quick about it.

Whatever measurements the chips took, when Rohan pressed his thumb to the third chip, it lit up.

Savannah stood, towering over the strands of her hair that littered the floor. “Your turn.”

Vicious winter girl. Rohan flipped the next poker chip. “Truth.” He drew a white card but didn’t even look at the question on it. “Why did you dare me to cut your hair?”

That wasn’t the question he should have asked. There was no utility to asking it. And yet…

He wanted to hear her say it.

“Why not?” Savannah moved around the table, putting it between them.

Rohan placed his palms flat on the wood and leaned forward. “That’s not a real answer, Savvy. Put your thumb on the chip.”

And that caused the chip to light up.

Savannah flipped another one. “Truth. Who is the mutual acquaintance that you and Jameson Hawthorne share who is so fond of French?”

“Her name is Zella,” Rohan said, settling his thumb on the chip. “She’s a duchess. One who, for whatever reason, thinks that she can take something that is mine.”

That wasn’t just a truth. That was the truth of Rohan’s life. The Mercy was his, and he was the Mercy. Without it, he was just a five-year-old boy drowning in dark water.

No one and nothing mattered more.

Rohan waited until the chip lit up, then flipped over another one. Dare.

He drew a card. There was only one object left on the table, so he was

utterly unsurprised when the image of the glass rose stared back at him.

What do the rest of the cards hold, then? Rohan sidelined that question and locked a hand around the glass rose. And then he held it out to Savannah. “Break it.”

“Excuse me?”

He leaned over to lightly place the rose down on the table, right in front of her. “I see you, Savannah. The real you. The angry you.” Rohan let his voice go low and rough. “Fire, not ice.” He nodded toward the rose. “I dare you to break it.”

“I’m not angry.”

It was a good thing the chip he pressed into her palm wasn’t for truth. “Scared to let go?” Rohan asked her. “You don’t want to admit how angry you are,” he said, his voice low and taunting, “because if you do, someone might ask why.”

There were reasons for him to ask that went beyond wanting—almost needing—to know.

It was all connected. Why she was here. That anger. Her father. What else does the winner of the Grandest Game receive, besides money?

“I bet,” Savannah said, calmly picking up the rose, “that no stranger has ever told you to smile.” She paused. “Perhaps I’m angry because women like me don’t get to be angry.”

Rohan opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, Savannah turned and threw the glass rose as hard as she could.

It shattered into pieces.

“There you are, Savvy,” Rohan murmured. I see you.