Sundering the fan—thoroughly and repeatedly, first in the dark, then in light—yielded nothing.
“We’re going to need that fan for something,” Savannah said, “and now it’s in tatters.”
Rohan gave a little shrug. “Improvisation is a skill. When the moment comes, we’ll improvise. Until then…” Rohan eyed the tatters. “I’ve always had a certain fascination for broken things.”
“Because you like to fix them?” Savannah’s tone was scathing.
“Because I like to scavenge them for parts.” Rohan looked up at her. “I don’t believe in fixing things or people unless I need them whole.”
“I would not advise trying to fix me,” Savannah told him.
“I am under no misapprehension that you need fixing.” Channeling his inner pickpocket, Rohan relieved her of the glitter vial.
“What are you doing?” Savannah snapped, once she’d realized what he’d done.
Rohan uncorked the vial. “Dumping out the glitter.” He upended the contents onto his palm.
“Careful,” Savannah said in that mud-on-your-shoes, blood-on-your- knuckles kind of tone. “Glitter sticks to everything.”
Sticks, Rohan thought. Glitter sticks to everything. “Savvy,” he said. “The lint roller.”
Savannah’s pupils expanded, inky black against the pale, silvery blue of
her irises.
“Unroll the sheets,” Rohan told her.
There was always a moment in every game when Rohan saw exactly how that game was going to play out—how it was going to end.
He and Savannah Grayson were going to get out of here. They would make it to the dock well in advance of dawn. They would decimate the competition in the next phase of the game.
He would use her. She would use him.
And one of us is going to win it all.
Savannah tore sheet after sheet off the lint roller, so fast and fierce that Rohan could practically taste the adrenaline pumping through her veins.
Savannah was made for moments like this one. As was he.
“There’s not enough glitter to cover all of the sheets,” Rohan observed.
Savannah ran her hands over them, her fingers long and dexterous. “This one,” she said, something almost brutal in her tone. “The adhesive is uneven. Parts are sticky. Parts aren’t.”
Rohan didn’t question that—or her. He crouched and spread the glitter across the sheet. When he was finished, Savannah flipped the sheet over, dumping the excess glitter.
Rohan tried to make sense of what was left behind, but if there was a message, it was muddied.
“Glitter sticks to everything.” Savannah’s eyes narrowed. “The fan.”
The one they’d sundered. “Time to improvise.” Rohan lifted the sword. Holding it in both hands, he used the blade as a fan, his movements rapid and controlled. Not enough. Rohan lowered himself to the ground and began to blow.
Slowly, a message took form. KING ME.
“King me,” Savannah said above him. “Rohan.” There was an urgency in the way she said his name. “King me. As in checkers.”
As they bolted for the game on the wall, Savannah smiled—not a socialite’s smile, not a wolfish or roguish one. No, her smile was ecstasy and victory and sharp around the edges, and Rohan drank it in like wine.
“Do you think we need to king a specific piece or all of them?” Intentionally or otherwise, Savannah made that sound less like a question than an invitation.
“There’s also the issue of how we ought to king the pieces,” Rohan
replied in kind. “In gameplay, you can either slide a second piece beneath the first or—”
“Flip it upside down.” Savannah did exactly that to one of the pieces. With no hesitation, she moved methodically down all the black pieces on the back row, flipping them over.
Rohan did the same for the red pieces. She beat him to the end of her allotted pieces, leaving Rohan to flip the very last of his. As soon as he did, the game split in two, the wall parting along the vertical axis, revealing a door. Rohan tried it. Locked. There was no keyhole, just a black screen next to the door.
“Enter audio code,” a robotic voice declared.
The world around Rohan went still and quiet, and everything—every last damn thing—fell into place. “The birthday card,” he said.
It was the only one of their four objects they hadn’t used. When Rohan opened it, the gentle melody of “Clair de Lune” filled the air.
Moonlight.
The door before them opened straight to the rocky shore.
