On the fourth floor of the grand house, Lyra found seven doors, each bearing an ornate bronze lock. On the wall, there was an enormous clock, roman numerals marking the time.
Five o’clock, almost exactly.
Lyra stepped up to the first door and tried her key. It slid into the lock but wouldn’t turn. Moving on to the next, Lyra heard Gigi behind her, trying out her luck with one of the other doors. Lyra’s second attempt was unsuccessful, but on her third, the key turned in the lock.
The door opened.
The room beyond was startlingly simple, a king-sized bed the only piece of furniture in the room. Laying across the pristine white bedspread was a ball gown.
Lyra walked forward, the door closing behind her as she forgot everything but the gown on the bed. Its bodice was a dark navy blue, almost black, like the ocean at midnight. The skirt was long and made of layers of tulle.
Don your costume and your mask, Lyra thought. The ball begins at quarter past.
She lifted the gown off the bed, revealing a mask, delicate and jeweled, underneath. It was the kind of mask that covered only the region of the face surrounding the eyes, the kind a person might have worn to Mardi Gras.
Or to a masquerade ball, Lyra thought. Bewitched despite herself, she
laid the gown over her arm and ran her fingers lightly over the jewels on the mask. Surely those were rhinestones. Surely those weren’t diamonds, arranged in elaborate, hypnotic swirls, each individual jewel small but flawless.
Surely.
Lyra forcibly turned her attention from the mask back to the gown. Guarding herself against the urge to get carried away in the magic of the moment, she did as she’d been instructed and donned her costume, shedding her own clothes and slipping on the gown.
It’s just a dress, Lyra told herself—but it wasn’t just anything.
The bodice gripped her curves, the fit uncanny. Perfection. At the smallest part of her waist, the tulle skirt was the same dark blue as the bodice, but the fabric lightened, inch by inch, to a brilliant blue that gave way to a light, frothy one, that melded into the lightest pastel. The bottom of the skirt was completely white. The color didn’t change evenly across the skirt; it changed in waves.
Lyra felt like she was wearing a waterfall.
She reached for the mask. Long, velvety black ribbons hung from either side. Lyra wasn’t sure what she’d expected from the Grandest Game—but not this. She hadn’t expected it to feel like this. Like magic.
Glittering mask in hand, Lyra made her way from the bedroom into the attached bathroom, drawn to the mirror. She studied her own features as if they belonged to a stranger: dark hair, amber eyes in a heart-shaped face, golden-tan skin.
She stepped back, taking in the look, the feel, the damn aura of the dress, trying to remember that this wasn’t a fairy tale.
This was a competition.
Her gaze caught on the bathroom drawers—two of them, built into the vanity. Inside one, Lyra found a pair of ballet flats. She put them on.
Inside the other drawer, she found a pair of dice.
They’re made of glass, Lyra realized. The glass dice were positioned off- kilter from each other, like they’d been rolled. A three and a five. Lyra picked them up, and the instant she did, words appeared on the bathroom mirror, transposed over her reflection.
PLAYER NUMBER 4, LYRA KANE. Lyra stared at herself, and then the words on the mirror changed. GAME ON.
She put on the mask.
