As Lyra stepped into the hallway, she saw a flash of someone else headed down the spiral staircase. She went to follow, but as she hit the stairs, she paused, glancing back at the clock.
5:13.
The stairs spiraled down. The stairs spiraled up.
They’d been given hours to explore the island, but what about the house? Giving in to instinct, Lyra ran up the steps, light on her feet, surprised at how comfortable the ballet flats she’d been given were, how sturdy they felt beneath her feet as she came to the very last step of that grand spiral staircase and—
Lyra came to a complete and utter stop. The staircase let out in a circular room, the only room on the top floor of the house.
A library. Lyra took three steps forward—and spun. She couldn’t help it. Fifteen-foot shelves ringed the room, filled with thousands of books. The ceiling was made of thick stained glass that, in daylight, would have cast colored light across the gleaming wood floors.
Like the dress and the mask and all the rest of it, this room was magic. “I’m a sucker for libraries.” The voice came from behind her. “Circular
ones in particular.”
Lyra turned to come face-to-face with the speaker—or, more accurately, mask-to-mask.
If she’d thought her own mask was breathtaking, this one was a sight to
behold, and so was the gown that went with it, the fabric a deep, midnight purple, richer somehow than Lyra’s blue, the skirt full and covered in breathtaking stitching in a shade of silver like moonlight on water.
The matching mask was lined with delicate black gemstones, with deep purple ones framing the eyes, but the most remarkable thing was the metalwork. Was there such a thing as black gold? If so, some artisan had cajoled it into delicate, interlocking tendrils that resembled nothing so much as lace.
Stop staring, Lyra told herself. She looked back to the shelves circling the room. “It’s beautiful,” she said, but what she was thinking was There’s only one player I haven’t met.
“And you don’t trust beautiful things?” There was something in the masked girl’s tone, an audible spark, like Lyra had just tipped her hand more than she’d intended to. Belatedly, Lyra recognized that voice, and she knew suddenly who the girl in that moon-kissed dress, behind that dark, glittering mask, was.
Not a player. “You’re Avery Grambs.” The Hawthorne heiress, here, right in front of her.
“I was you once.” The heiress smiled, but because of the mask, Lyra had no idea if that smile reached Avery’s eyes. “Trusting people wasn’t exactly my forte, either. But if I could give you a little advice, going into this game?”
Everything about this interaction felt surreal. Lyra exhaled. “Like I’m going to turn down advice from the person who masterminded all of this?”
The one pulling the strings. The one at the center of this game. The billionaire. The philanthropist. The Avery Kylie Grambs.
“Sometimes,” Avery said, “in the games that matter most, the only way to really play is to live.”
Lyra’s throat tightened, and she looked away. She wasn’t even sure why.
When she’d gathered herself, when she glanced back— The Hawthorne heiress was gone.
