Diamond Team.” Jameson Hawthorne’s voice was all around them. “You have chosen to take your one and only hint.”
Rohan wondered—briefly—where the game makers’ command center was and what they had been doing to pass the time.
“But as you know,” Jameson continued, “hints in this game must be earned.”
Ledgers must be balanced, levies paid. Everything in Rohan’s life had come at a cost.
“Door number one or door two?” Jameson Hawthorne asked. “Pick your challenge.”
“Two,” Savannah said immediately.
Instants later, there was a sound like the turning of gears, and the game table in the center of the room began to split at the seam they’d found earlier, the two halves of the tabletop pulled apart as if by invisible hands. A Needle In A Haystack and all of its pieces fell to the ground as the two halves of the tabletop flipped outward, rotating a hundred and eighty degrees and disappearing beneath the underside of the table. A second, formerly hidden tabletop stared back at them. Shining hardwood, green felt. “A poker table,” Rohan commented. Around the rim, holders had been carved into the wood for cards and for chips. The poker chips themselves— all black—were placed at equidistant intervals around the perimeter of the green felt. In the center of the table there were two small stacks of what
looked to be playing cards, one set white with gold foiling, the other black with bronze and silver. Positioned next to the cards were three objects: a silver hairbrush, a pearl-handled knife, and a glass rose.
“Behind door number two,” Jameson Hawthorne told them, “is a game.
To earn your hint, all the two of you have to do is play it.” “Poker?” Savannah guessed. Her gaze slid to Rohan’s.
“Not poker.” Avery Grambs was the one who replied. “Truth or Dare— or a version of it, anyway.” Something in the Hawthorne heiress’s voice reminded Rohan that she had promised the players an experience. And then he thought about Nash’s claim: Our games have heart.
“Working as a team—becoming a team—requires cooperation,” Avery continued. “It requires a certain amount of openness. In some cases, it requires risk.”
“Each of the chips on the table in front of you has a word written on the bottom.” Jameson was clearly enjoying this far too much. “Half say truth. Half say dare. To successfully complete this challenge, you’ll need to collect three from each category.”
“Once you’ve turned over a chip”—Avery took back over—“you’ll draw a card from the corresponding pile: white for truth, black for dare. The person who draws the card issues the challenge. The other person must fulfill it. If, for any reason, after drawing a truth card, you decide that you would prefer to pose your own question instead of the question written on the card, that is allowed.”
“Presuming, of course,” Jameson interjected, “that said question is just as interesting as the one we have provided.”
Well, that was ominous.
“You’ll notice that there are three objects on the table.” Avery took back over. “The dare cards don’t specify a dare. They specify an object. Coming up with an appropriate dare using that object is up to you.”
Rohan wondered what kind of challenge they would have faced if they’d chosen door number one. A puzzle instead of a game? Something less… personal?
Out loud, he focused on a different question. “What’s to keep us from lying?”
“I’m so glad you asked,” Jameson replied. “The poker chips have a little something extra embedded in them. Place your thumb flat in the center of a
truth chip as you answer or a dare chip immediately after fulfilling your dare. We’ll be monitoring your heart rate, among other things. You could try fooling us, of course, but if we flag one of your answers as false, the challenge fails.”
No hint, Rohan translated.
“What about the dares?” Savannah was using her high, clear society voice, but her body told a different story.
Her body was ready to fight.
Fight who? The labyrinth called. And why? Rohan resisted, staying in the moment.
“A proper dare,” Jameson said, “also has an effect on one’s heart rate. If you think you can trick our sensors, the two of you are most welcome to try and risk not getting your hint. Bonne chance.”
With that, the game’s masterminds went silent.
“Good luck,” Rohan translated flatly. “Jameson Hawthorne and I have a mutual acquaintance who is fond of the French version of that phrase.”
The duchess. Rohan recognized the move Jameson had just made for what it was: the blighter’s way of making it clear that he and Avery knew exactly what was at stake for Rohan in this game. It wouldn’t have taken much for them to figure it out, given their history with the Mercy.
You two know I’m not going to try to cheat, Rohan thought shrewdly. Compared to the Proprietorship of the Devil’s Mercy, what was one little game of Truth or Dare?
