Rohan walked over to the panel on the wall and depressed the hint button, ensuring the game makers would hear him. “Our hint,” he demanded. As far as Rohan was concerned, they’d earned it. Three truths. The brush. The knife. Savannah’s hair. The glass rose.
“You know the card that says, ‘this is not your clue’?” Avery’s voice was back. “Take any of the other cards in the game deck for A Needle In A Haystack and hold it up to a torch.”
The speakers went silent.
Savannah grabbed a blank card from the “haystack.” Rohan grabbed another. They split, going to different torches, and Rohan wondered if Savannah needed to put space between them.
I don’t get to make you feel like that? Like what, precisely, love? There were perfectly strategic reasons to want an answer to that question.
With the heat from the torch, invisible ink became visible on Rohan’s card: Say cheese.
“A camera?” Savannah said, a sure indication that her card had borne the same message. “Or a mouse?”
Rohan tried a different tactic. “Cheese,” he said.
There was a beeping sound, as the audio passcode registered, then one of the triangular room’s walls began to rotate backward. It turned a full ninety degrees before clicking into place, part of a new wall in a much larger room.
More shelves. Rohan took in the room’s expansion. More games. Fifteen feet from the poker table, there was a second recessed area cut into the floor, host to a Ping-Pong table. Rohan strode toward it and hopped down to examine the table, but in the depths of his mind, a different puzzle beckoned.
What besides money does a person get from winning the Grandest Game? Rohan ran a hand over the Ping-Pong table, searching every square inch of its surface. Notoriety?
At this rate, Savannah was going to need her own room in the labyrinth.
Careful, Rohan. He could still feel the moment the knife had cut through her hair, but there was no room in his plan—in any of his plans—for that kind of fascination. Nothing mattered more than winning.
He leapt out of the recessed area to examine the back wall, the only one in the room that wasn’t covered in shelves. It was covered in Ping-Pong balls instead. Hundreds of them.
Rohan waved a hand over the wall, skimming the surface of ball after ball. “Savannah,” he called. “Some of them rotate.”
“Is there anything written on the balls that turn?” Savannah asked, seemingly all business as she made her way toward him and joined his search.
“Not that I can see,” Rohan said. But then, we couldn’t see anything written on the cards, either.
“Invisible ink again?” Savannah as good as read his mind. “I found one that rotates.”
They continued on, rotating the loose balls until they clicked into place. Rohan half expected turning the last ball to trigger something—but no such luck.
“That leaves searching the games on the new shelves.” Savannah gave every appearance of having shaken off the effects of Truth or Dare, every appearance of control. “I’ll take this wall. You take—” She cut herself off and froze mid-stride. “Rohan.”
The way she said his name killed him.
Remember who’s playing who here, he cautioned himself.
“What is it?” Rohan said. As he made his way to her, he saw what Savannah saw: The shelves on the wall to the left of the Ping-Pong balls contained nothing but chess sets.
“Kings and queens,” Savannah whispered as she reached for one of the boxes. Without her braid and all that hair, Rohan could see the back of her neck, long and tense.
He grabbed a box of his own. “The crown and scepter clues are straightforward. As for empty thrones—”
Savannah interrupted, “We’re looking for a set missing a king or a queen.”
They got to work. Each chess set was unique. There were pieces made of marble, glass, crystal, and wood; boards that folded or were bejeweled; simple sets and artistic ones; themed, children’s, and antique chess sets.
Finally, Rohan found a set missing a king. “Savvy.” That was all he needed to say, and Savannah was beside him, her long legs closing the gap between them in an instant.
Rohan removed the chessboard from the box. The pieces were plastic, unremarkable. The board looked like a typical cheap chess set, but Rohan unfolded it and placed the pieces in their spots.
Savannah joined in, and they worked together—his hands, hers, his again—until all the pieces were on the board except for the missing king.
“There’s our throne,” Rohan said, nodding at the empty square. “That, or its mirror on the other side.”
Savannah reached out and touched the square, then dragged her fingernail across its surface. The black came off, like a scratch-and-win ticket.
Beneath, there was writing: USE ME.
Rohan lifted the board, sending the pieces scattering. He pushed against the square with his thumbs, and it popped out. Savannah’s hand darted to catch it. She squeezed the square between her forefinger and her thumb, and it lit up with an eerie, purplish glow.
“A blacklight,” Rohan murmured.
“The Ping-Pong balls,” Savannah said beside him. “The ones we turned.” No hesitation.
In an instant, they were at the back wall. “Shield them from the actual light with your hand, then try the blacklight,” Rohan said.
She did. They did, and letters appeared one by one on the balls they’d rotated earlier, spelling out a Latin word.
“Veritas.” Rohan said it out loud. There was a beep, and a section of the ball-covered wall separated from the rest. A hidden compartment. Inside there were four objects.
A lint roller.
A birthday card.
A vial of glitter.
An old-fashioned silk fan.
When they’d removed all the objects from the compartment, another, larger section of the Ping-Pong-ball wall swung outward like a door. Carved into the wooden floorboards where the wall had been a moment before, there was a single word. FINALE.
“One last puzzle.” Savannah stepped up next to him, staring down at the word.
This stage of the game, this moment in time, was coming to an end. Soon the two of them would no longer be a team. She’d promised to destroy him. She’d promised to enjoy it. Rohan tended to believe her on both counts, which meant that if he wanted Savannah Grayson—as an asset—he would need to make his move.
“If you’re about to propose another wager,” Savannah said, “my answer is no.” Her uneven, knife-cut hair made her look even more like a warrior wrapped in ice-blue silk. She still wore the lock and the chain around her waist, and if the weight of them was painful, she didn’t seem to mind, any more than Rohan minded bloody knuckles.
“No more wagers,” Rohan told her. “No more games.” He’d come into this thinking of himself as a player and her as a game piece. But Rohan hadn’t gotten to where he was by underestimating any opponent for long, and Savannah was far more than a queen.
She was a player, too. “I believe it’s time,” Rohan said, locking his eyes on to hers, “that you and I struck a deal.”
