A lack of light did little to impede Rohan’s search of the room—in particular, the floorboards and walls. In a game of his design, if the lights had gone out, especially this close to the end of the game, it would have been because he’d hidden a flashlight for the players to find.
A challenge.
A twist.
A way of turning up the heat.
And yet… Savannah wasn’t searching. Rohan listened for her movements—they were slight, targeted. She was giving their objects a thorough examination. He listened harder. The fan opened, and the fan closed.
You’re not looking for a button or a switch, are you, love? You aren’t looking for a light source at all.
Rohan had been taught from a young age to question every assumption, to come at problems from every angle. “You know what I find fascinating, Savvy? Tells.” He allowed her exactly one second to ponder that. “A sudden lack of motion. Too much eye contact. Too little. A tightening of the throat or shoulders. A change in pitch. The slightest flex in one specific muscle in the cheek. Even the way a person stacks their chips can tell me everything I need to know.”
Rohan paused again, listening for the sound of her breathing through the darkness.
“The fact that you are not searching for a light source, or even a button or switch on those objects, is a tell.”
“Of what?”
“Nicely paced reply,” Rohan murmured, “just enough challenge in your tone. But the body never lies, love.”
“You can’t see my body. And don’t call me love.”
“That took you a quarter-second too long, Savvy. You don’t believe the power outage is part of the game.”
Silence.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Rohan challenged.
He could practically hear the arch of her brow through the dark. “If I told you every time you were wrong about something, there would hardly be time for anything else.”
Rohan recognized deflection when he heard it. His brain connected the dots—one after another after another. “Are you aware,” he said, testing her, “that some players in this game have sponsors?” No reply from Savannah. “Perhaps your sponsor calls it something different.”
Silence.
“You were one of the Hawthorne heiress’s personal picks for this game,” Rohan continued, “so whoever approached you would have had a very narrow window of time in which to do so.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.” That she’d replied at all, let alone with a bluff that weak, he took as a sign to push a little more.
“Now, why would your sponsor kill the power? Surely it’s not just to distract the other teams while you stay focused. To distract the game makers, perhaps? But from what, exactly? And how?”
There were few things Rohan’s mind loved more than interlocking questions. Solve one, and the answers became apparent, all the way down.
Savannah was doing this for her father.
Rohan wasn’t there—yet. But with each second that passed, he could feel himself getting a little closer. In the meantime…
“A less scrupulous individual than myself,” he told Savannah, “might be considering a bit of blackmail right now, but I have no interest in gaining your compliance.” Rohan took a step toward her, and he made sure it was audible. “I am not looking for an obedient little piece to move around the
board, Savvy.”
Not anymore.
“I am looking,” Rohan continued, with another, audible step, “for an alliance. A partner.”
“I reject the premise that you have anything to blackmail me with.” Now it was Savannah’s turn to take a single, threatening step toward him. “I’m Grayson Hawthorne’s sister. I will get the benefit of every doubt. And you broke Jameson’s ribs. Do you really think Avery Grambs has forgotten that? That she’ll listen to or believe you over me? Based on what? The fact that I didn’t play this game your way in the dark?”
“Half sister,” Rohan said. “Excuse me?”
“You’re Grayson Hawthorne’s half sister,” Rohan murmured, “as you’re so very fond of pointing out.” He could have pushed harder there, but he didn’t. As he’d told Savannah, he had no interest in coercing her into anything.
“Since there’s no need to look for a light…” Rohan took that as a given. “Perhaps we should focus on something else?” He took care of the remaining space between them and brought his hand to her left hand—and the object she held in it. The vial of glitter.
Wrapping his fingers lightly around hers, Rohan spoke: “The fan is in your other hand, and the lint roller is tucked into the chain around your waist, isn’t it?”
“Why ask if you are already so convinced that you know everything?” “Put the fan down for the moment.”
He was fully prepared to be told to go to hell, but she must have wondered what he was up to, because a moment later, Rohan heard her slip the fan into the chain.
He reached for Savannah’s free hand, then coaxed her fingers into exploring the vial as his did the same. “This vial is made of glass.” In the darkness, Savannah made no attempt to shrug off his touch. “The cork at the top is made of rubber,” Rohan noted. “There’s a raised emblem on it.”
“A star.”
“The cork could function as a stamp if we could find something to use as an inkpad,” Rohan murmured. “Or it could work as a key for a certain kind of lock.”
“There might be something hidden inside the glitter.” Savannah was not the type to let someone else take the reins for long.
“Or perhaps,” Rohan countered, his voice low and heady, “what we really need is the vial. Glass can break. Shards are sharp.” He thought about the glass rose and the hourglass and wondered if she was doing the same.
I see you, Savannah Grayson, even in the dark.
“The lint roller is the disposable kind with sticky sheets that tear off.” Savannah’s tone was remarkably even, but Rohan still knew: He almost had her.
We’re better together, love. And above all, you want to win. You need to.
“What do you think would happen,” Rohan said, “if we unrolled the sheets?”
“What did the inside of the birthday card say?” Savannah shot back.
So demanding. “Happy birthday,” Rohan reported. He used his free hand to fetch the card from his tuxedo jacket and opened it, allowing the music to fill the air. “‘Clair de Lune,’” Rohan told her, and then he translated the song’s name: “Moonlight.”
Savannah’s body shifted, and Rohan felt movement in the air. The fan. She’d retrieved it from the chain and opened it once more. Rohan called an image of the fan up in his mind, moonlit thread against deep navy silk, and a single word: SURRENDER.
“Close the fan,” Rohan told Savannah. “Partway. Slowly.” She started to do exactly that, and he brought his hands to hers once more. “Bit by bit by bit.”
Rohan wasn’t a novice when it came to his own body’s responses or the effect his touch could have on others. He’d done far more things—and far more creative things—in the dark than this. It defied all logic that touching Savannah Grayson’s hands could feel like an earthquake inside of him, like he was exploring her bit by bit by bit.
“Stop,” Rohan said. Savannah stopped. Rohan ran his fingers along the embroidered letters on the fan, some of them now obscured.
“And so,” Rohan murmured, “surrender becomes sunder.”
“Sunder. To split apart.” Savannah didn’t miss a beat. “To sever. To rend. To rip. That’s our clue. That’s where we start. We sunder the fan.” She paused, and Rohan read into that—not hesitation but consideration.
He allowed his fingers to skim the back of her hand, knuckle to knuckle
to wrist, and he told himself he had full control. Strategy and want, after all, didn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
“You want an alliance.” Savannah’s words seemed to live in the space between them. He could feel them, feel her. “I want the longsword.”
“To sunder the fan?” Rohan said immediately. “Or for later?” “Does it matter?”
Rohan allowed himself to lean forward and whisper in her ear. “Everything matters, Savvy—until nothing does.”
That was the truth. It was also a warning. And a promise. I will betray you. You will betray me. Winning was the only thing that would matter in the end.
“I’m keeping the sword,” Rohan said. “And you’re going to work with me anyway.”
He counted three seconds of silence before she spoke again. “Lift the blade,” Savannah said. “Now.”
Another tell. Rohan pulled the sword and, with a counterclockwise turn of his wrist, brought it vertical in an instant. He felt the exact moment that Savannah pressed the silk fan into the blade. The fabric began to tear.
“Rohan?” Savannah sundered the fan. “We have a deal.”
